Welcome To Spiritual Whiplash
Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the policy of separating immigrant children from their parents sighs, “Just when you think the Trump administration can’t sink any lower, it does.” Sigh is right.
On Rudy Guiliani, The New York Times writes, “Few have been so willing to defend the president, and, paradoxically, few have been so damaging to his legacy.” True that. And he’s still willing to stand with him. Go figure.
“The people at the Capitol who said they were there because the president wanted them to be weren’t necessarily delusional.” No, they were right. Head-shaking, but right.
“Trump now becomes the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Half of all presidential impeachments since the Republic began have been impeachments of Trump. This latest impeachment is different than the first, and not just because it was bipartisan. It culminates a week in which Trump has finally faced the broad social pariahdom he’s always deserved.”
Michelle Goldberg asks if it’s too little, too late. Then she observes, “There’s a bleak sort of relief in the arrival, after everything, of comeuppance.” Bleak, yes, much bigger than the momentary, karma-police satisfaction.
She goes on, “The siege of the Capitol wasn’t a departure for Trump, it was an apotheosis.” A culmination, the logical progression of all the overt indications he has made from the get-go.
Then why are both his adherents and the rest of us surprised? And, make no mistake, we are.
I think it’s because we have a wicked case of emotional—and spiritual—whiplash.
Like this, “An animating irony of Trumpism—one common among authoritarians—is that it revels in lawlessness while glorifying law and order.” Say what?
But think a moment. Isn’t that right? Trump screeching a need for strength as he incited the mob last Wednesday. Strength? Mob? What’s wrong with this picture? A mob only happens because they feel weak. Those two don’t go together. What is this? The Bastille?
“Central to Trump’s mystique is that he breaks rules and gets away with it,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an N.Y.U. historian and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.” We must “show the world that he cannot in fact get away with it.”
And yet isn’t that what the hue and cry over the repercussions of the mob’s actions is predicated upon? We can act, in no matter whatever way we choose, and pay no price? No-fly lists anyone?
Mussolini’s definition of fascism was a “revolution of reaction.” Ms. Ben-Ghiat continued, “Fascism had a radical impulse to overturn the existing order, ‘to liberate extremism, lawlessness, but it also claims to be a reaction to bring order to society.’” Chaos brings order? How?
Whiplash indeed. And no wonder. The minute we think we have a handle on what’s going on, there’s more revelation, and more horror.
David Brooks’ Opinion piece about the growing rift in white evangelical Christian churches is telling. “You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts. You can’t have an argument with people who are deranged by the euphoric rage of what Erich Fromm called group narcissism—the thoughtless roar of those who believe their superior group is being polluted by alien groups.”
I latched onto group narcissism as a sort of mental savior, a shopping bag into which I could toss all the behaviors I find deplorable. It is a savior, and it isn’t. We cannot afford to reduce this collective experience into a simple common denominator, no matter how much we might like to do so.
What has happened is complex, complicated, nuanced, multifold, growing, morphing, changing before our very eyes. Does that sound like a pesky, little virus we have recently come to know? It does. Are we suffering the mutation of a political virus?
Mr. Brooks recommends, “Others have to be reminded of the basic rules for perceiving reality. They have to be reminded that all truth is God’s truth; that inquiry strengthens faith, that it is narcissistic self-idolatry to think you can create your own truth based on what you ‘feel.’ There will probably have to be pastors and local leaders who model and admire evidence-based reasoning, wrestling with ideas.
“On the left, leaders and organizations have arisen to champion open inquiry, to stand up to the cancel mobs. They have begun to shift the norms.
“The problem on the right is vastly worse. But we have seen that unreason is a voracious beast. If it is not confronted, it devours not only your party, but also your nation and your church.”
Unreason? Is that the virus? I don’t think so. I think the real virus underneath the unreason is loneliness and that Mr. Trump’s ostracism by those who are now speaking their thorough disgust with the man is simply a billboard version of what each of us is struggling with in these allegedly more connected, but really least connected, times.
“A week later, Representative Liz Cheney, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, would vote to get rid of him, joining nine of her fellow Republicans in backing impeachment. “The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said in a statement, adding, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
This is probably only the second time I will ever agree with Liz Cheney in my life. [The first was when she came out as gay.] And yet …, and yet …, despite the need to condemn his evil actions, unless we address what’s beneath them, our country will continue to suffer.
“A recent federal intelligence bulletin warns, ‘Amplified perceptions of fraud surrounding the outcome of the General Election and the change in control of the Presidency and Senate,’ along with fear of what the new administration has in store, will ‘very likely will lead to an increase in DVE violence.’ DVE stands for ‘domestic violent extremists.’”
Opinion writer Peter Beinart asks, “Why aren’t there more courageous senators? And what would it take to produce more senators like [Mitt Romney]?” He’s the only Republican who voted to impeach Mr. Trump the first go-round.
“The answer may be surprising: To get more courageous senators, Americans should elect more who are near the end of their political careers. This doesn’t just mean old politicians—today’s average senator is, after all, over 60. It means senators with the stature to stand alone.”
Consider this carefully. Mr. Romney did indeed stand alone. Is that what we need? Not only senators who have the strength (remember what the Mobster-in-Chief called for?) to stand on their own, but citizens who will stand alone as well?
Mr. Beinart again, “Like most people, I’d prefer senators who do what I think is right. But I’d take comfort if more at least did what they think is right. That’s more likely when you’ve reached a phase of life when the prospect of losing an election—or being screamed at in an airport—no longer seems so important. America needs more senators who can say—as Daniel Webster did to his constituents in Massachusetts—‘I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer to save you, whatever be your attitude toward me.’”
Kara Swisher, writing on how technology played into the drama, asks a seminal question. “Can we start over?” “Well, in the last two weeks, [d]igital hate and misinformation finally jumped out of the screen and into the real world, in the form of a mob that attacked the Capitol after having been incited to violence by the president.” Can we start over? We can if we want to, Beloved.
You wouldn’t think that the absence of a matriarchal raven in The Tower of London would pertain to our situation, but hear me out.. Merlina, the Ravenmaster of the Tower has determined, is dead. The headline read, “A Raven Queen Vanishes, and Britain Checks a Prophecy.”
“Legend says at least six [ravens] must be kept [in The Tower], or the nation will fall. [No worries, there are still seven—that old, heir and a spare thing.] The ravens—sometimes collectively called an ‘unkindness’—became bored and restless without the detritus of human contact that kept them in snacks in addition to a regular diet that includes mice, chicks, meats and biscuits soaked in animal blood. They were also said to pine for the stimulation of a human audience for their party tricks that include mimicry.”
The ravens are lonely. The rebels are lonely. Hell, the president is lonely. Just as we are discovering that we are. The light is slowly dawning on just how isolated, how lonely, how raw a life lived without genuine connection can be.
“The tower is only the Tower when the people are there,” Ravenmaster Skaife told The Sun newspaper last year. “The ravens have always been so important to the tower because they’ve been surrounded by myths and legends. We really need people to come back to help the ravens.”
In the world of mysticism, the raven signifies the power inherent in magic. Now before you conjure Hogwarts or hobbits, that’s not the kind of magic that heals loneliness, Beloved. This is what heals loneliness:
In a piece for the Ties column this morning, Court Stroud writes heartfully of the fraught relationship his sweet gay self had growing up with his manly man stepdad. Consider this.
“At 30, I told them I was gay.
“‘Never made any difference to me,’ Russ said.
“My jaw hit the floor.
“He’s known since you were 16,” Nelda [his mom] said. “A boy telephoned. Russ went to get you. You fainted.” I remembered the phone call, but hadn’t realized they did, too. A guy from Nebraska I had a crush on had called long-distance. We’d met at student council camp and I’d been desperate for him to like me.
“She paused. ‘It was hard for me, but he says you were born this way.’
“So, Russell Lee had been my secret ally all along.”
Beloved, if a senator and a stepdad can stand alone despite the loneliness and make everyday magic—for honor, for love, for truth, for beauty, for justice—then so can I. So can you. Who knows? We might even start a revolution wherein we discover upstanding citizens acting upon the things we care about, discovering secret allies, and making magic all along the way.
Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection between spirituality and culture. Find out more at www.susancorso.com