Tag Archives: Senator Ted Cruz

Is The GOP “Kraken Up”?

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Sydney Powell, an attorney that was included recently in the fold of Trump’s “legal team” suddenly found herself “written out of the script” of the Trump Show, her conspiracy-theory orientation reaching an extreme that even the Kingdom of Trump could not handle.  At one-point last week she even avowed that she was privy the information that would devastate Joe Biden’s status as President Elect, describing this purported bomb shell as a “kraken.” 

I must commend her to being familiar with Scandinavian folklore, however, “Kraken” being a sea monster in its mythology that could suddenly emerge from the depths of the sea and wreak havoc on ships and their crew.  And I also give a nod to Sydney for utilizing metaphor as many of her kind are metaphorically challenged, being in a linear-thinking overdrive.  But after this “praise,” the woman is nuts! 

However, I do think that there is a “kraken” in the depths of Powell, and the Republican Party, and all political parties…and all humans.  One expression of this within the GOP is their intense fear of a “deep state” that is threatening to destroy them and is responsible for “rigging the election” against Trump.  This “kraken” is just one culture’s creation to express the human intuitive fear that there is a monster in the depths of our heart.  And in our current political morass, the Republicans demonstrate just how “human” they are as they respond with this internal terror by projecting it “out there.”  I remember noting this being illustrated by Republican Senator Ted Cruz who declared, “President Obama is out to destroy the Republican Party.”  It was obvious, even then, that the GOP had a self-destructive element in their depths with “creatures” such as the Tea Party. 

I admit that I have spent most of my life terrorized by the “kraken” in my own heart and obeyed the teachings of the culture of my youth and blamed “them”, whoever the “them” of the day was.  It is so frightening to contemplate the heart’s darkness which is why the gods were so gracious to offer us a persona, or “fig leaf”, to cover it up.  They intended for us eventually to find the humility to recognize its presence and begin the lifelong process of acknowledgement.  This is what Goethe had in mind with his observation, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.” My country is now having an opportunity to acknowledge its collective “beastliness”; our religious culture is having the same opportunity. 

“Oops!”

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Hannah Arendt’s work has emboldened me recently to “assail” reality, blessed with some dimension of her “internal dialogue”. Taking a critical stance toward reality is a dangerous endeavor as the attempt to “view” reality entails an assumption that one is separate from it.  That very assumption can easily lead to sheer madness as it implicitly gives one the temptation to think with delight, “Oh boy, I’ve got it!  Lay down world and take it! I’m special, having a word from ‘on high’ that you need to listen to.”  The imperious attitude that one has achieved objectivity is the very same peril that I’m so “arrogantly” hoping to not share here.

The alienation that I labor with always brings to mind the quip from Emily Dickinson, “Life is over there…on a shelf” as if it was a book or a curio on a shelf.  That “blessing/curse” gifted us with the brilliant poetry of Dickinson though I have achieved only a critical viewpoint that I share here occasionally. “Reality” is a set of assumptions and biases that we live by, a body of “givens” that is necessary to be able to wake up in the morning without the task of “making sense” of our world all over again.  When we awaken in the morning, the implicitly agreed upon worldview will still be with us and we will again be able to put our pants on one leg at a time.  BUT, as this “reality” unfolds over the passing of time, it accrues sinister notions that need to be addressed.  In my life, that has involved disavowing, for example, that women are to be submissive to their husbands, that persons of color are inferior to we honkies, and that my spiritual tradition did not have toxic dimensions.  When critical thinking begins to set in, it can leave one with a sense of having become unmoored.  It is frightening to have the insipid experience that, “I don’t see things as I was taught to see them.” But I am today coming to accept this “internal dialogue” that insists that I have something to offer…but only to “offer” and not a view point that I can wield like a hammer.  Remember the old adage, “Give a kid a hammer and everything is a nail?”

I like to describe “reality” as a mere “dog-and-pony show” to which we are taught to subscribe.  Shakespeare described it with the cryptic observation that it was “a tale told by an idiot.” His insight makes me cringe at times when I recall the many times this has been the case with me, and inevitably still is! But the humility of this insight makes it easier for me to utter the famous wisdom of Senator Ted Cruz when I am wrong, “Oops!”

Senator Ted Cruz Demonstrates an “Echo Chamber.”

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Here is a video clip of Ted Cruz tossing “red meat” to a group of hungry, rabid supporters.  He carefully follows his script, not missing a point, offering up to those reptilian brains everything they want to hear.  (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/04/1418371/-Ted-Cruz-Kingwood-Texas-Tea-Party-delusional-speech-in-under-5-minutes)  It reminds me of my youth in Baptist revivals with the firebrand evangelist tossing our the appropriate “red meat” for that setting with his approbation coming in the form of “amen’s” and cries of, “Preach on, brother!”  In each setting, the crowd goes home basking in the delight of having their prejudices and premises confirmed.

This is an illustration of the echo chamber that we hear from the media so often.  And, yes, the “echo chamber” is present with any line of thought…even we damn liberals… who much prefer basking in the self-serving comfort of “smooth words” that the prophet Isaiah warned us against.  No one, individual or group, wants to have his/its pre-conceptions brought to the table.  We prefer the comfort of this “echo chamber” even to our own detriment rather than be brought to an awareness of our limits which is always very painful.  As W. H. Auden put it, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”  We prefer to remain embedded in our own thinking.

Anyone ensconced in an ideological comfort zone, fights tooth-and-toenail against being disillusioned.  And, of course, all the ugliness that we hide beneath our comfort of being “right” and “noble” is seen to be “out there,” embodied by people who are different than us.