Another election.  Another Veterans Day.  Another round of triage.  Yes, it's a new day. Welcome to Group.

Might be nice to start out this session by reminding everyone that those five Kubler-Ross stages of grief are not linear, bim, bam, boom, and all-done.  Elisabeth Kubler Ross has herself had mixed feelings about coming up with that scale, saying it was always meant as a guideline, not a serial shopping list of tasks to be done, and crossed off in that specific order -- nor was it meant to exclude other facets.

So, as we move through our reactions and feelings, it might be helpful for us all to remember that each person experiences grief in his and her own way, and each person works through it in an individual way, too.  There will be setbacks, repeats, stumbles, dance steps done out of order, time-outs, new steps added in...

Try to think of it as celebrating your own personality and path -- don't penalize yourself for grieving in your own way, in your own time, and in your own fashion. Mark your own progress with yourself, not others.  Don't rush it.

Meanwhile,  If you're looking for prescriptions, here's some that are pretty cheap, effective, and easy on the system:  Build in more time for the people, events, and activities you already know you enjoy;  pleasure, love, and laughter are nice distractions, so to say.  Other suggestions?  Music, movies, reading walks in the park; pamper yourself a little, treat yourself, and do it on purpose, with meditative Zen focus.  Hug more, too.

Or, as our dog friends would say: wag more, bark less.  (Dogs are Zen masters.  A lot of good can come from observing their behaviors.)

And limit the time you spend consuming -- and dwelling on -- bad news.  A little goes a long way.  No reason to buy scuba gear when you can have a better time snorkelling.

There will be time later for action -- for volunteering, joining the fight, whatever you think is right.  For the moment, though, it's OK to go inward for a little while, and rest. Trust me, the dragons will still be there when you come back.  There are always dragons.

While you wait and rest, some advice:  As your mom said, stop messing with it -- give it time to heal.

* * *

Ever since the shitshow ended a couple of nights ago there has been a plethora of polite analyses of What The Fuck Just Happened. Desperate pundits are trying to be reasonable while describing how and why Fucko the Clown just won the election.

This is what Denial looks like:

The hubris of Hillary Clinton and the DNC empowered them to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders because not only did she “deserve” the presidency, but they believed she could beat Fucko in the general election. Clinton, the DNC, and their donors, completely underestimated, or ignored, the Hillary hatred that has been simmering for decades, as well as the contempt voters have for establishment politics.

True. But the most insidious form of denial is always true. But it is not the whole truth. That is why denial is a complete waste of time and doesn't solve anything. It is always easier to accept and believe a partial truth because it is a distraction that keeps us from recognizing the larger, more uncomfortable truth.

Occam's razor. Noun. The maxim that assumptions introduced to explain a thing must not be multiplied beyond necessity.

Let's see how it works.

59,821,874 Americans voted for Fucko the Clown therefore there are 59,821,874 Crazy Stupid People in the United States. Regardless of the fact that the previous sentence sounds like a harsh generalization … it is not. The only way anyone could vote for Fucko is if he/she is a Crazy Stupid Person. Rational smart people could not vote for, would never vote for, anyone like Fucko the Clown for president.

That's it. That's all we need to know. There were enough Crazy Stupid People in the United States on November 8, 2016, to elect Fucko the Clown.

Welcome back to Group -- please grab a little something from the food-and-drink snack cart, and we can get started...

As you know, positioned here, as we are, on the lip of the smoking impact-crater of democracy, the first thing we've had to attend to is pulling out survivors from the white-hot and smoldering wreckage -- pulling people out from under towering stacks of collapsed polling data, out from under the shattered shards of broken dreams, out from under the formerly stable, non-psychotic, and modern-world construct formerlyt envisioned and expected by most people here and abroad.

True, it was never going to be an exciting run with Hillary, perhaps, but one could take sincere comfort in the routine ability to make plans for getting up in the morning, and still finding one's slippers on the floor, next to the bed -- and not discovering instead a radioactive hole 139 stories deep, vomiting up a shimmering, nuclear slag-heap of lava belching forth, champagne-fountain-style, resulting as an incidental, unexpected, and minor happenstance following a late-night, American Presidential Twitter-fight with China, Russia, and North Korea...

* * *

For those who were curious, we have an initial summary report today from The Code Blue Project, the non-profit group surveying medical facilities and usage, following Tuesday's demolition derby with democracy.

With 94% of aid stations, urgent-care strip malls, and hospitals reporting in, it appears the group's top-line "Crash Cart" report shows more than 119 million people were given emergency defib treatment on Tuesday alone -- talk about paddling up a river with no canoe!

Yes, well... the breakdown of Americans was CLEAR! -- or so they themselves reported.  The breakout of numbers was a pulse-pounding 50-50 -- with slightly more Democrats served than Republicans.

Field staff attributed this to the greater heart-load attributed to Democratic political expectations, and to their own overwhelming and historic sense of collective doom, although Republicans themselves reported feeling lost, helpless, panicked, and dismayed at the unexpected prospect of actually having to grow up, become adults, and govern for a change.

Democrats reported a sense of loss on par with the laws of physics being repealed, while Republicans said they felt a sort of "anti-gravity, flip-flop queasiness," as one high-level campaign worker put it, while sorrowfully contemplating the loss of being able to openly hurl threats, shout insults, urge followers to beat up people at random, and "howl at the moon like hyenas in heat."

If our clock wasn't cleaned, it was certainly reset.  That makes twice in one week.  I wasn't over Falling Back yet -- now, in mid-primal scream, I am Falling Forward, imagining many of us, holding our heads as we drop, by the battalions, parachuting in, chutes failing to open, each of us Edvard Munch, spying the ground racing up.

Somewhere around 3:00 a.m., as Eastern Shock Zone is calculated, I think it was, when it was certain -- when the curtain was pulled around the unsettling corpse of the election.

3:00 a.m. -- the time, you might remember from past messaging, when it was comforting to think someone alert, aware, and with lights-on-in-the-head, might take an emergency call for the nation, get up, get the lights on, and start working.

(Soon, of course, at 3:00 a.m., we can count on someone groggy, foggy, and with fused circuit breakers in the head, to take an emergency call for the nation, sit up, and start tweeting insults and partial-sentence rants.)

Like many, I was bleary-eyed, and maybe teary, too, and with the strong need for sleep at hand -- alas, another formerly safe refuge made impossible, another port denied.

So, I went back to old tricks, the equivalent of counting sheep:  letting my mind wander, while sleep-typing, helping words do easy circus tricks on cheap wooden chairs, for no applause or treat -- just because the words were restless, flipping and flopping around on the seismically shattered floor of my skull, a gaggle of squishy, half-deflated, somewhat wounded concepts limping and lurching to and fro...

After watching the third and final debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton I agree with you … we should vote for Clinton on election day. Our conclusion is the same … but for different reasons.

I do not think if Trump were elected that the United States would succumb to Fascism.

That Has Already Happened.

It is true that the U.S. pulled back from the brink in the 30's and 50's. But the country sailed over the edge the moment the Supreme Court nullified the voice of the people and handed the presidency to George W. Bush on December 12, 2000. That's the day democracy in the United States stopped breathing and died. And Guess what? 16 years later It's Still Dead.

We could argue about whether or not the U.S. is a Fascist State, or an oligarchy, or to be more precise, a plutocracy, but that's not the point. The point is: all Americans must vote against Donald John Trump.

Because he is insane.

It appears that unless the Universe has a couple of extra tricks up its sleeve, we're witnessing the last days of presidential hopeful, Fucko the Clown. As of today, Friday October 14^th, there are 24 days remaining until the election. Is it possible that Fucko could do or say anything that could salvage his flailing campaign? Are there enough Fucko supporters in swing states to stop a Clinton win? I don't think so. But then again … this is a presidential campaign the likes of which we have never seen. The American voters, Republicans and Democrats, have been played. Not like a violin … more like a kazoo. And the tune, eerily reminiscent of Pop Goes the Weasel, goes something like this:

There is an Orange Monster, with deplorable minions, hammering at the gates of the shining city upon a hill. This beast, who had lived his entire life in ostentatiously bestial ways, recently had been shown to also treat women in a beastly fashion (surprise surprise). The outraged citizens of the shining city chose a strong, battle-hardened woman as their leader to battle the beast. But unbeknownst to the citizens of the shining city upon a hill, the leader they chose to vanquish the Orange Monster … was another monster.