The Trump/Grief Series: “Mom, Why Are You Still Shocked?”

My son is a millennial. He lives and works in Washington DC. He is very kind. He is very smart. We speak often of politics. He has asked me countless times over the last four years why I am still shocked and in disbelief as I rail, yet again, about the latest Trump travesty, lie, cruel tweet, charge of corruption, heinous policy, etc. etc. etc.

In Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief, shock, disbelief and denial are the characteristics of stage one. I am mired here. I think it would help me to ponder this stage in the broadest sense and then narrow it down to what hurts me so deeply.

What happens to us when we lose someone we love, or we lose a job that defines us? What happens to us when we lose a friend who laughed through life with us or lose savings that provided security? What happens to us when we lose a house to a fire and no longer have a safe harbor or we lose a belief system that allowed us to function in the world? We may know the facts are real; we may acknowledge them; yet it all may feel utterly and wholly unbelievable.

Our reality shifts completely in the moment of loss. We are trying to absorb and understand what is happening but it simply is too much to comprehend. We will deny it, not accept it, minimize it, and/or defer our feelings about it.

It is not uncommon during this stage to experience:

• A short attention span
• Difficulty concentrating
• Impaired decision-making
• Confusion or loss of memory
• Resistance to reality
• Fear, panic, feeling out of control
• Outbursts of anger, hostility
• Powerlessness
• Restlessness
• Increased heart rate
• Exhaustion/disrupted sleep
• Heaviness in the chest
• Lump in the throat
• Wringing hands, crying, sighing
• Feeling cold
• Lethargy

Why is that? It is our body’s natural defense mechanism letting in only as much as we can handle one moment at a time. It is a shutting-down of our usual feeling, thinking and doing. This is protective — a blessed anesthesia — that allows our psyche time to accept a painful reality.

Many of my internal parts are nodding and saying, “Yup, yup, yup — that happens to us a lot when we watch CNN or MSNBC or read the internet news outlets.” I have other parts that are saying. “Yes, you do walk around like someone died, but honestly, what have you lost? No one in your family died. You have friends. You have a nice house. You have health. You have savings. You have a good job. What is up with you?”

That is a fair query — what is up with me? It is back to Percival asking the dying king, “Uncle, what ails thee?”

When I pose that question to myself I hear a faint little voice that says, “Trump is cruel. Republicans are bad. They hurt people. They don’t care. They are mean. They are breaking the rules.” Now I would say that voice sounds very young, very innocent and very kind. What was very interesting to me though was the comment, “They are breaking the rules.” That felt very important.

When I asked her what the rules were, this little girl answered very quickly, “Be kind; treat everyone equally, always tell the truth, and always be honest.” I thought these were great rules.

The more I sat with this, I realized these rules in the grown up world would be called values. In my adult world they are the values of kindness, equality, truth and honesty. The longer I thought about these values, the more I understood they are the foundation of who I am or seek to be as a human being; they inform and direct the actions I take as I move through the world; they are the standards and criteria by which I evaluate actions, policies, people and events.

I also know that Trump and his cabal could care less about those values and that they operate from an entirely different value paradigm. I think the child within me is absolutely staggered by that truth, shocked by that truth, numbed by that truth, is in denial that such a thing could even be. Her grief knows no bounds. She wants a world filled with people who have the same values and beliefs she does.

I started to wonder about that. Could there be such a thing as universal or core values that most human beings share? Could there possibly be a place deep down inside of us where red and blue come together — not in the Trumps of this world, but regular people?

I started researching and discovered that just as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is a big deal in the field of death and dying, so too is Dr. Shalom H. Schwartz in the field of psychology and the search for universal human values.

Shalom H. Schwartz is the Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 1967 and has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Princeton University, and the Hebrew University.

He has written or edited 9 books and published over 220 articles in international journals in social, cross-cultural and developmental psychology, sociology, education, management, law and economics. His seminal articles on individual and cultural values have been cited in more than 50,000 publications. Dr. Schwartz is a big deal in the field of values and he provided me another map to understand my distress in the world of Trump.

With respect to the importance of values, Schwartz states:

· Values serve as stable standards or criteria.

· Values guide the selection and/or evaluation of actions, policies, people, and events.

· People decide what is good or bad, justified or illegitimate, worth doing or avoiding, based on possible consequences for their cherished values.

· Some values are more important to the individual than others.

· Multiple values are normally implicated in any proposed action.

· Evaluation of an action will depend on the relative important of the competing values it implicates.

· The impact of values in everyday decisions is rarely conscious. Values enter awareness when the actions or judgments one is considering have conflicting implications for different values one cherishes.

· Values help humans cope with one or more of the following three universal requirements of existence: our biological needs as individuals, our need to coordinate our actions with others, and the need of groups to survive and flourish.

· People often have competing or diametrically opposed values with those around them. Without compromise, conflict occurs.

In 1987, Schwartz, along with a number of psychology colleagues, conducted empirical research to determine whether there are universal values, and what those values are. In 1994 Schwartz published results from a series of studies that included surveys of more than 25,000 people in 44 countries. As of 2011, data has been gathered on more than 60,000 individuals in 64 nations.

His research suggests there are ten types of universal values; each of which is differentiated by an underlying goal or motivation. They are as follows:

Self-Direction

Defining Goal: Independent thought and action–choosing, creating, exploring

Stimulation

Defining Goal: Excitement, novelty, and challenge in life

Hedonism

Defining Goal: Pleasure or sensuous gratification for oneself

Achievement

Defining Goal: Personal success through demonstrating competence according to social standards

Power

Defining Goal: Social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources

Security

Defining Goal: Safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and of self

Conformity

Defining Goal: Restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms

Tradition

Defining Goal: Respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas that one’s culture or religion provides

Benevolence

Defining Goal: Preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is in frequent personal contact (the ‘in-group’)

Universalism

Defining Goal: Understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature

Schwartz also tested an eleventh possible universal value, spirituality or the goal of finding meaning in life, but found that it does not seem to be recognized in all cultures.

I sat with this list for quite some time and felt sad. There are 328.2 million men, women, and children living in the United States. Each has their own unique set of values and beliefs from which they live their lives — consciously or unconsciously. In the November election 153 million people voted — 79.5 million voted for Biden; 73.6 million voted for Trump. I am taking a leap here but I am assuming those who voted for Trump have values which fall into domains listed above which are in direct opposition to my values. The significance of that goes back to the final values tenet posited by Schwartz: People often have competing or diametrically opposed values with those around them. Without compromise, conflict occurs.

Trump’s acts of cruelty number in the thousands: bullying tweets, daily lies, egregious policy decisions, acts of corruption, acts of treason, and more. Each act shocks the child in me and throws her into stage one grief — shock, disbelief and denial. She just does not understand how anyone could live with values so contrary to our own when they hurt so many people.

She is not alone. Though we may not share a common definition of truth, Trump supporters do value truth ala Trump style, and they too suffer from shock, disbelief and denial when faced with the reality Trump lied to them.

This is epitomized in an interview I watched on CNN on November 17, 2020. The interview describes all the features of stage one of denial with respect to an individual facing not only imminent death but the loss of a value/belief system that informed their life until their last breath.

Alysin Camerota spoke with Jodi Doering, an ER nurse in South Dakota. Ms. Doering lives in a town with 650 people. On her day off she decided to tweet about how she was feeling. Little did she know that tweet would go viral and give her the opportunity to share her powerful story on national television.

Ms. Doering tweeted:

I have a night off from the hospital. As I’m on my couch with my dog I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is (g)oing to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have COViD because it’s not real.

Yes. This really happens. And I can’t stop thinking about it. These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a (expletive) horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again. Which is what I will do for the next three nights.

But tonight. It’s me and Cliff and Oreo ice cream. And how ironic I have on my ‘home’ Hoodie. The South Dakota I love seems far away right now.

Forty-eight hours later, Doering’s tweet had more than 218,000 likes and more than 50,000 retweets. On Monday, she was on CNN.

The New Day clip with Camerota was astonishingly sad as Doering repeated her horror stories of patients not believing that COVID-19 was real even as they lay dying from it. Doering told Camerota that it wasn’t one person who behaved this way, but a “culmination of so many people.”

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening to me, it’s not real,’” Doering said on the air. “And when they should be spending time FaceTiming with their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred. … I just can’t believe those are going to be their last thoughts and words.”

Patients there have said it couldn’t be COVID-19, and that it’s either the flu, or pneumonia or even lung cancer. Anything but COVID.

“Even after positive results come back, some people just don’t believe it,” Doering said.

I am including this interview for two reasons. The first is that Deoring’s experience gives us first hand insight into the power of denial as one faces death despite somber test results, escalating medical treatment and counsel to reach out to family and friends to say goodbye. The power of denial when death is in the room is staggering.

But Doering also showed us the power of denial when an individual’s value system is shown to be false. On their death bed, her patients continued to support a distorted value system they shared with Trump. Even on their deathbed, these folks could not accept that Trump lied to them. They could not accept he lied about the existence of Covid; that he lied about the deadliness of the virus. That he lied about the efficacy of masks, social distancing and hand washing. That he lied to them about everything. “It must be lung cancer. I don’t have Covid. It is a hoax,” one individual said just before he was intubated. The power of denial is stunning.

As moved as I am by the Camerota/Doering interview, I do not feel shock writing about it. In the past that little girl in me would have been keening in disbelief and dismay. I think as I write these essays, my grief map is getting clearer and more defined; I see where I started out on November 8, 2016 and understand better why I have been stuck in shock and disbelief.

Now I know each time I bump up against anything Trump does that is contrary to my core values of kindness, equality, truth and honesty; I am going to have an emotional reaction; I also understand why. That clarity is both a relief and gives me power to move forward.

The question then becomes what next? Well my sequence since Hillary lost has been an endless loop of shock/disbelief/anger and rage. It is time to look at anger and rage which is the second stage of loss. That anger is aimed specifically at Trump, Republicans in the Senate and House, certain Republican governors and, oh yes, the 73.6 million people who voted for him on November 3, 2020; it is an awful lot of anger.