The Five Stages of Grievance Politics, a Clip Show
On June 27, like many registered voters within the Democratic Party, I was dismayed by Joe Biden’s performance on the stage. Or, more accurately, I was extraordinarily upset and dismayed at his inability to focus or pivot. As someone else with a chronic neurological condition, I was initially skeptical of critics, because those of us with speech difficulties don’t do well under stress. However, I can’t deny that the Biden campaign always felt locked in what one commentator on Pod Save America accurately described as “the sort of grinding politics we’ve been trapped in since Trump descended the escalator into politics.” It had felt like a moribund campaign months before then, and, in the days afterward, it felt like some truly macabre spectacle of forcing an elderly man onto political podiums to beg for his life. Which might be tied to the American Experiment.
And, within that awful complex of anxiety and fear, there was a sense of guilt and self-loathing. This was so clearly not the man I’d voted for four years ago; and he seemed tired and run-down. Which is what the Presidency does to a body. But, if I voted for him, did I really want an 80-year-old who should be gardening and puttering in the garage, wearing himself to the bone for me? Wouldn’t that be the sort of same indirect human sacrifice I’ve railed against for most of my life? What if I voted for a man who had an aneurysm during tense negotiation with the Israelis? How does that second-hand sin stain my soul?
As I’ve said, they were awful, and then, in a moment that will define not only DNC in-fighting for decades, but possibly the course of the country; Joe Biden, in an act unparalleled in human history, actually formally ceded the Primary race, and endorsed his VP, Kamala Harris. In the days that followed, I became almost suicidally depressed. The thought of running a black woman against a Neonazi (if you have one person peacefully dining with Nick Fuentes talking, you have two Nazis at the table)(I’ll also go even farther and bemoan these young, entitled Millennials and their unhealthy obsession with Antifa — in my day “Antifa” was known as “The 82nd Airborne Division) just drained me of life. Then, in the next week, something amazing happened: Black women got on the telephone. Specifically, Black Women raised $2 million in a 90-minute Zoom Call. Then Black Men raised $4 million.
If you’re majority member — even if you’ve lost significant privilege, as I have (if you can go more than a month without a trip to the pharmacy, you have a wider roaming range than I do) — there will come a time when you notice minorities around you organizing and quietly hinting that they know what to do, if you’ll just trust them. The moment I learned that there were grassroots activists lining up behind Harris — and they were the same group that ended legal segregation, and helped enact nearly-universal voting rights — I made a conscious decision to put my White Colonizer prejudices aside, and toss in with the Black folx. I got on the “White Dudes 4 Harris” call, with some other family members, and even made it to Vegas for Harris’s appearance there.
Now, to be sure, a dead-even chance with Donald Trump is a net Electoral College loss, so, we have work to do. Having said that, the Harris campaign feels like a real political campaign, in which candidates court unions for endorsements, glad-hand mayors, and get involved in retail politics. It’s something America hasn’t seen in over a decade, and, despite the life-and-death-of-the-republic stakes, the campaign feels alive.
Again, we’re a helluva a way from anything like a Biden-Walz Administration, and, even that doesn’t bring peace to the Middle East, halt inflation, or guarantee peace and prosperity, but it takes us a big step in that direction.
Now that I’ve gone to a Harris-Walz Pep Rally and seen how vivacious those politicians were — at a sprightly 60 — the burden of mummification is on the other side. And, without the split-screen comparison with Joe Biden, The Other Guy is suddenly the very dark, off-putting, Cryptkeeper-looking candidate. Trump running against Joe Biden was truly horrifying, because, as Peter Wehner wrote in The Atlantic, “[Trump] formerly seemed more ominous and threatening, which, whatever its political drawbacks, signaled strength; now, he seems not just old, but low-energy, stale, even pathetic.”
So, the “moribund campaign” narrative has shifted from Biden to a man who is incapable of admitting to anything resembling weakness. And, to be fair, he’s undergoing the exact same grief I live every day. Similarly to what therapists and social workers have told me, Trump is grieving the campaign he thought he was going to have, just as I mourn the loss of the life I thought I’d live before cancer. And, through that prism, his behavior, through the right lens, makes more sense. Folks, hit the lights, and enjoy the…
Five Stages of Grievance Politics
- Denial — Trump emanated an alternate Truth the other day, and there’s something oddly familiar about the premise:
I have no idea how that scenario plays out in reality, but it doesn’t seem like a reality-based scenario. I guess we all prop Joe Biden up and march him to the DNC, like we did from February to July, and kick down the door for him, and somehow frog-march the man to the top of the ticket? Sounds swell! Also, why on Earth would Biden want to debate you, again? We literally all just talked among ourselves and decided Elder Abuse in the DNC wasn’t cool. If Joe Biden was capable of assaulting the elite corps of Democratic Party voters, he’d be 20 points ahead in the polls and we wouldn’t be here.
2. Anger — You may or may not have caught Trump’s bizarre “Real Housewives” psychotic break last Thursday, depending upon your pain tolerance and antianxiety medications. If you didn’t here’s a very calm, sane, serene man discussing the size of his… crowd.
Admittedly, that is Trump’s go-to mood on days that end in “Y,” so it may or may not be a sign of grief. Your call, but Freud would have a field day with Drumpf’s obsession over crowd sizes.
3. Bargaining — Okay, this isn’t exactly the traditional, “If I improve my overall health, maybe I’ll make it” phase that I went through after my cancer diagnosis, but it’s… well, it’s definitely something (you don’t have to watch it all, just the first two minutes of the first question):
Donald Trump attempting to persuade Black people to vote for him when there’s literally a Black woman running strikes me as the sort of desperate overture one makes when pharmacists stop returning your calls. It’s Trump’s version of bargaining, though; in which he’s clearly doing you, the audience, a deeply personal favor by entertaining your ludicrous notions of democracy or persuasion. Also, if there is a single series of interactions that perfectly encapsulates His Lumpiness, it’s an ill-advised attempt to woo Black voters that ends in a bizarre, eugenics attempt to quantify Harris’s heritage. This, from a man who likes to boast that his mother is Scottish. IT’S A TOTALLY NORMAL THING TO BE CONFUSED ABOUT MULTIRACIAL PEOPLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY; YOU’RE REALLY THE WEIRDO.
4. Depression — This is a perfectly normal way to describe the death of the Amerikkkan Empire:
I’ll be honest, I was looking for an example of The Donald in his new, weirdly-sedentary state. This clip delivered 84 minutes of that, and more, but I literally stopped watching after noticing the King of Brain’s groceries piled on the table behind him. Admittedly, I only noticed that because the opening warning salvo about the hellish Godless Communist Apocalypse was the most boring recitation of the End Times that I’ve ever heard. Every man in my family gives that exact same speech when we have to pay more than $10 to park in a lot.
And that was after a bizarre attempt to talk about the weather. To be clear, making small talk with neighbors and party guests is a Very Normal thing to do. Even someone as weird as me does it. But, clearly, this is a sign of narcissistic injury, and now, The Donald has to fight a campaign on two fronts: to beat Harris at the ballot box, and prove that he’s a Very Normal Human, with fleshy skin and a full set of blood. His ego won’t permit him to tackle the former before proving the latter, if that press conference is any indication. Even Trump’s half-hearted attempt to make small talk about the weather is perpendicular to reality. He can’t even say, “Looks like we might get rain, later,” like me making small talk with my neighbors, he says, “The rain doesn’t look eminent.” Even if I were to pull out my high-dollar vocabulary and say, “There’s imminent rain,” my neighbors would probably call around and ask if I was okay. Trump making some sort of effort to appeal to voters on-camera, though, as a normal politician is indicative of his ongoing psychic melt-down.
5. Acceptance — [Footage not found]
The next thing Donald Trump can accept will be the very last. I went back for an attempt to rewatch that rambling presser, and, before I turned it off at the 20 minute mark, he actually started campaigning for both Biden and Harris. Admittedly, it was in a way that I can only begin to describe as a back-handed, but that’s the only compliment he’s capable of. If Trump were capable of accepting anything, he wouldn’t be verbally abusing America in front of a table of rotting meat — A Totally Normal Scene in America.
