Grief, Reckoning, and Reform
Grieve. Why? Because blocking it spawns depression and paralysis
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I'm going to be brief this Sunday. And I’m taking off my history and political theorist hat in order to discuss how to cope emotionally.
What we are experiencing is loss and grief.
As we watch a tragedy far worse than Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre unfold—Trump’s massacre of the rule of law in the Eric Adams’ corruption case—we are struck by feelings of loss: the loss of our democracy.
The loss is real, not imagined, so we must cope with the pain of it—with the ultimate goal of preserving what we love and believe in.
We must grieve. For it is only through grieving that we find new strength and vigor.
I learned this principle of human health from personal experience—the death of my mother, the death of my father, the end of my marriage—and from psychology, philosophy, literature, and twenty years of treating patients in psychiatry.
“To weep,” Shakespeare writes Henry VI, “is to make less the depth of grief.”
We need history now more than ever. Soon I'll be back in your inbox with insights from Cato’s Letters. Before that, I'll write “Why Trump Will Unlikely Defy Court Orders.”
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Yet, once we grieve and refortify, what do we do? That's the hardest question. We can grieve privately within the embrace of community and self-compassion.
But how do we stop an authoritarian demagogue who is the head of the most powerful office in the world and the commander-in-chief of the Army, Navy, and Air Force—and now the U.S. Department of Justice?
We are chastened. Still, we know something certain. There will be a reckoning. The rack and ruin of Trump will be met by a watershed that will bring forth a more just and intelligent democracy.
To get there, we cannot allow bottled-up grief to curdle into depression and depression into apathy and inaction.
We have to take care of our grief and each other, and, successful in these, we’ll find a way. A day of reckoning, reform, and renewal will come.
The loss is real, not imagined, so we must cope with the pain of it—with the ultimate goal of preserving what we love and believe in.
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Eli Merritt is a psychiatrist and historian who writes about the origins of our present political discontents and solutions to them. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, among other publications.
He writes American Commonwealth and is the author or editor of the books “Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution,” “Demagogue in the White House: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump,” and “How to Save Democracy: Advice and Inspiration from 95 World Leaders”
More articles by Eli Merritt
Books
The Curse of Demagogues: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump
Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution
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In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, " Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted." Matthew 5:4 "NKJV"