The Magical Donald Trump
Wait, wait, wait...just hear me out....I mean Tina Turner would...
So, Tina Turner is dead. And the world that’s cared not at all over the preceding years of her declining health suddenly decides to care again. For clicks or comfort, the internet was afire with “heartfelt” tributes to “those legs" and the owner of said legs. Repeated, often, her rise from abused wife to Private Dancer and proud (Mary?) Swiss citizen, Tina Turner’s life, mythologized in movie, was recalled lovingly, and deservedly.
It was all genuine and, yes, all deserved, and while you might be able to question the sincerity of the surprise that some might feel in the face of the death of an 83-year-old, do not at all question the feeling. Tina Turner had touched us all.
As a child when I saw her, wig a’flying, whooping it up during multiple renditions of the Ike Turner take on Proud Mary I, at first, called fraud. I just didn’t believe or buy it. But there was an eerie freneticism that made it hard to look away from and after not looking away long enough I started to see it. I mean really see it. The kind of edge-loving hysteria born of nerves, trauma and just a sort of…animal fear.
Learning more about Ike Turner’s coke-fueled abuse it all makes sense but here the dividing line yawns and exposes the chasm between what the true believer is and does and what the cynical opportunist makes way for. Ike? Had all of the makings and markers of a cynical opportunist. Like any good pimp he sold what he knew people would buy. About women. About Black women, specifically. He, as he often claimed, materially changed their lives for the better. Face punching and cake shoving in those same faces aside.
Trump, in wandering back to the middle on a handful of issues, has pulled off a stunning act of legerdemain and now appears to be the sanest Republican running for the 2024 Presidential Race.
But whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it always comes out worse for the pitcher and so likewise for Tina, she was less fueled by cynicism than she was true belief. In? In the possibility of escape, freedom, renewal, revenge, truth and the telling of those truths. Tina was not fucking around and while a cynical opportunist can always dismiss whatever charges fly their way, as Ike did, with a shrug, the true believer rarely does. It’s life, and/or death, for them.
Which has to be considered when considering today’s Trump, and the mystical, magical act he’s pulled off and which, as is often the case, is only really pulled off by cynical opportunists. That is, Trump, in wandering back to the middle on a handful of issues, has managed a stunning act of legerdemain and now appears to be the sanest Republican running for the 2024 Presidential Race.
While some might argue that’s very akin to being the tallest midget, it is noteworthy in many regards. As his legal troubles mount and either despite, or because of this, Trump has trended to the center on any number of issues where he is now outflanked by his erstwhile challengers for the mantel of Republican front runner. Abortion restrictions should be left up to individual states? Yeah, him. OK with same sex marriage? Him too. The broadsides against Disney’s wokefulness? No, not him, not at all.
Trump edged perilously close to as far as you could get without standards and arm bands, eliminating any right leaning flank action, creating a raft of competitors willing to follow him off of those right side cliffs before he, as the wind blew, wandered back to the center. The same center that makes declared candidate Ronald Dion DeSantis “look” absolutely insane by comparison.
Trump could do this because he is a coreless entertainer who leans as the rebarbative element of his MAGA tribes do. But just a little bit before them, and just a little bit faster/sooner.
DeSantis, on the other hand, is now fighting what’s sure to be a losing battle with Disney, turning tax-paying Gay Americans into criminals, and earning travel warnings from the NAACP for turning Florida into an unsafe haven for people of color.
Fifty-seven-year-old Senator Tim Scott is embroiled in some imbroglio over the nature and state of his self-proclaimed virginity while Trump is battling back accusations that he’s raping near-strangers in public dressing rooms. And Nikki Haley’s flipflopping on the January 6 attempted coup, all while Trump is holding firm that he is the rightful president of note underscore what will be clearer yet. That is: their true believerhood will be no match for the quicksilver nature of his cynical opportunism.
Do you have any clear cut doubt that a President DeSantis would not do to the rest of America what he’s done to Florida? Because you shouldn’t. And he will.
Or as pundit, show co-host, and Trump antagonist Nathan Lee Wilcox said on the If the Shoes Fit podcast, “Trump is going to vaporize them all,” about the running Republicans challengers. This is what happens when true belief comes head to head with cynical opportunism.
But a considered secondary scenario. In this one true belief does not get vaporized but by some scant chance, or a prison term, sees Trump succumb, and wins out. Do you have any clear cut doubt that a President DeSantis would not do to the rest of America what he’s done to Florida? Because you shouldn’t. And he will. This is the nature of True Belief.
Albert Speer, infamous Nazi architect, was a cynical opportunist nonpareil. He lived a media-full existence for the fullest extent of his 76 years on this planet, dying while visiting his mistress in London. At his worst what do you have? A handful of fairly unremarkable buildings.
Hitler, every ounce of true believer, leaves behind what? Tip of the iceberg…15.9 million civilians dead, 7.1 million victims of Nazi genocide and 5.5 million famine and disease deaths. At his worse what do you have? Not a single inch of space on this planet that’s not been affected by his depredations.
Now Tina Turner was no Hitler (her beliefs were personal, his professional), and Trump is no Speer, but there are perils a’plenty at thinking true belief is a harmless measure of conviction. Or put more simply, if Trump is the sanest (most predictable) person in the room precisely what kind of room are we in anyway?
Well, a lot can happen in the next 18 months, especially to octogenarians, but for those of us not-yet-octogenarians perils a’plenty remain. Plan accordingly.
Matthew Fox Morning Meditation
Memorial Day 2023: From Self-Hatred to Self-Love & Spreading Love
Otto Rank’s profound insight that a “philosophy of pessimism” is born of self-hatred gives us a deep understanding of the origin of much suffering in the world–but also a door to the way out of this suffering. If the door into the suffering of self-hatred often comes from abuse of many kinds, then the way out is to find goodness around us that elicits the love that is a response to goodness. Much self-hatred is perpetuated, as Rank points out, by our overactive imaginations, the “artiste-manque,” the creativity we invest in beating up on ourselves.
This we are prone to do of course in a culture that is based on competition more than co-operation, a culture therefore that has taken the basic dynamics of capitalism “to heart” as one says, that is, as a foundational way to look at the world and even at oneself.
“The survival of the fittest” meaning the meanest–not, unfortunately the survival of the fittest meaning “those who fit in well, who adapt, who recover, who forgive (including forgiving oneself).”
The self-hatred that births more hatred can be found in the destructive childhood of Adolf Hitler whose father beat him daily, as psychologist Alice Miller has demonstrated. We all know how that turned out. The abuse of the last president’s Ku Klux Klan honoring father explains a lot of recent history as well.
When Julian of Norwich talks about God as “the goodness in nature and things” and how we are all born with “joy as our birthright,” she is clearly offering another way to look at the world and look at ourselves.
When Thomas Aquinas tells us that “wonder makes joy” and Webb Telescope is daily filling our souls with an ever-deepening story of the wonders of our universe and planet on which we all live, abundant joy should be in motion.
We are invited beyond anthropocentric self-doubt and wrongs done us by parents, society or Patriarchy that brings with it “fatalistic self-hatred” as Adrienne Rich reminds us to the graced community of the more-than-human. From self-hatred to Self-love meaning self-connected-to-the-whole.
If a pessimistic philosophy causes self-hatred, then true self-love, self in the context of the whole, can cause a blessing-oriented philosophy. A rediscovery of the Original Blessing that earth, cosmos and we all are is medicine for self-hatred.
Memorial Day remembers those who put Self ahead of self; and love ahead of fascism.
Admittedly got lazy copy/pasting spiritual post from Facebook feed. Was never a Tina Turner fan but am impressed and excited that she indeed wore a wig. Have you listened to Paul Levi's wetiko virus talks or read his books? Yesterday encountered Wetiko in my own psyche while on a hair raising journey. Showed up as toxic fear and sickness, ego clinging and panicked sense of separation from life. Thought I was gonna die. Made calls to my family in the middle of the night. Was entirely convinced this was the last moment of my wretched mortal life. Then as the demonic dancing slowed I remembered the mainly nice well intentioned creative acts that comprise my history, interrupted here and there of course by the irresistible delights of greed hate and delusion. Had a little cry and then laughed and went about cleaning up the mess. Viewed through a Wetiko lens with a dash of course in miracles Tina Turner transcended the forces and voices that conspired to destroy her. She met the haters and raised them in creative accomplishment. Trump is the embodiment of hate, and if there is such thing as a mind virus that makes us scapegoat and devalue each other into easy reducible categories he's captured that energy epically. So how to respond to the forces of unadulterated hate in the lead to 2024? Don't bite the hook. Design fun house mirrors to remind one another how shitting on your neighbor makes you look, and feel. When I was but a lad i worshipped killdozer. Still do. Didn't understand at the time how they captured the poetic beauty of narcissistic psychopathy and turned it back on the sick soulless corporate death scape. Michael Gerald has in fact always been kind and accepting toward me even though my childish mind regarded him as frightening and unreachable, kinda like you. So thanks for continuing to provoke the kind of medicine the world desperately deserves. Gotta go through it to get to it.