Stage Three

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.” Albert Einstein.

I bargained with my grief and came to terms with it yesterday in a small way. Part of that was figuring out why this election has affected me so much. I believe that stress actually compromised my immune system over a month ago and I went from the Flu to catching Covid to a bacterial infection in my lungs I am still taking anti-biotics for.

How I came to this state is going to be part of the bargain I have struck with my grief over American ending. To avoid Stage Five, depression, I am going to need a project.

I am going to try something within my abilities and “podcasting” looks like the best path.

Stage Two

Maybe this is going to go a little quicker than I thought a couple hours ago.

My wife had a talk with me and said many people are crying. I have not been able to bring myself to watch any news, but they know what I know. And now I am thinking about the two-digit IQ half of America that just destroyed it and are cheering. This takes me out of denial, which I have already processed as my brain just playing a trick on me….and on to anger.

I imagine I will be stuck on anger for quite a while. But…maybe not.

After anger, then bargaining, then depression, then acceptance.

Sanjana Gupta, writing for https://www.verywellmind.com/the-bargaining-stage-of-grief-characteristics-and-coping-5272529#toc-when-bargaining-in-grief-becomes-a-problem

Contemporary Views
However, more recent research shows that the process of grieving may not necessarily follow a set pattern of specific reactions over time. People react to loss in different ways and grief can be messy.

-a more current interpretation of the theory is that:

“Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are some of the common reactions to loss. People may experience these emotions at any time during the grieving process and not necessarily in any particular order. Everyone may not necessarily experience all five of these emotions when grieving, as each person tends to have a unique bereavement process. Factors such as the severity of and circumstances surrounding the loss, individual differences in personality and temperament, and cultural, spiritual, and religious beliefs can play a role in the person’s grieving process.“

This is my third post today and I have a long drive ahead of me…so I will end it here for now. Bargaining seems to be next, and I will think about that. “In this stage, you may find yourself negotiating with yourself, with people around you, with fate, or with a higher power to try and mitigate or undo your loss.”

Stage One

The initial shock is wearing off.

I am now entering that first stage of grief….denial.

I am fated to watch America die over the next few years. It was obvious to me in the run up to the election if we lost, we would lose everything…. irretrievably. After nearly a quarter of a millennium, the experiment is over. Several billion others around the world are wondering how this happened, but unlike Americans, they know what will happen next. Inevitably. But while we did understand what was at stake, now suddenly we do not. That does not change the fact there is no going back now.

And I am thinking, and I cannot stop myself….well, maybe this is not the end.

Denial it is.

Next comes anger, then bargaining, then depression, then acceptance.

I do not know personally how the next stage, the anger, will manifest. I am not violent but there may be some violence in society. How long will it take to go through the outrage and move on to the next and the next and finally accept what has happened?

I predict the anger will come with the first actions of the regime. Then the bargaining with my soul that it is not that bad. Then it will become clear that it really is that bad. My fear is that it will be as bad as it possibly can be, which would be the last chapter of The Turner Diaries.

Election Day 2024

Up at five after about six hours of sleep. Here we go. Not a great feeling about today. I hope it is my old ready crew thing messing with me (when I stood duty as a helicopter aircrewman I would get these bad feelings). Of course it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Bad things would happen sometimes and sometimes not. Hopefully not today.

Rejecting reality is the ultimate superpower it seems. Redefinition, repetition, projection…flooding the zone with misinformation and chaos. Only the strongman can decide and assign “truth.” What is truth?

Space and now the Storm

On his book “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by historian Gary Gerstle:

5:56 “The Soviet Union represented an existential threat to the United States”.

6:48 “-and that required (to contain communism) a standing army and quasi-peacetime of a sort that America had never experienced before. And Taft was profoundly uncomfortable with this…he was a republican in a classical sense, small central government, devolve power to the state, it’s suspicious of foreign entanglements, believing that America was protected by the two vast oceans and thus did not need a strong standing army, did not have to be involved in world affairs, and he was opposed to The New Deal; he thought it was a form of tyranny, was going to lead to collectivism, Soviet style, and he was poised, in the 1940’s, to roll back The New Deal-“

Eisenhower came along to address communism and without the cold war The New Deal would have disappeared and been seen “as a blip” instead of a “juggernaut” that continued on for 30 more years.

17:18 “-but the scale of this would not have reached the point that it did without getting a lot of republicans on board and the critical argument for them was national security and the critical event was Sputnik-“.

We Have More People

Some good news:

6 percent of American adults support the use of force to restore Trump to the presidency.

8 percent of American adults support the use of force to prevent Trump from becoming president.

6 percent is a little over 15 million. 8 percent is a little over 20 million.

While the right is more likely to have guns, America has more guns than people and those on the left with guns, and there are many, will share if it comes to violence. Only a small percentage of a small percentage of a small percentage are going to end up shooting at each other and it will in my opinion be roughly equal and Martial Law will be declared quickly, and the military will move in and when they start shooting anyone with a gun on sight, which is the only way to stop a civil war, it will be over quickly. The military will follow the orders of their officers and the officers will obey the sitting government. Various National Guard and Reserve units might stage half-hearted mutinies but the military will react to that like the dreadful hand of God. The great worry is that the democrats are the ones who will not react strongly enough out of fear of being the fascists and if luck is on their side the Trumpists will take power.

Do You Believe?

The Kamala Harris speech was rousing…and took me back to a significant event in my life some years ago.

She concluded with, “Do we believe in the promise of America…and are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

I was having a discussion with a coworker before Trump was elected trying to explain why Trump would not be a good President. I thought it was in good faith but when he asked me, “Do you believe in America?”, the light bulb went on and I realized nothing I said would make any difference to him because he was essentially stating I was NOT an American. Not his idea of an American. He was unmistakably othering me.

There are those who “believe” in the tribe and nothing else. There are those who do not believe in tribalism….that reject the principle that the group you identify with has all knowledge and authority and “others” not in your group are enemies. In Fascist ideology this is a necessary feature called “othering.” The three primary features being 1) the absolute authority of the Leader and the State ideology, 2) absolute loyalty to the Leader who embodies the State, and 3) the demonization of those identified as not part of, or not fit to be, a subject of the State. One of, or a group of, the “others” that must necessarily be destroyed. Because the individual cannot choose to be a subject of the Leader and State without some valid reason to do so. An existential threat is really the only valid reason to suspend all independent thought and “believe.” A promise is something hoped for, that must be traveled to with independent thought, not something taken as it is on the authority of celebrity or a cult of personality, not something that was, in the past. We must not go back. The threats American democracy faces are to its very existence, but unlike fascism, we must NOT suspend individual thought.

When Kamala Harris is asking us if we believe in the promise of America, she is asking if we believe in the freedom of the individual, she is NOT asking if we are in a tribe. Those that demand belief in and submission to a Leader and an ideology and absolute loyalty to that Leader are not referring to any promise of the greatest good for the greatest number of individuals. Only the power of their tribe embodied in the authority of their Leader. Not about truth as a primary feature, only the authority of the Leader, not about the rule of law, only the authority of the Leader, not about the good of the people, only the destruction of those not submitting to the authority of the Leader, who embodies the power of their tribe. Only the Leader can save us….is the lie.

That Trumpists are willing to ignore reality, to call lies the truth, and to change the meaning of words to make them serve the fascist ideology of their Leader. The single most glaring example is the idiotic statement that “America is not a democracy, it is a republic.” America is both in the same way countries are a monarchy and a kingdom. A direct democracy does not delegate authority to elected representatives. The citizens are the representatives and vote. A republic elects representatives who vote on laws that make up the rule of law that limits the authority of direct voting to do things like make people kings and start wars. The representatives, elected by direct democracy to ensure the greatest good for the people, discuss and decide and vote on acting on these issues and enact or repeal the laws limiting or enabling action. If the representatives do not create the greatest good possible, they are democratically voted out of office and new representatives are democratically voted in. A republic is a democracy. Checks and balances, limits, “limitarianism”, is what changes direct democracy to representative democracy. A mob does not understand that this is what democracy actually is, whether direct or representative as in a republic.

Trumpism is a mob being conned by a demagogue to enable him to take power as the autocrat of a fascist state. There are other terms that blend into this such as kleptocracy, plutocracy, authoritarianism and the terms just explained are also often defined in slightly different and very different ways to the point where they can be completely different except in name. That is the world we live in. And the predators who want to take absolute power use that ambiguity and manipulate emotions and grievance to control the mob.

The next few days will decide the future of America. We the People will either continue as a democracy….or what has been America will end. We must fight and win.

250 Million are NOT Garbage?

250 million Americans just happen to be….white.

I just heard him say it. Loud and clear. His white supremacist AR-15 army could not get a clearer message. Steve Bannon saying everyone should be willing to go to federal prison…and now I am really getting worried. Garbage trucks are perfect for mass burials of dead bodies.