To paraphrase Yogi Berra, who quipped, “It’s amazing how much you can see by just watching,” I believe, “It’s amazing how much you can hear by just listening. Having read countless editorials and heard untold talking-heads on the 24/7 news channels try to explain the Trump-MAGA coalition, none has enlightened me as much as listening to my sister, a hard-core conservative, Christian, Trump supporter, and anti-progressive. Understandably we avoid political discussions (no value added), but when such topics inevitably arise we are civil and polite.
So during one such fruitless exchange, in exasperation, I asked her, “But don’t you care about people, the poor, the homeless, the sick?” She looked at me incredulous that I had posed such an inane irrelevant query. “God no,” she said shaking her head.
DUH! How obvious, Greg! I had made the fundamental error of assuming that others think and feel as I. The essential difference between progressives and conservatives was instantly clear to me. The goal, the motive, the victory worth fighting for to a conservative is to defend the current economic and social structure within which they feel secure. Whatever means are necessary to preserve the current structure that they trust justifies the end. And should the defense of their system cause collateral damage, so be it.
Conservatives have empathy but it is easily pushed aside when their sense of order is threatened. Immigrants and refugees who have children to feed and are fleeing war, rape, and murder in their homeland evoke conservative pity. However given the narrative that immigrants are criminals and threaten the pure blood of America, locking up children in cages, rounding up and deporting millions becomes imperative. The narrative gets echoed, and the wisp of empathy is vanquished.
Progressives follow an opposite feeling based logic. Their dominant motivation is empathy and a desire for justice. Their essential goal for “progress” is to augment lifestyle comfort within an egalitarian social structure. Progressives reject personal gains if they exploit others, i.e. progressives do not condone collateral damage.
Today’s polarization is a battle of two opposing goals: economic and structural preservation favorable to the wealthy and a white/male/christian social community vs. social justice and lifestyle enhancement for marginalized minorities, non-WASP social groups, along with middle and lower class social reforms. Progressives don’t consider taxing the ultra-rich as collateral damage. No real harm, no foul.
Traditional Republicans push to preserve their economic and political power, while progressives strive to decrease wealth inequality. Anti-wokes resist cultural changes they perceive will diminish their status as “real Americans;” meanwhile progressives push for changes to uplift the status of the discriminated groups, the “illegitimate Americans.” Christian MAGAs seek to impose their view of a holy social order, while progressives strive to separate church and state and its freedom restrictions.
What then energizes conservatives and progressives at their deepest psychic levels? Consider this quotation by the Jungian analyst, Marie Louise von Franz describing the Roman polytheistic religion at its end stages, circa 200 BCE to 100 CE, as it was ready to adapt monotheism and the incarnation of god into man.
“…the Greek and Roman religion had already evolved partly into a philosophical system but had already degenerated into a kind of soulless institution that no longer included any primitive emotion. The cult became formal and sober as is our modern Christian church. The essence of religion on the original level consists in being emotionally gripped, totally involved with the primitive emotional part of the personality. One could not imagine ecstatic dancing dervishes in a Christian church. Religion is a total experience which encompasses the primitive, affective, and instinctive aspects of man….”
(from “The Golden Ass of Apuleius” Shambala Publication 1992 edition.)
Trump-MAGA coalition subsets of Christians and anti-wokes are cults that derive from Trump a religious style of primitive, affective and instinctual libido.
Like the ancient Romans and Greeks above, the Christian Church has lost its emotional and primitive affect in large part because so much of the innate psyche has been relegated to the satanic shadow. Sex, fun, hatred, lust, deceit, exploitation, and vile denigration are denied psychic energies that Christians are experiencing vicariously through adulation of Trump. My Trump supporting Christian fundamentalists friends spew a mantra, “I like his policies. Hate the sin, love the man.” The policies they like are his willingness to enact Christian cultural laws. The do love the man, but don’t really hate his sins. Unconsciously they love that he acts out their shadow emotional energies of lust, hatred, criminal activities, racism, bullying, misogyny, and exploitation. Trump releases in his Christian cultists their primitive, affective, and instinctual energies.
To explain the psychology of Trump’s enervation of his anti-woke/anti-progressive following we need to mention Jungian personality types. For readers unfamiliar with these types you can get more information by researching Psychological typology, Myers-Briggs typology, and the pairs of Extroversion/Introversion, Thinking/Feeling, and Perceiving/Judging. To follow the current discussion, accept our typology premise that persons are born with specific profiles that give them an innate proclivity toward conservatism or progressiveness. Hence the approximate 50-50 split worldwide is in our hard wiring.
The majority of conservatives are ST’s , sensate thinkers, who accept a single reality. They are easily energized by narratives of threats to their security that incite a combative protectionist retaliation. Trump is their god of instilling hatred toward progressives, immigrants, black women lawyers, welfare programs, non-loyalist media, China, and NATO. The fear he induces is like a tribal war dance with face painting. The anti-wokes respond similarly to their god’s warpath cries to annihilate the cancel culture at his political rallies . As von Franz explained the root of religion is the primitive, affective, instinctual discharge of energy that makes one feel jubilantly alive! Only Trump of the conservative candidates has shown this capacity, hence no other Republican has garnered enough competitive votes to loosen his grip on the anti-woke and Christian base.
In response to Trump progressives feel injustice on behalf of the groups he demonizes. Their sense of injustice constellates their archetypal inner warriors to wage war against the Trump-MAGA coalition.
That is the crux of today’s polarity: it is a holy war for the Christians and the anti-woke; it’s a morality war for justice to the progressives. Not so for the life-long Republicans. They hold their noses and turn blind eyes and deaf ears to Trump’s character flaws and his pandering to the Christian social agenda and the war against the woke. For the life-long Republicans it’s only about supporting the party’s power structure.
In PART THREE we ponder how this holy war may play out. Hopefully it passes with minimal bloodshed.
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