Category Archives: conservatism

Watch the Republicans Continue To “Guzzle the Kool-aid”

Leave a reply

With Trump’s 2nd Impeachment trial before us, we are going to see a real time playing out of the prophetic skit by Saturday Night Live in 2013, “Mr Belvedere’s Fan Club,” starring Tom Hanks. I have blogged in the past about a reverie of someone lost in the lunacy of a man who believes the moon is made out of cheese. In that reverie, I make the point that anyone who believes anything….regardless of how crazy it is…if he believes it fully, as in “beyond the pale”, there is no getting through to him. I dealt with this in my clinical practice in a psychiatric hospital and we diagnosed these patients, “psychotic.” For psychosis is the term for one who is cut off from any external reference, being wholly intoxicated with his private field of reference. Put an individual like that in a group of like-minded souls, and one will find a political party led by people like Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, Matthew Gaetz, and technically led even yet, Donald J. Trump.

I grew up in a mind-set like this. Oh, in fairness to those good souls, metastasis had not set in. It took a Trump to bring that poison to fruition. But there was a smugness that I grew up in, a smugness which is simply an essential dimension of tribal coherence. The smugness rarely metastasize to the point we are witnessing in my country, a process the analysis of which is beyond the pale of this exploration. “Smugness” even has a place but it ever finds a Trump, “Katy, bar the door!!

Tomorrow we will witness well-educated men and women passionately oppose conviction of Trump in this trial. To argue with them about their enthrallment would be a foolish endeavor. They have “drank the kool-aid” which is a grim image to remind us of what can ensue when one gives into unquestioned unconscious biases, to override the brain’s capacity for metacognition. It is kind of like some of my past clinical patients who were in the grip of suicidal ideation; these patients had lost hope and were relentlessly driven by the the “only” hope they could imagine, jumping over the cliff. It was the greatest challenge of my clinical practice, trying to offer hope to those in the grip of hopelessness.

Does Professional Baseball Now Have More Moral Courage Than Hordes of Religious People?

Leave a reply

Is professional baseball more of a moral arbiter of our country than religion, at least with many of our religious people?  Yesterday, the Major League’s Baseball Writers Association of America voted to not allow Curt Schilling into the Hall of Fame and later explained that one of its criteria for admission moral turpitude  Schilling has demonstrated the absence of this “moral turpitude” in more than one occasion, just recently when he defended the 1/6/21 insurrection at the White House and in a 2016 tweet when he called for the lynching of journalists.  His past also includes a strident display of racism, sexism, an “general human ugliness.” He was fired from ESPN telecasting for similar offenses.

The Baseball Writers Association of America apparently does believe words…and actions…matter.  Oh yes, they have some ‘splaining to do about past blatant racism and other offenses…and they will now face pressure on the matter; but in our nation’s moment of grievous peril, “moral arbiters” need to step up.  And many religious leaders (i.e. Robert Jefferess, Franklin Graham, Paula White, et cetera ) will not offer a voice of disapproval to the dark “savior” they have adopted.  Nor will most of the Republican Congress who demonstrated yesterday when they voted on a matter which reveals how they will likely vote soon on conviction of Trump in the upcoming impeachment trial.

Yes, my “panties are in a wad” again.  And hopefully they will continue to be as I have much to say about how intelligent, college educated, “born again believers” can harbor gross attitudes, speak great evil, and behave badly all “in the name of Jesus.”  I “been there, done that.” The situation devouring my country now is not one of reason, or intelligence, or even politics.  It is “out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks” and our collective heart is now speaking, in words and deeds great evil, and nothing but a spiritual reckoning beyond the pale of anything that Jeffress, Graham, White, et al have ever faced will suffice.

A “Too Much Wine” Discourse Here….

3 Replies

I must admit it, I’ve had a glass of wine or two.  Maybe even three, given that the deputy sheriff just approached me from my perch in a lawn chair on the road in front of my house, telling me that reading my blog on a loudspeaker in this quiet neighborhood, clad only in a thong and fake arrow through my head suggested I should, “Take it inside.”  Ok, I will admit there was a 4th glass of wine! 

But with this disinhibition upon me, let me report I am furious with the Republican Party for their gross disrespect of their base in which I grew up in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s in the South.  They are totally out of control and are appealing to a base which is so readily amenable to their manipulation.  I grew up there, in a population which was susceptible to such manipulation, and I resent the disrespect to my people who are not stupid, nor ignorant, and can “understand” the political reality that is present if it is presented fairly and without manipulation. 

I am very angry, particularly at fundamentalist/evangelical Christians such as Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress who prostitute themselves before the Trump Demon.  I still have a very strong spiritual dimension to my life, and it will never leave me, but what passes as “spiritual” in my culture is something that is profoundly “unspiritual” and abysmally evil.  This situation is best conveyed by Shakespeare who saw clearly through the religious hypocrisy of his day, noting,  

“Thou hast described 

A hot friend cooling. Ever note, Lucillius, 

When love begins to sicken and decay, 

It useth an enforcèd ceremony. 

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith. 

But hollow men, like horses hot at hand, 

Make gallant show and promise of their mettle. 

“Hollow men” which T.S. Eliot described as straw men, “head piece filled with straw”, always must flaunt their piety.  That is because they lack it so sorely in their heart.  Yes, again, I admit I  have “been there and done that.”  The more guilt-ridden one is, the more he must prove how un-guilty he is, though Jesus taught that we are forgiven for being “guilty”…if we can only acknowledge it.  Jesus knew that we were all guilty. 

Let me confess as a former Christian, who is now more “Christian” than he has ever been…though don’t tell anybody about it, the label is so ignominious in our current time…and the label is totally unimportant to me now.  If anything, I have read the Sermon on the Mount and I am a “follower of the teachings of Jesus.” 

Let me publish this before I sober up!  And the bit about the street side reading of the blog and such was totally facetious!!! 

Another Take on, “That Giant Sucking Sound”

1 Reply

“That giant sucking sound” is often less intense than it is with Trumpism. That “sound” is just the noise that happens when an ego, individually or collectively, is ripe for a needed change. God is up to his mischief, trying to nudge us into changing our perspective about the whole of life, including ourselves. Sometimes Her nudging is not adequate and She will hit us up the side of the head with a bat such as ..this twin-headed pandemic, Trumpism and Covid-19.

As explained yesterday, that “sucking sound” is merely the void/Void trying to get us to recognize and respect that dimension of life which is beyond the pale of reason. That heart of us lies beyond the representational world that we take for granted, offering us darkness and light simultaneously. This was what Goethe recognized when he told us, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.” To word this less philosophically, this Divine intervention seeks to make us aware of the unconscious and give us some appreciation for its role in life. ‘Tis so much easier to deny this, cling to our illusions, and dismiss any challenge with a stock response such as, “He was just kidding” or “he was just joking,” or even a non sequitur like, “It was Obama’s fault!” Seriously, our unconscious has to “nudge” us lest She is forced to, “get Medieval on our ass.” For in that depth of our Being lies a potential which cannot emerge without “birth pangs.”

Over-emphasis of Law Reveals the Absence There Of

Leave a reply

The Trump/Covid 19 virus continues to beset us!  I am afraid, as you probably are, but I do have a “Center” that does indeed hold…apparently!

I hate to brag, but from even before this twin-faced pandemic hit us, I recognized that Trump and the GOP’s need to hide was very significant, and very revealing.  “Build that wall” was about more than the boundary between our country and Mexico; it was a disclosure that Trump has always been desperate to “build walls” between himself and the world, between his conscious mind and the monstrous, demonic madness that rages in his heart.  (NOTE—I confess that I must really want to brag…but am still too “humble” to embrace this and all other human qualities!!)

This “virus” is the expression of a denial system that has lain not-so-dormant in the American soul for decades ago, and egregiously so in the Republican Party.  But, as Carl Jung told us, “What resists” persists and the Bible told us in its heavy-handed ancient manner, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it.”My adulthood spent largely in the mental health profession reveals this tumult in my own soul.  Since early childhood, I too have “built walls” and comforted myself in the self-referential and linear prison that denies “reality.”  But as Jung noted, “it” is now coming out, paralleling this historical moment we are living through.  But spiritually/emotionally I appear to harbor less “darkness” compared with that which cowers in the bowels of Trumpism.  (Hmm!  “darkness” and “bowels.”  Do toy with that  Metaphor in your heart;  toy with that choice of words!!!)

“Walls,” i.e. boundaries, are an essential dimension of human experience…and technically of the whole Cosmos that embraces us.  But over-emphasis of “walls” reveals a corresponding absence of them in the depths of one’s heart.  Trump is the poster boy for this ancient human malady.  His crawl out from under the socio-cultural/political rock of our nation reveals an opportunity for us, individually and collectively, to consort for a moment with this primordial darkness.

(CONCLUDING AFTERTHOUGHT–If you are subscribed to this blog, please indulge me for a while as I post more frequently.  My “belly is full of words” and they want to spew, just as they did in the belly of that ancient bloke in the book of Job who merited but a cameo in that narrative. This is the thing about blogging that I appreciate; it permits the self-indulgence that my timidity prevents.  Those who know me personally should be so grateful!!!)

 

Mother Earth, Taos, N.M., and a Talented Local Poet

Leave a reply

A year ago I met a lovely poet, writer and “empath” who, for lack of a better term I would describe as doing “soul work” with animals and humans.  I received a blog post from her yesterday morning which beautifully conveys the passion and wisdom that she brings to the table anywhere she goes.  With her permission, I am sharing a link to her work along with an excerpt from a recent post of hers. Here you will see her love of life, including Mother Earth, and this little corner of this earth, Taos, NM.

A week or so after Earth Day, the days have begun to feel warmer here in Taos, even hot just after midday and into mid-afternoon. So Blue and I ventured to where the shadows of trees would cool and protect us as we walked together. These delicate flowers were thriving in the protection of the Ponderosa pines in the forest we found ourselves in. Whenever I can, I will take a pause to sit or even lay on the Earth, perhaps my favorite kind of meditation. After sitting awhile, then my eyes were drawn to these beauties.

Here in Taos, we still have a month or so before the clouds will gather enough precipitation for rains to begin falling as part of the monsoon season in northern New Mexico. The cloud beings that gather in these parts are favorites of mine. I literally feel the uplift of their presence and feel, oddly, as if they are my very own playmates! (What do they hold within themselves?)Cloud beings seen ‘dancing’ and touching the thermal rise of the mountains, here looking toward Taos Mountain and the Sangre de Christos a few days before Earth Day on April 18th.This time of year, early springtime with things warming up some, we see the apricot trees starting to come out in full bloom. I see this as another kind of precipitation, that of life force and nectar and flower essence. I often pause and thank the trees for their beauty and renewal, once again, calling to the inner reaches of my own essence to hint forward.

Every year with every season, I notice differences and fluctuations, subtle shifts within my own timing that most often are stimulated by that unique elemental dance before and around me. Grasping that I am part of all life, life being life, what a potent way to wake up to what is moving for me within the internal landscape as my own earth and skies! There I can also experience what is budding or coming to fruition literally and creatively.

And, here is a link to her entire blog, including the rest of this post:  

https://lifebeing.life/ 

 

 

Thoughts About our Endemic Obtuseness

Leave a reply

The “deep state” is often brought to the table in this pandemic by the Conservative voice. Technically, “it” is present also with our Progressive voice; for there is always unacknowledged intentionality in each of us, in all groups and individuals, as none of us know objectively what we are doing, saying, or thinking. But this “dilemma” proffers us an immediate ruse, individually and collectively–simply choosing to disregard the presence of subterranean depths in our heart. W. H. Auden had this problem in mind with the poetic quip, “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.” Satchel Paige, the brilliant, talented, and eccentric pitcher from baseball’s “Negro Leagues” in the mid-20th century often advised, “Don’t look back; whatever is there is gaining on you.”

In this current “deux ex machina” that is before us, blame is an immediate, self-serving escape from the sense of responsibility that it demands. Blaming China, or perhaps the “deep state,” or Obama, or some version of “them” only hampers our nation’s ability to address this crisis. Prophetic voices in a crisis like this become from beyond the pale, not from within it; the Reverent William Barber is a notable example. But Indian novelist and political activist, Arundhati Roy, last week also had a prophetic word for the world, describing this pandemic as, “a portal” through which we might find a turn-around in the very nature of how we grasp the world:

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And, in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. (from interview on Democracy Now)

This Indian wisdom brought to my mind a “war-horse” of many conservative pastors, 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

 

 

A Lamentation of Reality’s Intransigence

Leave a reply

Today I am going to continue my “assault” on reality, the quotes necessary because “reality” is impregnable to the attack of one simple bloke like myself.  What makes it so invincible is its subtlety; it can’t be seen with the naked eye.  Its premises are commonplaces, most of which a society cannot be left without.  But so many can be lived without and a society is better off when they are given the light of day. One simple example from my youth in the American South involves racism—television shows were “white”; NFL quarterbacks were “white”; and miscegenation was verboten.

This “reality” that I am here kicking around ordinarily has the capacity to slowly evolve, to adapt to circumstances even against the down drag of inertia.  But in certain moments of history, there is tremendous “down drag” as the evolution appears too drastic and frightening to much of the population.  This leads to the socio-cultural ferment that we are currently witnessing in the United States, and even in the world.  This has led to civil war in the past.

We can’t escape the unconscious dimension of life which shapes reality.  Oh, well, we can simply assume that it does not exist and passionately insist that we know exactly what are doing.  But we don’t.  There is always more to the picture which is a frightening notion to most people. It is so frightening that people will cling desperately to their certainties and usually will find a leader who will be their champion.

If you are curious about this tenuous nature of reality, you might find the following book of interest, “The Social Construction of Reality” by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman.

Addictive Thinking and Our Political/Spiritual Morass

Leave a reply

The abysmal morass that is gripping my country today is just a matter of “thinking.”  I sometimes tease my friends on this subject with, “Hey, why don’t God just stop us from thinking.  All the problems would then go away.”  But, of course, the problem is actually deeper than our thinking as our thinking flows from our heart and as Woody Allen once noted, justifying his marriage to his step-daughter, “The heart wants what it wants.”  We think what fits our heart’s intents and it is easier to just go with where our thinking takes us than dare to look into these intents.  Looking into these intents is to risk opening Pandora’s box and our identity in a sense is predicated on not venturing there.  But not “venturing there” leaves us with an impoverished identity, a rigid ego structure that can make us very successful, even give us a very “good” life, but one that is missing the riches that could be had by that “venture.”  The poet Ranier Rilke noted, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.”

William Butler Yeats, the famous Irish poet, addressed this mind-body disconnect with the powerful prayer, “Oh God, guard me from those thoughts men think in the mind alone.  They who sing a lasting song must think in the marrow bone.”  Thinking is intrinsically a dissociative developmental accomplishment but in maturity…if things go right…we can acquire the ability to let our thinking be influenced by our emotions, i.e. “our body.”  We will then be able to ‘feel” and “think” together, no longer being captive to our preconceptions and premises, described by W. H. Auden as the thinking of “a logical lunatic.”

The issue here is “the heart.”  My heart is still tainted by my literal-thinking past in which I somehow imagined it existing in my depths in some concrete form.  This concretism allowed me to think that I “knew” my heart, that I could grasp with my intellect its machinations, as well as treasures.  My culture taught me that this was possible.  For decades I’ve been learning that the heart is a mysterious dimension of my experience that cannot ever be fathomed by “thinking.”  But here, I am tackling “with words” to put into words a dimension of human experience that cannot be put into words.  That dimension is the “Divine Spark” which is the Ineffable and therefore a mystery, known only by “that still small voice” in the depths of our hearts which is “heard” only in silence.  There are parts of me to which this makes “no sense” at all for those “parts” are the hyper-rationality that I escaped into in my youth with the nudging of my culture.  Well, “nudging” is putting it mildly.  Cultural dictates are overwhelming to a child which is why they are so difficult to become aware of at any age.  They are intrinsically subtle and the egoic mind is not designed for subtlety.

We are now witnessing in my country what can happen when reason is in subjection to unacknowledged depths of the soul.  The acknowledgement of these depths evokes the feeling of being out of control, an illusory sense of control which reason has given us.  The religious dimension of this catastrophe was prophesied by Paul Tillich in the mid-20th century when he wrote, “A religion within the bounds of religion is a mutilated religion.”  Tillich knew that the resulting faithlessness of religion would facilitate the spiritual darkness in which we are now living; for, religion locked in the “logical lunacy” of reason does not require any faith though it does facilitate the seduction of certainty.

An Exploration of Trump’s “deity”

Leave a reply

I’ve long noted a rock-solid “belief” that many Trump supports have in him, so firm it is almost like he is a god.  I do think that divinity is an issue with him, though it is a dark divinity.  Carl Jung pointed out that the notion of god, if explored deeply and honestly, would always expose the ambivalence of the heart.  A theological term, aseity, is relevant.  This term means “in and of and for itself.”  In Christian theology this is often called the pleroma or the god-head.  This is the god who is the prime mover, able to move others but incapable of being moved by anyone or anything outside of himself. This is a valuable term for an exploration of Deity but when it is discovered in a human being, to any degree it will be malignant narcissism and catastrophic in its consequences.

This Trumpian darkness has been present throughout Trump’s life.  For example, in 1995 walking into the dressing room of Ms. Teen USA beauty pageant where young girls were in various stages of undress or nude.  He explained later, “Well, I owned the pageant.”  And he frequently voiced in public…video is still available… his lascivious designs on his daughter Ivanka.  God’s can even intrude into the incestuous realm.  In the 2016 campaign he avowed, “I can stand in the streets of Manhattan and shoot someone” and not lose my support base; this is being proven almost daily.  In the impeachment furor currently underway, his minions are speaking in explicit terms of Trump’s invincibility and inviolability, Lindsey Graham declaring earlier in the week, “All I can tell you is from the president’s point of view, he did nothing wrong in his mind.”  Someone quipped on Twitter, so astutely, that the same could be said of Jeffrey Dahmer.  Then yesterday Alan Dershowitz contributed to the aseity-complex demonstration, declaring that as President there are no limits for Trump, adding that if he deems his re-election as President is best for the country he can do what he needs to obtain that re-election.

Group-think has enveloped the Republican Party and is threatening the entire country.  Their investment, their “faith” in this dark “savior” is so intense that they’ve pledged more loyalty to him than they have any awareness of.  They have “drank the Trumpian kool-aid” and it is more deadly, in the long run, than the Jim Jones flavor.  People who have been devoured by group-think have lost the ability to “think” and are completely subservient to premises which they will not dare to look at.  This reminds me of an intense argument I had decades ago when I was in college with a girl friend who was studying law.  My argumentation was proving too much for her and she suddenly, in exasperation declared, “You are arguing to make a point and I’m arguing to stay alive.”  We later explored that exchange and I learned she meant that she was arguing to “stay on top” or win the argument and found herself in dispute with someone who merely wanted to make a point. She could not handle “losing” the argument though winning/losing was not on any agenda I had in mind.

The problem in Congress on display here…reflecting a problem in the American soul…is that the GOP is “arguing to stay on top” making compromise impossible.  If they did not suffer from that Trumpian insistence on “being right” as in “not being able to concede the possibility of ‘being wrong’”, they would be able to see that there are national interests that supersede this fracas and focus on any of these problems would diminish the internecine hostilities.  But this is not a matter of reason.  They have “dug in” with Trump, dug in so deep they cannot get out, and he knows it.  Their judgement is impaired and you can’t reason with someone or “someones” whose judgement is impaired in this fashion.  On a lighter note, but actually not so light, they might wonder at some point, “Hey, putting a man who is so insecure about his penis size that he had to reassure the entire world about the matter on Tv was not such a good idea.”