TV News LIES

We pretty much imagined life would change the minute we had seen Orange-Head's numbers tallying on the Electoral College board.  Not long after, we saw the popular vote's run-up, noted the disconnect -- once again -- shook our heads briskly, and were certain life had veered off course.  Having lived through the opening salvos of Post Election (and Electoral College) Stress Disorder, we are test-flying on a new era, no doubt about it.

This era's airplane, we keep noting, has no wings or engine, we keep noticing -- and the pilot-emperor has no clothes...

There's keeping an open and hopeful mindset, and there's ignoring the bus and truck which have leapt the curb and are coming straight at you.

Last week's shocked and jittery, anxious-for-good-reason, wait-and-see mindset has now disappeared, for solid reasons, not just anticipated-maybe-concerns.  The hand-wringing lasted four days.  We're now into Holy-Shit-Build-the-Bunker-Deeper Mode.  (Wait too long and we'll jump to the final phase, Ain't-that-Rocket-to-Mars-Done-Yet?!)

Thanks for coming by later in the day today than we've been meeting lately.  I'm sure that you, like me, just wanted to linger under the warm blankets until, oh, say -- the mid-terms.  I don't blame you there.

Getting up on any cold morning is tough to do:  You've spent all night warming up the spot.  And now, so soon after Tuesday of the Damned, seeing your breath in the room, perhaps you also feel like you're rising for your daily appointment with the firing squad.

Yes, I know:  I keep waking up in TrumpWorld, too.  The thought clicks into place about two seconds after my eyes open and consciousness dawns.  Dazed and confused.  Then, the cringing and wincing begins all over again...

My blood pressure goes up 40 points envisioning his clan in the national living room, rummaging around in the country's secrets and cupboards and treasure chests, looking for self-fulfillment, self-aggrandizement, and various wealth-building angles to play.  We have 243 million adults living in this country, give or take.  THIS is the best we can do? REALLY?!

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.

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.