Some years ago, I wrote a book called Evolution versus Revolution. As you might imagine, I came down hard on the side of evolution. Part of my argument derived from research done on mourning. I compared the stages of individual grief with what occurs when there are significant social changes.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross introduced us to the idea that when people die, they and those who care about them proceed through several phases before they come to grips with their impending loss. They don’t accept this bereavement without fighting back.
By now most Americans are familiar with Kubler-Ross’s five stages. These are: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance. Each must be traversed before a person is prepared to move ahead. Moreover, it takes time for an undesired event to be fully accepted.
Imagine my surprise when I heard representative Matt Gaetz allude to these stages during a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee. The committee was in the midst of deciding whether to condemn Attorney General William Barr for defying a congressional subpoena when he made this comparison.
Gaetz’ point was that Democrats are still trying to come to terms with their electoral loss to Donald Trump. Their defeat was unexpected and unwelcome. As with death, it was something they hated and hoped to reverse. Losing, I have argued, is akin to a loss. Rather than dealing with something that is gone, it deals with what we can never have.
Liberals certainly did not attain an ardently desired goal. They are still feeling the pain. Hence, in order to cope, they have descended into denial. They could not believe that a man as obnoxious as Trump had won. After all, Hillary Clinton was destined to prevail; he must be a usurper.
The next stage of grief is anger and liberals did not disappoint. They loathed Trump. He was alleged to be the epitome of all that is evil this this world. A liar, a cheat, a bully, a dictator, a fascist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a sexist and a homophobe, he embodied every imaginable kind of immorality.
Gaetz was thus right on the money when he described progressives as having experienced denial and anger. Where he went wrong is in alleging that they had entered the bargaining phase. As the committee hearing amply demonstrated, Democrats are not yet prepared to bargain in good faith. They are far too angry to be fair.
No, they are still in profound denial. The Mueller report was supposed to settle the matter of whether Trump colluded with the Russians to steal an election. Before it was made public, liberals were certain it would provide the evidence to impeach the impostor in the White House. They were shocked when it did not.
As a result, they resorted to denial. According to them, the president was not exonerated. Although Mueller decided there was no collusion, the Democrats argued that this was only in a legal sense. He had conspired with the Russians, but the evidence didn’t rise to the level where he could be found guilty in a court of law.
Their solution was to transfer to a venue where a guilty judgment could be rendered. If Trump was not legally culpable, he was surely politically culpable. Given that the Democrats had captured the House of Representatives, they could use their newfound clout to reverse a deplorable decision.
This is where we now are. Liberals have no intention of bargaining with conservatives. They made this plain when they adopted the strategy of resistingTrump at every turn. Their attitude is that we were right and you were wrong; consequently we cannot allow you anything that smells like a victory. That would be tantamount to endorsing evil.
We see this in the Democratic refusal to acknowledge that we have a migration crisis on our southern border. We see it when they pretend that the current economic growth spurt is due to Obama policies. We also witness it when liberals claim there were no scandals under the last administration.
As for Attorney General Barr, he has to be converted into a villain in order to discredit the Mueller report without discrediting Mueller. To this end, Barr must be censured for something. He personally has to be the one who distorted the meaning of the report.
To this end, we get the hilarious spectacle of condemning Barr for not doing what it is illegal for him to do. Because their denial is so deep, Democrats are unable to see that they are asking for information which cannot lawfully be released. This absurd gridlock will surely continue until liberals admit their defeats.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Kennesaw State University
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