The 5 stages of Trump grief: How to go through them as fast as possible

Millions of American voters -- in fact, the majorityof American voters, if estimates of Hillary Clinton's popular vote victory are accurate -- are about to go through their first full day of emotional torture.

Whether it lasts days, weeks, months or years, we know what to call this feeling. It is grief -- painful and genuine as if we'd gone through a death in the family.

SEE ALSO:Good luck, America: You just elected Donald Trump president

What many have lost is a sense of America, its essential goodness and fairness and competence in governing itself. How, we say, could that many of our fellow citizens vote for a man to lead them who embodies the opposite of all that?

But as the old activist saying has it, don't mourn -- organize!

We will soon need to resist with a fierce and united front the worst items on the agenda president-elect Trump has promised over the course of his horrific campaign: the banning of a billion people from U.S. entry; the deportation effort that could rip 11 million people from their homes; the tearing up of climate agreements vital to the planet's health; appointing an anti-abortion Supreme Court.

Some, if not all of these things will happen if we do not take action. We have little time for sorrow.

We all move through grief at our own speed, of course, but it helps to have a roadmap when we need to find our way out as fast as possible. Below I've tried to lay out how our feelings could be processed, using the traditional five stages of grief as they might apply to Trump.

1. Denial

I'm betting most of us are going to be stuck here for a couple of days. Especially for generations (like me) raised on video games, on the concept of going back to the start when you lose a life, it's hard to believe there's no immediate do-over on this boss level of life.

Maybe you feel like it's all a bad dream. You ate too much cheese at the election party and fell asleep on the couch. There was something in that beer, and now you're hallucinating. The Ghost of Christmas Future will show up at any minute. You'll certainly learn whatever lesson this vision was supposed to teach you!

If you've caught yourself thinking anything like this, know that it's okay. It's natural. The brain is trying to avoid the trauma of the event. (Waking up every morning and reminding yourself is going to be enough of a shock.) You can help ease it back to Earth.

My advice: Plunge into a good novel. Read the stack on your nightstand, at last, instead of checking Twitter or Facebook. Fall into a beautifully-described world that is better than the one we live in. It's good therapy.

2. Anger

This is pretty much all Twitter is at the moment, which is why it's a good thing to avoid. Or don't! Plunge right in and let it rip. Scream at the #MAGA crowd. Let them know we won't go gently into that good night. Excoriate news networks for all the free time they gave Trump. Or turn the anger inward on the progressive movement: Make your feelings known on why Hillary failed, whether Bernie would have done better, whether she should have at least picked him as her VP.

Do all the things we're not supposed to do, and which will be of no use in the long term. Recriminate. Finger-point. Insist that the FBI clearly had its thumb on the scales of democracy, or that the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act swung the election, both of which have the added benefit of being true.

Feels good, right? Cathartic? Enjoy it -- just know that there is a more effective outlet for this anger.

Perhaps, for example, you could organize a peaceful but noisy demonstration outside the New York FBI office. This is the place known as "Trumpland" for the agents who went rogue, promoted bizarre Clinton conspiracy theories as if they were fact, and passed information to the Trump campaign. Demand a full and proper investigation. Don't let them get away with it.

You might also have a peaceful protest outside 30 Rock, and let NBC know you're not cool with the way they coddled and normalized a full-on racist candidate during the campaign -- from his guest-hosting SNL to his hair-ruffling on Jimmy Fallon. The Todayshow would have to cover you.

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3. Bargaining

Anger is exhausting. No one can sustain it forever; no one wants to. And so the accommodation begins: Maybe he won't be that bad! He's a change agent; he'll "drain the swamp," whatever that means.

Maybe at least with one party controlling Congress and the executive branch, we'll actually have a functioning government again, and a good bill or two might slip through. Maybe Congress can restrain Trump in some way; maybe the Pentagon can keep his finger away from the nuclear button.

Maybe they mean it when they say repeal and replaceObamacare, and maybe the replacement could actually be better. Maybe they won't just throw millions off health insurance or reinstate preexisting conditions!

Yeah, good luck with all that.

But as you run down the list of maybes, there's a glimmer of actual light: the class-action fraud lawsuit against Trump University. The president-elect is testifying in that case on November 28. Perhaps a judgment against him, or horrific details from his dozens of pending lawsuits, will rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Perhaps Congress can be inveighed upon to impeach him, with enough evidence and enough protests. This would mean a President Pence, which is its own kind of nightmare. But Pence can probably be trusted more with the nuclear codes so hey, one battle at a time.

The point is to not over-bargain to the point where we are convinced everything is fine, meekly submitting to the inevitable. If we do that, we stay blind to some very real opportunities to find chinks in Trump's armor -- and keep a light shining on them.

4. Depression

We're familiar with this slough; we all find ourselves in it from time to time. The news Wednesday morning is, without any close rival, the most phenomenally depressing in electoral history. A popular vote majority may have been thwarted by the Electoral College before, but never to this degree and with this disastrous a set of consequences.

But what that means is that in this case, misery has company. A lotof company. Liberals, Democrats, Libertarians, Republicans, Conservatives, Greens; the Trump opposition was drawn from across the political spectrum, and they are everywhere.

So reach out to your friends and neighbors in suffering. They do exist, even in the most Trump-friendly counties in America. One of the few bright spots of this election was the private Facebook group Pantsuit Nation, which let millions of Clinton voters -- mostly women -- know that they were not alone. It connected the neighbors we never knew we had.

We need to love and care for one another like never before. Only then, with strong networks, can we help and inspire each other to do what needs to be done through the dark days that lie ahead.

5. Acceptance

Here we are at what could well be the nadir of America. Right now it feels like we've reached the end of the road for progress, and that all we have to look forward to is a slide into banana republic-style dictatorship with a ridiculous wannabe strongman at the helm.

But by going through the stages of grief, we emerge on the other side knowing that there's nothing we can't do to claw it all back.

We can stymie Trump's agenda and build a new movement that will sweep him or Pence out of power in 2020, and replace them with a president who will be far more progressive and effective than Hillary would have been -- heck, even more than Obama was.

Our strategic minds will have to be keener. Our political muscle has to be stronger. And just as in any muscle-building operation, the effort has to start small.

It starts at the local and state level; that's the Republican playbook. Start with the school boards and work your way up.

Over the last 8 years, riding the wave of concerted "Tea Party" opposition to Obama, Republicans began taking over the majority of state houses and legislatures around the nation. That's how the GOP captured Congress, not the other way around.

And that's what can happen in reverse, too, in a series of anti-Trump wave elections that could take over the House of Representatives as early as 2018.

But the pendulum can only swing back if Trump opponents learn the lessons of this election. Don't place your trust in polls, ever; don't take any state in the nation for granted; don't automatically believe the conventional wisdom of the coastal bubbles. Don't waste your time with focus-grouped messages or celebrity endorsements or any kind of equivocation.

Just speak the truth, which is the one thing that has almost never been on Trump's side thus far. This is what is necessary to repair the Democratic party's relationship with the Rust Belt: bold plans with genuine benefits to all, clearly explained by entertaining and relatable communicators.

Should President Trump's economic plan turn out to be a chimera of tax cuts for the rich, this new movement will be there next time around to express the next wave of hostility directed at him and the rest of the elite Washington establishment -- because that is what Trump and the GOP are now, through and through.

Trump will start his administration as the most unpopular, unprepared president in history. We've got a good head start on building a strong, committed, nationwide anti-Trump movement.

It's not going to be pretty. But it is likely to be bumpy enough that the heartland of America will soon cry "okay, enough. Next!"

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