When I work with people in therapy I notice that often, just before they are about to make a big breakthrough – a significant leap to another level – they often have to come face to face with some of the worst things about themselves that are standing in the way. If they can confront and, as it were, embrace or integrate their dark side, then they will move to the next level and if not, they won’t. This process, however, is never easy. It is always painful when one has an image about oneself as being a kind, helpful person only to discover one has a shadow side living inside one that is exactly the opposite! Well, the same thing holds true of the evolution of the larger human collective – humanity as a whole also has a dark side – and so does America and I believe that, as a nation, America is poised on the threshold of making such a leap.
If this is the case, then Trump is absolutely essential to this process and he is offering an enormous gift to the American people generally and to the Republican party specifically. How so? What he is doing is holding up a mirror reflecting everything that is worst about this party – and indeed, worst about ourselves – everything which is low and disgusting and conspiratorial and hatred-filled and which prevents this party moving forward and therefore which badly needs confronting.
In an article in today’s New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote: ‘Assuming that Trump loses, many Republicans will try to pretend that he was a complete outlier, unrepresentative of the party. But he isn’t…. and his vices are, dare we say, very much in line with his party’s recent tradition…He is a pure distillation of his party’s modern essence.’ I wonder: will the Republicans have the humility to take this on board? I hope so. There is a character in a Thomas Mann novel that tells us: ‘If a way to the better there be, it lies in our taking a full look at the worst!’ And there’s a hell of a lot of that ‘worst’ out there today.
And of course Trump not only embodies that worst but incites it. Every day in the news, we are informed about some new transgression of his or some new person he has insulted. It is well known that he is a bully, a sociopath, a narcissist, a misogynist , a racist and a sexual predator, that he is greedy, a liar, a manipulator and a fantasist and conspiracy-theorist, has a highly inflated view of himself, demeans everyone and everything and that his vision of the world is both narrow and negative. He clearly has multiple personality disorders. For me, he embodies every single trait of the immature, weak, insecure, macho-infested, wounded masculinity that characterises the shadow side of a patriarchal mindset that simply has to die, as it has dominated the world for far too long and is the main reason why our planet is so full of violence and chaos today.
Yes, I think Trump not only embodies the Republican party’s dark side but also America’s dark side and even perhaps the dark side of many of us non-American men as well. Certainly, as a result of all his goings on being paraded in the news every day, he is giving all of us the opportunity to perhaps look at some very ugly parts of ourselves. So perhaps we men need to stop projecting our shadow onto Trump, let him off the hook for a moment and instead look inside our own hearts and see if we too might be carrying some facet of Trump-hood inside us. Perhaps we can even be grateful to him for offering us the opportunity to confront aspects of our own selves standing in the way of our being more fully human!
Of course, it is not by chance that Trump’s opponent in the race for President is Hillary Clinton. While she is certainly not without her faults (it is damn hard, believe me, to operate within the system as she has done for thirty years and not be implicated in it to some extent), I believe she nonetheless embodies many of the qualities required not only to lead America in the tough times that lie ahead, but also to assume leadership on the world stage.
A lot of the reasons why she is despised is because she is a woman – a woman with power – there is still a strong misogynistic streak in America, even among women. Hillary is the archetypal warrior lady. She’s a fighter. She is highly intelligent and she works damn hard and I respect her tough-heartedness and courage and she is certainly not devoid of tenderness as her detractors like to suggest. OK., her foundation may have received money from one or two dodgy sources, but it was never money she used for her own self-aggrandisement but always for her projects.
People forget that all during her life, she has done a lot in many different ways, to help women and oppressed minorities and this requires a lot of love, integrity and commitment. It is tough work. And what’s wrong with being ambitious? I believe she truly wants to change the system, to create a better world with greater equality for all and I trust that she will keep her word and fight to make all the changes in government that she talks about and that it will no longer be business as usual, that is, politicians not keeping their word, but rather, business being done along brand new lines.
At the time I admit I was sad that Bernie Sanders didn’t make it and while I love much of what he stands for, I feel a) that many of his policies will be implemented by Hillary – she’s said she would – and b) that the kind of complex challenges which we face in the world today can best be handled by intelligent warrior women like her as opposed to by old men. The fact that today we are witnessing a whole new raft of these strong women ( Angela Merkel, Teresa May, Nicola Sturgeon) emerging on the world stage, has to be celebrated. This is what the world needs if it is to evolve and heal, namely, the continued emergence of the feminine presence in leadership positions to celebrate the end of the oppressive, backward-looking patriarchy which is everything that Trump represents.
I therefore think it is fantastic that the new US President will be a woman. America is a very fine country. I was privileged to have lived there for over a decade and I am all the better for my experiences, having encountered some of the wisest people on the planet. So when we remember that Jung, who coined the term ‘the Shadow’, told us that ‘the tall mountain casts a long shadow’, we understand why the US shadow is so big and dark.
Trump-ism is emerging everywhere not because America is slipping backwards but because the country is moving forward quickly and thus is having to confront all the many skeletons in its closet so that it can continue on its upward journey. For confront these skeletons it must do. There is no way of avoiding this. And what Trump offers is the full monte. Put simply, the world we are moving into today has to transform and move beyond old fuddy-duddy and deluded worldviews. It is not about building walls and denying climate change and waging war against Islam. It is about letting the drawbridges down and honouring climate change and respecting Islam.
Essay: Looking to the Future
This essay looks at: a) the state of the world today b) what I see happening on the planet over the next eighty years and c) the new society that I see rising, phoenix like, out of the ashes. It is a hopeful essay but suggests that to get to the light, humanity may need to go through some more dark times… OK, it is time now to look forward and say a few words about what I think might…
