The Cult of Trump

It begins at the center and spreads, this wave of delusion and absurdity, demolishing the ability to question, to think straight, to distinguish truth from lies or reality from fantasy… It overwhelms any capacity for critical thinking, any logic and common sense in its path. It flips perceptions of reality on their heads, and projects its own evils as what their chosen foe is and does.

It is one of those cults of ecstasy, in which a manic madness obliterates all other feelings, especially those that might warn the victims away from it. It creates a context of its own that blinds its victims to any greater context, like, for instance, the real world. It is the most extreme form of mob mentality.

Meanwhile, those on the outside, seeing and recognizing the madness for what it is, are flabergasted at what ‘some people’ can believe and commit their whole hearts to. It is hard for basically rational people to understand the total abandonment of reason, believing that we all always have the power of free choice.

But mania is a disease, an affliction, and it takes a mighty strength of will to fight one’s way out of a cult, especially one that relies on the quantities of believers to sustain it. But there comes a time when many cult followers suddenly regain some sense of self, and their own strength of character returns, begins to separate from the cult.

Some, of course, never do. Perhaps, with some inherent flaw or deep damage in their own sense of personal boundaries and personal truth, they depend on the cult for any feeling of belonging, of worth and identity.

Even then, when one has snapped out of the delusions, the machine of the cult makes it nearly impossible to actually break free. Witness Jonestown, where many  were forced against their will to drink the koolaid. It is a matter of record that there were those who wanted to get out, to go home, but were prevented in the weeks before the koolaid, which was not a mass suicide but a mass murder. 

Cult figures rarely go down alone. When the greater reality finally imposes itself, when the cult loses its momentum, loses its believers, and begins to circle the drain, the central figure notoriously takes as many down with him/her as possible. Former followers are forced to drink the koolaid, former enablers and supporters are tossed under the bus.

This book explains a lot about why and how people get into cults, and when, suddenly, they snap out of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapping%3A_America’s_Epidemic_of_Sudden_Personality_Change

Romance is a Cat

I am glad of the cat
who keeps company with me
from time to time sitting
beside me on the arm of the chair
or on my arm despite
my need to have it free
and sometimes I pause from work
or pull her close against me to rest
slightly purring against my chest
and not body-blocking the view
of keyboard and screen…

At night and time to sleep,
she walks across me
with hard pointed feet that
concentrate all her little weight
against nerve points
and tender spots that wince…
I wake to find that I’m her bed
or just behind my knees
she has kept warm and cozy 
through the chilly night, 
and that is fine and right.

I’ve grown accustomed
to my days of freedom
from the worries and the cares,
the frustrations, aggravations,
the longings
of a partnered life,
happy so, and unperturbed by fears
of losses inevitable and fore-ordained,
that I feel I can no longer quite afford.
Disappointment and dismay
realizing self-betrayals of
of red flags ignored, denied…

My time, now,
my space is mine,
within boundaries safe and distant
no longer requiring human intimacies;
The little pointy-footed cat
much makes up for that.

Paradise Left

Milton wrote PARADISE LOST from the Victorian Biblical perspective, but that is not the only way to look at or resolve the same mythical problems of suffering and death, and how we got some good, important things to make human life better, and civilization possible.

In the accounts of Genesis, Biblical and earlier, the serpent is Satan, the Adversary, the Liar–a clear villain.  But he gives Man the fruits of knowledge, of awareness of right and wrong… in other words, understanding, morality and ethics. 

In the Greek mythos, it was Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and gave it to Man. He is not thought of as a villain, except, of course, by the gods. Both are known by the same name: Light-bringer.

Imagine this scenario, then… Adam and Eve have eaten the apple: they have acquired reason and critical thought, and most importantly, creative thought.  I don’t think God and the Angels evicted them from Paradise, where everything was easy-peasy… I don’t think they lost Paradise: I suggest that they abandoned it, because wonderful and perfect as it was, they could imagine more exciting things, they could imagine creating gardens and homes of their own.  Of their own…

Human beings are not the sort to remain content in a perfect garden, all things provided for.  We love to solve problems! Therefore, we need problems. Sure, when we feel overwhelmed by problems, we may dream of Eden, but it isn’t really what we want.

Gone

I thought you’d live forever, though I know it can’t be so–
I’ve always known I’d lose you, though I thought you’d never go…
There’d be time some perfect day to speak the long-unspoken word,
To tell you all I needed to, to be sure that you had heard…
That there’d be time to listen, to show how much I care
To be sure you know I love you, before you aren’t there.

But I have been so busy, and believed you’d always be
within my voice’s reach, and where my eyes could turn and see
that you are waiting, smiling, until my moment’s best
for attending to your moment, all those words and all the rest…
But time grows short–the leaf, it fades, falls drifting through the air
And it will touch the ground and still, before I can be there.

Sorrow, for the incomplete, the tales and songs unfinished…
Guilt, for all the chances passed and so our lives diminished…
Loss, for opportunities that knocked time and time again…
Anger, that you left too soon, and never warned me when…
Shame, because it is my fault, for the things I never gave
because it was so much easier to think you’d never leave.

2004

Lament For Love

I’m sorry, 
I can’t love you
like a love should be…
Out here I stand
beyond the glass,
the wall of distance
between my heart
and the world…

Love’s such
a quiet subtle thing
so easily drowned out
by need and want
and hungers wailing
from a time
the time when children
learn to love
by being loved…

I’m sorry
my missing pieces
make this puzzle
that is love
forever incomplete…
Yet I want to love, 
you are so very dear
although my heart is mute
and broken…

I know love
is something like
the yearning
crouched in here…
I wish, I wish, I wish 
that I could feel
all that I know is true.
I wish that I could give you
all that you should have from me
without the firewalls
that make my space
a safer place.

I cherish you
as I have always done
I want to know
that this is enough 
for you to understand
all that you are to me.
I would not have
your heart, your life
be broken, too.

2015

Tolkien Tribute: Symbelmyne

Even here the glimmering simbelmyne grows
in the ghostly pale green meads and haunted hollows
far from the hallows somber in their ordered rows
where our old bones the cold earth slowly swallows.

Of certainty indeed no living person knows
and none but guess what after long life follows
yet, even here the glimmering simbelyne grows
in the ghostly pale green meads and haunted hollows.
Ages pass, and generations–so life ever flows,
sire and son, one after the other follows…

Echoing faint, hooves thunder out of meads and hollows…
The Dead also remember, in our long repose:
Even here, the glimmering symbelmyne grows.

The Long Flight Home

A few years ago, my son was on his way home from college for the holidays, but our airport was under assault by snow and wind, and so incoming flights from other airports, like his, were delayed and then cancelled. I started for the airport, a two-hour trip each way in the weather–3 times, only to hear the flight was not coming. He lived in the Denver airport for 4 days before he got a standby seat, and was finally actually arriving. I wrote this as I waited at a restaurant near the airport.

Everything will be all right
as soon as we are home tonight–
all the miles, all passed by,
distances closed with a hug and a sigh…
Now I’ll enjoy without a qualm
the snow behind this evening’s calm;
the house will be alive with chatter–
nothing now can be the matter.
I don’t care now how deep it gets
or if wind plays branches like castanets,
if roads are too slick, or hills too steep
or where you’ve safely found to sleep–
As soon as we are home tonight,
everything will be all right!

The Karpman Triangle

It has been called a ‘trap’ that the Evangelical extremists set for Americans, with accusations against those who demand actual separation between Church and State. It is meant to put their perceived adversaries on the defensive, to use the fairness intent of politcal correctness to promote the sense of the Evangelical extremist’s being treated badly, unfairly.

This conservative, evangelical “Christian” program of absurdism bases its argument against secularism on the unconsidered assumption that morality is only achieved through religion, and specifically, THEIR religion.

What nonsense!

This kind of “Christian” is so profoundly invested in being victimized, in being the underdog, in being conspired against and persecuted… They can’t stand the idea that anyone might simply not care about them or their world-view, that as long as they stay in their own lane, they are of no particular interest.

So here they are, jumping up and down, setting their little ‘trap’ that only takes in the suckers who are caught up in the dysfunctional dynamics of the classic Karpman Triangle.

Which is, in fact, a lot of Americans. It is cultural with us, to root for the underdog, to side with the oppressed, so much so that we do it without looking into histories or more complete pictures, or even giving a situation much actual thought. We assume that the weaker is more deserving of outside support. Seeing the need, we provide, because we are the Good Person. And when the one we’ve judged the oppressor is brought low, we are so Good, we immediately, automatically forgive them and help them up without regard for whether or not they have learned from their embarrassment and suffering.

We don’t stop to wonder if this is part of the underdog’s necessary learning process. Or if it’s fair consequences because last week, this person was oppressing the person who is now oppressing them.

In the Karpman Triangle, the participants constantly shift from one role to the next: Oppressor oppresses Victim; Rescuer opresses Oppressor to rescue Victim, becoming the Oppressor and making Oppressor into Victim. Original Victim becomes Rescuer, attacking the former Rescuer, now Oppressor… And so the triangle rolls on jerkily down the hill, a game, a self-perpetuating negative social dynamic.

And the only way to win the game is not to play.