House Republicans and their revolutionary method of coping with grief

Psychologists contend there are five stages of grief: denial, then anger, followed by bargaining and depression, and last, acceptance. They also concede that because grief is so personal, "every person experiences its nuances differently. Your personality, your support system, your natural coping mechanisms and many other things will determine how loss will affect you."

What psychologists are missing in their analysis of grief is that large, cohesive groups of people can be subject to the acute sorrow that comes from loss. Yet more important to the specialized study of loss is that on
e of these groups — this too is missing from the discipline of psychology — has cunningly devised a means of escape from the full, dreadful effects of grief.   

I speak of the Republican Party, whose members in Congress and the media positively excel at ditching no less than four of grief's five stages — those from anger to, especially, acceptance. Their emotional genius lies in starting with denial, as others do, but then just never ending it. Thus no anger, bargaining, depression or unthinkable acceptance — acceptance of, for example, their loss of a prime topic for blusterous rabble-rousing. 

Republicans are now displaying, once again, their exceptional talent for simply denying loss — their "natural coping mechanism" whenever confronted by reality. For them, today's unfortunate reality is that they hyped what they called "highly credible" and "the most corroborating evidence we have" of President Biden's $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian energy firm.

This was big. Really big. Indeed it was proof of "the biggest political corruption scandal [in] the past 100 years," said a leading House Republican.

And it would have been, if only they had not lost the scandal because of its source; a human sleazebucket by the name of Alexander Smirnov. This grief-inducing jackass spun one towering falsehood after another — straight from Russkie Intel & Dirty Tricks Central — about the criminal character and felonious deeds of the sitting president. In fact he and his Putinesque disinformation laid what Republicans believed would be the firmest foundation for their eager impeachment of Biden. 

Now they're denying what the FBI told them about Smirnov the informant and what he was hawking. The bureau never wanted to share the stoolie's unsubstantiated info with congressional Republicans but was pressured to do so, via a potential contempt of Congress charge against the director.

The FBI warned them again and again: be careful, go slow and keep quiet about the information provided by Smirnov, because what he alleges is uncorroborated. And yet after the FBI's repeated warnings and admonitions to stay silent, Republicans, giddy as schoolboys in love, went public.  

Eventually, as you know, the bottom fell out. Federal prosecutors announced last week that Smirnov was an insidious liar — which he admitted after his arrest — and so nothing he said about Biden was credible. In their grief, enter Republicans' denial of their egregious bumbling.

Fox News primetime host Jesse Watters: "It’s a smear job." The FBI told our conscientious Republicans in Congress that Smirnov was credible, grumbled Watters. Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel: "It’s the F.B.I. that ought to have to explain the steaming pile of trash."

The Gateway Pundit's Cristina Laila: Smirnov is credible. "[He] NEVER 'spread Russian disinformation.' No one is falling for this Russia Hoax 2.0 you’re peddling."

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine: "Overwhelming" is the evidence against Biden. Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo: The feds are "taking this guy [Smirnov] down." The Washington Examiner's denial of Republicans' "most corroborating evidence we have" rhetoric: "Smirnov was not a key witness in the G.O.P. impeachment inquiry."

Fox News harpy Jeanine Pirro: "You’ve got this guy Smirnov who was a respected confidential informant for 10 years by the F.B.I. They paid him money, he was so credible. Now, all of a sudden, a couple months ago, they decide, 'Oh, he’s not credible,' because he’s claiming that, you know, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were engaged in a problem."

Healgrief.org is the website from which I took this post's opening material on the stages of grief. Given the above material on how the Republican Party copes with grief — to deny the true history of its loss; to deny that it created its own loss; to deny even the existence of its loss — the site plainly, even laughably errs when it writes that denying one's pain is the wrong way to go. "It is necessary to face your grief and actively deal with it," says the website.

That may be true for most folks. But Republican partiers prefer to just deny everything and scream that they've been victimized.