Is
It Grief?
February 3, 2026
I’ve spent a lot of time lately feeling like crap. I have
described what I’m feeling as despair over Trump’s fascism and all the harm it
is inflicting on the world, on my country, and on individual people and families.
There is no doubt that that harm is immense. I needn’t go into all of it here.
All of us who have been paying any attention at all to the news this past year
know what it is. I’ll just mention two aspects of it. The first is ICE. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement. Donald Trump is using ICE to create terror in American
streets and American homes. He is using it against immigrants, or at least
against dark-skinned immigrants, the way Hitler used his armed groups against
Jews early in his deadly campaign against them. He has made millions of people
afraid to leave their houses for any purpose—to go to school, or work, or a medical
appointment, or the grocery store. This aspect of Trump’s fascism has provoked
a massive public response against it, and Trump has backed down a little bit,
in words if less so in actions. Still, Trump’s fascism and the har it is doing
continue apace.
Second, Trump’s all out assault on the rule of law. Maybe
this one hits me especially hard because I used to be a lawyer and still have
my legal education and years of experience practicing law. I have heard all my
long life that we are a country ruled by laws not by people (except in my youth
it was always by “men”). That has never been as true as most Americans have liked
believe, but there is still truth in it. A written constitution establishes our
national government. It is the foundational law of the land. Federal office
holders take an oath to protect and defend it. Until Donald Trump, even the
worst of our presidents (and there have been some really bad ones) have known
themselves to be bound by it. Our lives are governed by laws at multiple
levels, from the federal to the local. We have institutions that exist to
enforce our laws and to punish those who violate them. Law functions, or at
least is supposed to function, independently of whoever the people are who are
acting under it or enforcing it. The federal Department of Justice is supposed
to be the top law enforcement agency in the country.
Donald Trump feels himself to be bound neither by the constitution
nor by any other law. He and others highly placed in his administration violate
court orders all the time. Trump uses the DOJ as his personal lawyers, and he
orders them to undertake utterly unjustified investigations into imaginary
crimes by his political opponents. He thinks judges who rule against him, which
they, thank God, do all the time, are corrupt and should be removed from the
bench. He has said his political opponents should be executed just because they
are his political opponents. All of these things and a great many more that the
Trump administration commits at will are all gross violations of law and
constitute an assault on our traditional rule of law. And they all add up to
just one thing—fascism.
I have been reacting to all of this Trumpist fascism with
what I usually call despair. I also call it hopelessness. I am continually
tempted to deal with how I’m feeling by withdrawing from the world as much as I
can. I read far less news, and I watch news on TV far less than I used to,
because most of the time I just can’t stand what I learn when I do read or
watch it. Yet I know both that total withdrawal is neither possible nor
ultimately desirable. I am a citizen of the United States, and that means I
must be concerned with what’s going in that country if for no other reason than
that it can affect me personally in quite negative ways. So I stay at least
marginally involved even though I often wish I didn’t have to.
As I have thought about what I’m feeling these days, it
occurred to me that I am also feeling a great deal of anger. I’m mad as hell at
Donald Trump and at his many fascist minions over the severe harm they are
doing to my country and to God’s world. I never have been, am not, and never
will be a person who advocates or resorts to violence as a way to address
problems, but I certainly understand the way it tempts people these days. Extreme
problems often seem to call for extreme solutions, not that violence is ever
really a solution to any problem. Donald Trump calls for extreme solutions, and
we must find nonviolent extreme solutions for dealing with him. Perhaps the
anger I and millions upon millions of other Americans are feeling will prompt
us to find those solutions.
Then this morning I read a meditation by Rev. Cameron
Trimble. Trimble, an ordained Christian minister, calls herself “a strategist,
spiritual leader, and serial entrepreneur,” not that that really tells me much
about her.[1]
She puts out daily meditations, some of which at least are well worth reading. Her
meditation this morning is on grief. She suggests that we consider our reaction
to the horror(my word not hers) in our country to be grief rather than despair,
anger, or anything else.
I know what grief is. I have experienced a good deal of it
in my life. I have grieved most deeply the death of my first wife, which
occurred over twenty years ago when she was only 55 years old. Though I have
remarried and my life is good, I still break into tears over that loss from
time to time. Of course, our two adult children still grieve the loss of their
mother when they were in their 20s. I have said to them many times that grief
is the form love takes when we lose a loved one. I tell them we grieve so much
because we loved so much. (I’m starting to tear up as I write these words.)
I found Trimble’s suggestion that we think about what we’re
feeling as grief intriguing. I considered whether what I am feeling these days
really is grief rather than despair. I want to think of it as something other
than despair, and I tried to do that. But that anger that I feel just wouldn’t
go away, when it occurred to me to look at Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ famous stages
of grief.[2]
When I looked at them online I was a bit surprised to find that “anger” is the
second of those stages. It comes right after “denial.” Kübler-Ross says that
anger may stem from feelings of helplessness and frustration over the situation
one is grieving. So I thought: Well, I certainly am feeling one of the stages
of grief these days! But does feeling one of the stages of grief mean you’re in
grief? I thought no, it can’t mean that. So I decided to look at Kübler-Ross’
other stages of grief to see if I have felt or am feeling any of them.
The first stage of grief is denial. It is refusal to accept
the reality of a loss. I’m quite sure I have never denied either the reality that
Trump is a fascist or the immense harm he is doing as president. I guess some
people thought that maybe he wouldn’t be as bad as they feared. That seems to
me to be a kind of denial. But I’ve never thought that. I have never expected
anything but disaster from a Trump presidency. The man is inherently incapable
of creating anything else.
The third stage of grief, according to Kübler-Ross, is “bargaining.”
This is an attempt to negotiate a way to lessen the loss one is feeling. My
first thought was that I have never done that with regard to Trump’s fascism,
but then something else occurred to me: Is my looking forward to the 2026 and
2028 elections as coming to save us from Trump that kind of bargaining? It may
very well be. Bargaining can include seeking ways to lessen the loss one is
grieving. I certainly hope and to a certain extent expect that those elections
will at least lessen if not completely reverse the harm Trump has done, is doing,
and will do for as long as he is in office. So maybe I’m experiencing some of Kübler-Ross’
third stage of grief as well as the second one.
Kübler-Ross’ fourth stage of grief is “depression.” This is
a feeling of deep sadness and despair as one accepts the reality of the loss. I
have no doubt that I am feeling this kind of depression. (Maybe clinical
depression too, but that’s an issue for another day.) I always call it despair.
I’ll say that I fear falling into despair over Donald Trump, but, if I’m
honest, I think I have to admit that I’m already there. People of faith aren’t
supposed to feel despair. More about that below. I feel despair because I see
no short term way of ending and repairing Trump’s destruction of my country and
of God’s world. So it seems I am experiencing Kübler-Ross’ fourth stage of
grief too.
Kübler-Ross’ fifth stage of grief is “acceptance.”
Acceptance doesn’t mean one is okay with the situation they are grieving.[3]
It means, rather, that one has found a way to move forward and to integrate the
loss into their life. I am taking “move forward and integrate the loss into my
life” to mean that I have put the loss sufficiently deep into my subconscious
that, most of the time at least, it doesn’t interfere with me living my life. I
certainly have reached that last stage of grief with regard to my grief over my
first wife’s death. It took me a full year after her death to get to acceptance
in this sense, but I got there.[4]
It’s different with Trump’s fascism. Perhaps it’s different
because that loss is still taking place. A death happens once for each person.
It happens at a specific time and place, and then it is in the past. The losses
Trump is inflicting on us are taking place over an extended period of time, and
they most definitely are not in the past.
So I have to wonder: What does acceptance as finding a way
to move forward and integrate a loss into your life mean in our current
fascist, Trumpian context? Does “move forward” just mean you haven’t killed
yourself in your grief and you’re still living? It seems more likely that it
means that somehow you do keep living your life despite your grief. Grief
certainly can derail a life. My grief over my first wife’s death nearly
derailed mine.[5] I
can’t say that my grief over Donald Trump has done that, not yet at least. I
mean, I’m living my life, for the most part, just as I did before Donald Trump.
It’s just that I live it with an anger and a sadness I didn’t have before
Donald Trump. So I guess you could call that “moving forward.”
What about “integrate the loss into your life?” I guess I’ve
done that with regard to the death of my first wife. I mean, her death is part
of my life. It has been since it happened, and it will be until I join her in
death. I’ve integrated it to the extent that while it’s always there, I don’t
think about it most of the time. I thought about it a good deal a few days ago,
because one of those days was her birthday. But most of the time I go through
life well aware of her and her death but, for the most part, aware only at a
subconscious level. Most of the time I’m not actively thinking of her death or
of our time together, precious as that time was. Most of the time when I think
of her and her death, I don’t break into sobs, though sometimes I still do. So
I suppose I have integrated the loss of her into my life.
Have I integrated Donald Trump and his destructive policies
and acts into my life? I sure hope not, for doing that seems to involve
resigning oneself to the loss and the permanent nature of it. My wife’s death
isn’t going to go away; but I know that one day Donald Trump will no longer be
here, and I sure as hell hope that his destruction of our country’s
institutions will no longer be here either.
I don’t think I’ve moved on from Trump. I’m living my life,
but that life includes incessant news about some new horror he has inflicted on
us or wants to inflict on us. I can go for rather long periods of time without
thinking of my late wife. I can’t go more than a few hours without hearing
about Trump, thinking about Trump, and being appalled by Trump. I don’t think
it will be possible for me to move beyond Trump as long as Trump is part of the
American political landscape and I’m still alive.[6]
So am I in grief over Donald Trump and his fascist nihilism?
Perhaps. But I still struggle with thinking of my reaction to him as grief.
Except, anger is the second stage of grief, and I sure feel a lot of that.
Depression is the fourth stage of grief, and I feel a lot of that too. I guess
I’ve done some bargaining, the third stage of grief, if counting on upcoming
elections to save us from Trump constitutes bargaining.
So maybe I am in grief, or at least partially in grief. I
suspect that Trimble meant just mourning over what Trump is doing, feeling
really bad about it, by her term grief. If that’s what grief is then yes, I’m
in grief. I mourn what my country is losing, and I’m mad as hell at the people
who are making her lose it. So is it grief? I guess in a way it is.
Does thinking about my way of reacting to Trump as grief
make any difference to me? Perhaps. I find myself being more accepting of how I
feel since I’ve begun thinking of it as at least a kind of grief. How I think
of Trump hasn’t changed, but perhaps how I think of myself has at least a
little bit. It doesn’t bother me that I’m angry and depressed. It doesn’t even
bother me that I feel despair as I think it used to at least subconsciously. Remembering
that grief is a fully natural, human set of emotions helps. So perhaps all of this
thinking about grief has helped some.
I cannot close this piece without saying something about the
role of faith in all this, something neither Kübler-Ross nor Trimble does in
their consideration of grief. I have had Christian clergy friends and
colleagues tell me not to feel despair because: God. That God is real and
really present both helps and doesn’t help. I agree that the arc of the
universe bends slowly, but it bends toward justice. Yet that bend is hardly
smooth. Injustice and other forms of evil keep coming up in human life. God
doesn’t prevent them. If God didn’t prevent the Holocaust, and God of course
didn’t, then God’s not going to prevent any of the harm Trump is inflicting on
us which, as bad as it is, isn’t nearly as bad as what Nazi Germany did to the
world, not yet anyway. So I don’t think that either God or our faith in God
necessarily averts our despair.
Rather, God is with us in our despair. God feels our despair
over human acts that destroy the faint trace of the realm of God on earth that
we have been able to create. God holds me up in my despair and gets me through
it. That, however, is a long way from preventing or curing it. So my Christian
friends and colleagues, please don’t expect me to be happy these days. Don’t
try to “cure” or “resolve” my anger and depression. You can’t, and I don’t even
want you to. Grief is natural. Grief can be healing. So I’ll live with my grief,
with my anger and my despair for now, thank you very much. And I’ll pray that
some day I’ll get over it because its cause, Donald Trump, is no longer part of
my life. May I live long enough to see that blessed day.
[2]
All references to Kübler-Ross and her theory of grief come from the first thing
that comes up in a Copilot search for stages of grief.
[3] I
saw a grief counselor once after my wife died. She told me I task was not to
make it all right. It wasn’t all right. My task was to live with it not being
all right. Apparently she knew her Kübler-Ross, and she was absolutely right. I
shared this wisdom with a number of grieving people when I served as a parish
pastor.
[4] As
the one year anniversary of her death passed I felt a strong sense of release.
Not relief. The grief was there every bit as much as it had been before. I felt
release to go on with my life. It wasn’t long thereafter that my current wife
and I got engaged. The grief is still there more than two decades later, but at
least I was able to get on with my life in quite a wonderful way.
[5] I
was serving as a parish pastor at the time. I found keeping up with that work
to be healing, and I thank God I had that work to do. The care my wonderful
parishioners extended to me in my time of loss helped too.
[6] I
suppose death is the ultimate moving on though I doubt that that’s what Kübler-Ross
meant by her term acceptance.
