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?!)

Every day brings new, multiple confirmations that Completely Insane People will be running the country.  Example:  Check out the Cabinet array being arranged for the next global round of Nuking Civil Rights and Carpet-Bombing Modern Liberties.  In no way could I ever have previously envisioned the current nightmare team being scraped up from the Returdlican Septic Tank of Discarded Retreads, them being resuscitated, and then given the golden keys to democracy's kingdom.

I'm also stunned to learn the Trumpster Transition Team -- should I go for the T-3, Terminator 3 wordplay here? -- didn't know it had to bring in its own work team to staff the west wing, of all things.  (I hope emergency-services people are standing by to explain electricity and paper clips to Team Hairdo, and to tell them they don't have to bring their own little bags of peanuts onto Air Force One, unless they just have to have the gold-dipped ones to be content.)

Being stunned by this bunch affords no protection via immunization or exposure in future stunnings.  Proof:  I'm gobsmacked to learn Trump doesn't understand that handing off your business interest to your kids does not constitue separating yourself from your business interests and insulating you from conflicts of interest.  Duh.

Maybe I simply expect more from a future president than someone who doesn't understand that asking permission for your entire family to have access to the entire bombshell arsenal of the nation's top level secrets is, you know, technically known as NOT GOOD, YOU BERSERK DUMBSHIT. This is especially true when a mjority of us still don't trust the Oranged Head of the family with them to start with, and haven't, not since the intelligence briefings started.

[Sorry, I had to snicker inwardly there, as Trump has clearly not gotten any smarter since then.]

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?!

How on earth did we elect a person who speaks and acts as this man has done all throughout a campaign -- and all through his life?  While in the public eye, in the spotlight -- not in some dank back room, where he was an unknown?  How can we respect someone who has spent a lifetime showing disrespect to everyone around him? How can we trust a man who has spent his life cheating and conning others?  How can anyone -- let alone half the country -- have been taken in by a man who always acted only for his own benefit, recognition, and gain... especially on the basis that this greedy elitist would do all he could to improve the poor lives of the regular, everyday people?

It's alarming.  It's another world.  It's some new rip or rift in the fabric of reality which has occurred, and there's no way of telling what will happen next, no way to know or understand what we should expect -- no way to see what the New Normal might be in this New World Order, this neo-democracy.

Yes, well:  Grab a Danish and some coffee, take a seat.  Welcome back to Group.

* * *

I'm sure you've already heard a Trump protester was shot at a demonstration.  Scary stuff.

Most protests have been peaceful.  One or two events got a little heated, I hear, with some proof of anarchist-agitators getting involved with peaceful protesters, trying to urge them on and make things ugly.  A clear majority of the events have been peaceful, respectful, legal, and spontaneous outpourings of real and valid concern.

We all expected Trumpsters would be riled up and rioting after Hillary's projected win.  We didn't expect to be marching and protesting a Trump takeover.  And we surely didn't expect them to start picking us off when we expressed our surprise and dismay at the qualities -- and lack of them -- in the totally inexperienced and woefully unqualified man-child who won the Electoral College, but not the popular vote.

I mean:  Let's get real. No one from the left started picking-off protesters when Obama won office, nor when rightwing marchers hoisted their Obama effigies high, or when they torched flags, figures, and photos of the man.

No one took potshots at the Supreme Court or its members when, it could be said, they ended -- at the very least interrupted -- the reign of representative democracy in this country on December 12, 2000, when a legitimate vote recount was underway, but was terminated by them, with the court deciding to hand over the presidency to their choice, and not the People's?

In fact, I'm trying to remember the last right-winger who was gunned down by someone from the left, or by an independent or other-party member -- when anyone pulled the trigger on any Republican, any time in the life of you, your parents, your grandparents...  All I remember, personally, is the assassination of JFK, RFK, and MLK, Jr., and that it all happened within my very own lifetime.

The Secret Service has sure had their hands full with the unprecedented number of death threats for Obama, gawd knows -- a sure sign that this country is not settling down and not getting any wiser.

Sure: There were plenty of rightwingnuts around, and still are.  Always have been.  None of them have been "taken out," as so many swaggering rightwing tough guys like to say.  And why is it that people with the gun collections and the camo gear and the chips on their shoulders for anyone not exactly like them are always lunatic, white-guy Republicans?

I tell you:  I'm waiting for the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! banner to come out of mothballs and be unfurled again.  It'll look just great to the world, hanging alongside a new, big sign I saw today celbrating Trump's win, reading:  THANK YOU DEPLORABLES!

* * *

You've probably already heard about that petition which was filed in Oregon, requesting that state be allowed to begin secession from the rest of the country.  California's talking about starting one, too.

Thing is, the one already filed in Oregon has been withdrawn.  Why?  Because of all the death threats, and threats of assorted mayhem and violence against the people involved, and their property.

• Funny -- I don't remember anyone on the left boiling over and threatening people during the on-again, off-again squirreliness from southern states who periodically ramp up seccession papers every third or 13th weekend, for any light-on-logic cause or another...
• Wonder why it is that it's always been the rightwingers who get twitchy, and who get trigger-finger itchy, who want to kill or bail?

This violence is happening -- and happening already, a whopping THREE DAYS after the election -- one person shot and many people threatened, OVER THOUGHTS THEY HAVE EXPRESSED.

What can we expect -- what in hell should we expect -- in the coming weeks, months, and years?  What should we expect when someone does more than express a contrary thought, and actually ACTS against the way rightwingers want things to go, against TrumpThink?

Will we start shooting members of councils and legislative bodies?  Kill any lawmaker daring to present a bill with another point of view?  Threaten their families?  Curse and spit at them, tell them we are burning down their homes?  String them up, out in front of their burning houses?  Warn them that we know their children's names, tell them we know where their kids go to school?

Yes, waking up in TrumpWorld gets more real -- every... single... day.

* * *

Ask me, Trump should stop tweeting about how "VERY UNFAIR" it is, having people peacefully expressing their First Amendment rights.

His complaints are hollow, vaporous, and are further insult, coming from a man who made suggestions about a Second Amendment solution for his opponent in this last tortured, and torturous, presidential race.  It is also doubly insulting, considering Trump had previously tweeted that people should march on Washington and stop "this travesty" of Obama's re-election in 2012.

Maybe a cooler head prevailed in the TrumpBubble, or, more likely than not, Trump was jumped and hogtied by his staff, and his Twitter account was once again wrestled away from him.  Later, a new message appeared, contradicting his first message, pouring love all over those passionate protesters.

You can't have it all ways, simultaneously, all at once, and from all directions and points of view.  We've had -- and still have -- plenty of rightwing hypocrites in office and on the political scene.  However, I think this is our first experience with a hypocrite able to display facets of hypocrisy from a multiverse of parallel multiverses and alternative dimensions, all at once.

* * *

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.

* * *

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."