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*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

It is probably the case that many Americans have either heard of or had to live through what is known as the framework that helps humans learn to live without someone or something, they lost. The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Right now after a little over 55-million voters installed a bigot, fascist, and sexual predator as leader of the free world, Democrats appear to be deep into the five stages of grief and are now so angry they are ready to do battle. Courage is an admirable quality, but courage without strength or power is a lesson in futility and that is what Democrats have to look forward to over at least the next four years and likely over the next decade.

It is understandable that Democrats are in denial and angry; they did just help Republicans and a con man swindle the American people into giving the Koch brothers and religious right complete unchallenged control of all three branches of government. But by dog, they’re going to put up a fierce fight for what they believe in; except they have no weapons and are tantamount to a diapered six-month-old toddler barely able to stand going into a monumental battle against a fully-armed and elite team of commandos. Democrats in Congress, the minority party, will scream and cry like the infant that keeps falling down when it tries to stand, but they have no leverage and no firewall in the White House to stop Republicans from doing any and everything the Koch brothers and religious right have called for over the past eight years.

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Although many Americans think they understand the gravity of the election’s results, it is likely they are either ignorant of what has transpired in the Republican movement over the past eight years in particular and past eighty years in general, or they are still deep in the denial stage of grief. Suffice it to say, that with unchallenged control of all three branches of government, every last despicable piece of legislation they’ve tried to pass, every last regulation, social program, or agency they’ve attempted to abolish, and every uncivil idea the evangelical religious movement proposes will be passed with relative ease while Democrats wail and gnash their teeth watching it get signed into law.

And instead of a firewall in the White House, a kill switch to stop an impending disaster, Republicans will have a happy fascist with a rubber stamp. It is not a stretch to say that this election will fundamentally reshape America into the Koch brothers’ and religious right’s vision of what Trump meant when he said “make America great;” it cannot include “again” because America was never remotely like what Republicans and evangelicals have in store for it. It doesn’t matter what Donald Trump wants or says because he will gleefully sign into law any piece of legislation the Republicans put on his desk so long as it doesn’t affect his personal wealth or erode his sense of supreme power; he is a greedy fascist after all.

One hates to be a buzz-kill with more disparaging news; especially when so many Americans with a social conscience are struggling with the denial-anger stage of grief. But the nearly all manner of media has for far too long, not been completely truthful when reporting the hard-to-swallow reality of the state of politics in America; and now the impending state of America.

That being the case, it is with no joy that one tells Americans who thought there was protection against Republicans defunding Planned Parenthood, privatizing Medicare, cutting and privatizing Social Security, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), workplace protections (OSHA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, and handing over all federal land and national parks to corporations are fooling themselves.

Besides Republicans threatening or attempting to complete every last one of those tasks, they are all included in the GOP’s official 2016 platform as a veritable Koch brother “wish list.” That representative list does not include the rash of barbaric religious planks that will install Christianity into all facets of society by government decree according to the GOP stalwarts Christian Reconstructionists and Dominionists twenty-year-long crusade to create a theocracy. It is noteworthy that the GOP’s official platform included a plank specifically addressing how to make Dominionist theocracy the law of the land in a section detailing how they will “rebirth the Constitution” to better reflect the evangelical lie that America was founded as a Christian nation.

Many Americans on the left are concerned that Republicans will eliminate the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) from existence; they have, after all, attempted repeal the healthcare law 60-plus times. Some Democrats feel Republicans will struggle and possibly fail because they are sensitive to the effects of eliminating healthcare insurance for 22-million Americans. That is an interesting proposition and assessment. Because they have had no problem justifying to voters the wisdom in denying healthcare to 5-million poor people by rejecting Medicaid expansion. They also have no issue justifying to voters that it is just good sense to deny tens-of-millions poor women, children and infants healthcare; at about the same frequency they justify denying healthcare to the elderly, Veterans and the disabled. What’s another 22-million uninsured Americans to Republicans who exist to deny Americans everything for sport?

Remember, these are heartless Republicans who are well aware of the Koch brothers’ libertarian list of agencies, laws, programs, and departments they want to eliminate, and the Republicans will act according to the Kochs’ demands and there is no-one that can stop them. It is why being the minority party is similar to being perpetually in the fourth stage of grief, depression. And, Democrats and liberals will remain depressed for some years because two years ago still Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave the Koch brothers a solemn pledge that as soon as Republicans get complete control of the whole government; “We’re going to go after them on healthcare, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board. All across the federal government, we’re going to go after it.” Of course, that “it” includes every government agency, department, and law the Koch brothers cannot allow remaining in what is now an America that they co-own and control in its entirety.

Readers often query this author to explain why this column is always so cynical. It is cynical, but not in the modern sense of only seeing the bad in everything. However, in the classic sense, it adheres closely to the concept that a cynic simply writes down what they see happening around them as truthfully as possible. Based on what this author sees today, and for the future, after liberals get through the futility of the bargaining stage of grief, they are, all of us, going to have to accept that the 2016 election will indeed transform America for the worse because no few number of groups failed in what is becoming a typically predictable manner every two years. More on that in another column.

*This column is the sole opinion of the author*