Jon Gabriel

Guest Opinion

Since Donald Trump scored the political upset of the century, his critics have worked through four of the five stages of grief at breakneck speed.

Denial: As state after state turned orange, media mavens and politicos wondered whether they had gone color blind. Election analysts kept reloading the vote tally from American Samoa trying to convince themselves this can’t be happening!

Anger: Progressives rampaged through their progressive cities to smash the windows of their progressive neighbors.

Bargaining:Celebrities shared memes insisting Hillary Clinton won, linking to stories of the growing popular vote gap.

Depression: Colleges hosted cry-ins and communal primal screams. One lost soul wrote an op-ed declaring that Trump’s election made her abandon her search for a mate.

But if you’ve read your Kubler-Ross, you know the fifth stage has been absent from the collective spleen vent: Acceptance.

Instead, every day of the Trump transition brings another round of hyperventilation. His detractors were outraged by how long it took Trump to make Cabinet nominations, then a few days later switched their outrage to his actual choices.

They were outraged that a tiny meeting of “alt-right” racists praised him. When Trump condemned the wannabe Nazis, the media blamed his supporters for falling for “fake news” and something called “Pizzagate.”

Can you believe what Trump said to Pakistan’s prime minister — or that he accepted a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s president? What will the totalitarians in China think?

But none of that pearl-clutching compared with the outrage over Trump’s tweets about flag burning or recounts or China or "Hamilton" or "Saturday Night Live."

Sad!

Let’s face it: Trump is a, ahem, unique president-elect. Acceptance might come a little slower for those who have grown accustomed to an urbane, smooth-talking Democrat in the West Wing.

Let me offer a little friendly advice: Breathe.

Look, I was a lifelong Republican until Trump won the nomination. I voted third party rather than sign my name to his reactionary agenda. I’m not the combover interloper’s biggest fan, to say the least. But hitting the fainting couch every time The Donald acts like he’s acted all his life is a recipe for cardiac arrest.

Worse still, if you panic over every misspelled tweet or unsourced transition rumor, no one will take you seriously if and when Trump really crosses the line. If Democrats learned anything from 2016, it’s that they shouldn’t have spent the past 50 years calling every Republican a racist, sexist or homophobe. Don’t be the boy who cried wolf.

It’s going to be a long four years, with plenty of real decisions to get outraged about. If you keep losing your mind every time Donald Trump acts like Donald Trump, you’re going to guarantee a long eight years.

Jon Gabriel is editor in chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic, where this column was first published.