Donald Trump’s cage-rattling is just what America needs

If there is a monster on the loose, it is of our own making

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in Phoenix.

Yes, Donald Trump may be the textbook narcissist. But is he a monster? Listen to Salon.com’s screaming headline: “How did this monster get created? The decades of GOP lies that brought us Donald Trump, Republican front-runner … He’s the product of a dangerous, cynical GOP strategy that dates back years.”

Get it? Trump’s not the real monster, the GOP is. And not just their Fab 16 presidential candidates. Blame the whole darn party: “Trump is the product of a deliberate Republican strategy, adopted by Richard Nixon’s people in 1968, to attract voters with an apocalyptic redemption story.”

Oh really? The GOP’s apocalyptic narrative? Salon rambles on, blaming not just the Republican Party. Their conspiracy has to be a lot bigger, right? So they blame America’s entire “conservative movement,” targeting President Reagan, Bush presidencies, even Fox News, and much more. Indeed, every element of conservativism within range is blamed for creating a horrible Trump Monster.

Wait. Stop. Stop blaming Trump. Nor the GOP. Nor the conservative movement. The truth is, America desperately needs guys like Trump to shake up our dysfunctional political system every now and then. Seriously, we need more Trumps, Naders, Perots. More mavericks. More attack dogs. More hell-raisers rattling the establishment’s myopic cage.

Seriously, go back to the early days that made America great, start with the caustic, bitter election of 1800. Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams. Both believed the other guy would absolutely destroy America. Jefferson and Aaron Burr won the first vote, tying at 73. Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the Treasury, hated Burr, so after a contentious 36 ballots in the House, he swung the deciding runoff vote to Jefferson, the lesser of two evils. Four years later, Burr kills Hamilton in a duel, whose image is still on our ten-dollar bill.

Today, Trump’s the same kind of dueler, attacking, irritating, mud-slinging. If this was 1800, he’d likely get challenged to a duel, maybe against McCain, Graham, Perry. Hey, that’s American politics. “Trump can’t help himself,” says the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker … and “we love it.”

Fact is, nobody can help themselves in politics. They are what they are. That’s also human nature, basic psychology. Not just Bernie and Hillary. Not just the GOP’s Fab 16, the conservatives, the media, even America’s newest third-party candidate, Pope Francis.

They’re all just being who they are. Monsters? Nah, just politicians. And you, me, we’re all creating these Monsters. We need them. And “we love it!” Admit it, politics is a brutal contact sport, deadly duelers playing for the kill. We love it. We thrive on it, demand it. So live with it.

Creating Monsters, a natural cycle of the history of every civilization

If the GOP isn’t breeding the Trump Monster. If you can’t blame the entire conservative movement? Then who or what’s creating these so-called Monsters? There is a deeper, darker psychological explanation that goes back to the American Revolution of 1776 and Adam Smith’s two classics on capitalism, “The Wealth of Nations” and “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

When I was new with Morgan Stanley’s investment banking team I read many books on the short and long cycles history. Today, my favorite is Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Then it was the 20th century Adam Smith’s “Super-Money,” “The Money Game” and “Powers of Mind.” But Ernest Becker’s “Denial of Death” stands out as the best description of this evolutionary cycle as we move further away from Adam Smith’s original moral economy into what Jack Bogle best described as “mutant capitalism,” most notably visible in today’s self-centered, principles of Ayn Rand, who has virtually destroyed Adam Smith’s morality-based capitalism.

In the introduction to Becker’s “Denial of Death” Sam Keen captures this downhill spiral into cut-throat competition absent any moral compass. Here’s our edited summary of his disturbing seven-stage forecast of the dark future ahead for human civilization across the globe as capitalism spreads like a pandemic, driven by a powerful psychological program prewired in the human DNA:

1. From birth we’re haunted by the reality of living in a hostile world

Psychologists warn us, we arrive at birth insecure, thrust in, terrified in a hostile universe. This awareness haunts us, an overpowering fear of our eventual death. No one ever escapes fate.

2. The painful awareness of eventual death creates endless anxieties

The world is filled with predators out to get us. This creates a biological need to control the anxieties facing us, that haunting fear of death that stalks us with a fate running in our brains on an endless loop.

3. We invent ways to suppress our anxieties, hide from our fears

Every day we labor to distract, minimize and deny this awareness of our powerlessness, inventing defenses to feel safe, pretending our world is manageable. Trump’s ego repeatedly tells us he’s one of the world’s most successful business managers, worth billions, and will bring this talent to manage a dysfunctional America. Who’s he really trying to convince?

4. We believe we can escape death, by becoming heroes ‘saving the world’

Yes, we convince ourselves we can actually avoid death. How? Society offers us defenses against “our natural impotence,” says Keen, “a hero system that allows us to believe we transcend death by participating in something of lasting worth. We achieve ersatz immortality by sacrificing ourselves to conquer an empire, to build a temple, to write a book, to establish a family, to accumulate a fortune, to further progress and prosperity, to create an information-society and global free market.” Anything to distract. But deep within, we know “making a killing in business or winning on the battlefield frequently has less to do with economic need or political reality than with the need for assuring ourselves that we have achieved something of lasting worth,” and avoided death!

5. Unfortunately, our heroic adventures turn into obsessive, blind addictions

Freud exposed your mind’s shadow world: Each of us is reliving the tragedy of the Greek god Narcissus. We get totally self-absorbed in a “monster’s” mission. Everyone else is expendable … except ourselves … we are indispensable … on a special mission … our unique destiny … forever immortal … in denial of the inevitable … we are living in the Denial of Death.

6. Our heroic deeds backfire, invite competition, attract opposition, enemies

Yes, all heroic ventures draw resistance, conflict. World wars erupt. But in reality, they are always fought psychologically, within our minds, not on battlefields. Yes, deep within every hero is buried a war zone of early childhood scars, haunting pains, ever renewing fears of death. This shadow world takes over, becomes real, backfires, as our heroic ventures self-destruct, collapsing civilization too.

7. Can our Trumps save the world from self-destructive capitalism?

Even billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates create intense opposition: Anticapitalists, anti-abortionist, free-market individualists, Big Oil hypocrites, far-right conservatives, fundamentalists, terrorists, more. History tells us all ideological systems eventually collapse, capitalism as well as marxism, even technology based systems self-destruct … remember, we are fulfilling natural law, cycles, patterns wired into our human brain, our DNA, deep in our souls.

Trump is no monster. Nor can we blame the GOP or the conservative movement for creating a Monster Trump. Rather, we’re all being swept along in the great wave of history, the long-term cultural evolution of capitalism that since 1776 created many Trumps, Clintons, Bushes, GOP conservatives, you and me. And we all are born to live in a survival-of-the-fittest dog-eat-dog world of capitalists competing to be heroes, to fool fate and live as immortal gods … at least that’s the delusion we each create in our own minds.

 

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Montefrío
Montefrío

Well, not to be overly wordy: twaddle!

Rise Up
Rise Up

Interesting article…seems like the 4th Turning could be both a cultural AND economic collapse. Add in a major war, and it’s a trifecta!

Dutchman
Dutchman

What’s also interesting, is how the MSM makes ad hominem remark, after ad hominem remark calling him a monster, a narcissist. What the hell else are the other canidates – like Hillary, like Obama (who wishes to become king).

Trump is saying what much of America thinks – but the MSM suppresses any mention of the facts:

Americans are sick to death of the Latin American invasion, paying for entitlements, and hearing about transgender faggots. We have had three major wars – Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan – and lost them all. We haven’t won a war since WWII. Korea was just a half assed victory. And we keep paying for all this.

I hope Trump rattles their cages.

flash
flash

Doesn’t Farrell know that the Donald isn’t erious and neither are any of the other candidates …right Blithe Lisper?

Razzle
Razzle

The only sane way to talk about presidential elections is to treat them the same as wondering who will win WrestleMania.

Anyone treating them as anything but theater and entertainment needs severe therapy.

I’m not joking.

Overthecliff
Overthecliff

Paul Farell??? Puleeze, Admin.

jamesthewanderer

It takes years of central planning failures, creeping socialism and totalitarian disregard for individual rights to create “monsters” like Trump. When things are going well, people will tolerate a lot of annoyance and infringement; when things are going badly, every nuisance citation, every traffic stop and illegal search and seizure, every “zoning” regulation and restriction on individual initiative becomes an affront, and enough affronts lead to … rebellion.
I am tired of other people who think they know how I should live – and want the government to tell me so. It will eventually come to chaos – like the German village that burnt down a “refugee resettlement” apartment complex to prevent intrusion. If Obama’s Furtherance initiative succeeds in bringing the ‘hood to the suburbs, eventually snipers will rule the night and the invaders will be diminished, day by day. DOJ and FBI will investigate a series of unexplainable homicides, all over the country, until they realize that no one will ever “see” anything, “hear” anything or know anything. And when the FSA is reduced by casualties to an insignificant fraction of the electorate, we’ll be able to vote in folks that care about the ordinary people.
Ahh, daydreams, how they flow ….

Kill Bill
Kill Bill

What politition DOESN’T have narcissistic tendencies?

Kill Bill
Kill Bill

Fux u autocorrect…pos.

FT
FT

Why would Paul Farrell or anyone else take anything from *any* Salon writer as anything other than complete bullshit?

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Overthecliff says: Paul Farell??? Puleeze, Admin.

I skipped it as soon as I saw It was PF. Too bad, I was really interested in seeing what new angle somebody had on Trump.

I ran into an old buddy, he said he used to work as a journalist in Mexico. – I met with top level folks, officers of the Judicial Police.

What do you think of Trump, some folks think he’s really offensive.

We don’t know but a prtion of the tip of the iceberg.

People claim he’s being unfair, accusing innocent Mexicans crossing the border, although there are those.

They have made it a business. Back when I was working as a journalist..

Did you get threatened?

Yes, you know the top cops, by the time they come to visit them and offer to buy them, they already have their family pics, address, everything.

Back before the Blog del Narco, La Gota Roja, they paid journalists to keep the murders out of the papers. Now they can’t hide it but they threaten news reporters. It is going to get worse in Mexico, sad to say.

Alexander Ač

Good.

Paul Farell is an excellent and insightful writer, but I don’t know why he is here 🙂

Alex

overthecliff

Jamesthewanderer, I don’t advocate the kind of violence you mentioned but I can see it happening. That will be worse than a sad day for USA.

Donnie Keleman

Like politics, people are tired of reading blog posts, articles and white papers which are just a rehash of other opinions and wishy-washy in offering actionable conclusions.

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