I never feel the need to vote until Donald Trump emerged onto the political scene. I still believe politics, like religion, is a personal matter which I rely on gut feeling and spend no time thinking or talking about. But current political affairs are apparently stimulating enough to conceive below lines in my mind:
American Shadow
With Joe the Soul of the Nation pardoning his son
International, internal, right, now the left
America consummates her fall from the moral high ground
The emperor has no clothes
The empire is strong[1]
Authenticity is nowhere to be found
except the macho man holding the last ounce
MAGA Donald the duck stinks all around
yet we choose to look away or beyond
for comparison with the high hypocrisy and the deep state
his badness has visible bound
Lies, conspiracies and hates abound
what used to hide in the shadow,
thrust into forefront
what has been the quite parts,
gain and amplify their sounds
White, black, yellow and brown
the melting pot stops mixing
everyone holds something that they FEEL they’re victimized on
we’re left with a republic of bananas
brandishing their skin[2], crosses and guns
The Jungian Shadow
In Carl Jung‘s model of the human soul, the shadow is the unconscious and the repressed part that stands alongside the conscious Id and Ego. It may contain positives, especially in people with low self-esteem, anxieties, and false beliefs, but for the most part it’s “the thing a person has no wish to be”.
The 21st Century Shallow
The 20th Century gave us the last batch of philosophers (Wittgenstein, Heidegger) and pschye analyzers (Freud, Jung), as well as cheer leaders (Barfield, Tillich) urging participation and the courage to be.
What we got from the 21st century so far? Crypto currency (Bitcoin), social media (TikTok) and generative AI (ChatGPT), exerting speculative, addictive and degenerative influences on human souls young and old. John Vervaeke, who seemed to be a great synthesizer of thoughts, caved to monetization in earnest. While Taylor Swift rouses the senses of the masses on the extravagant Eras tour, Waxahatchee can only reach the souls of a few at the local amphitheater… Where do the true thinkers and artists go???
The feeling vs thinking man
To cope with the 2024 loss, the Democrats seem to find solace in their winning the votes of the educated. The educated vs uneducated is a false divide. To me the line is between individuals who are driven by feeling vs those by thinking. A “feeling” person who can’t accept $9 per dozen egg most likely won’t dive into deep thinking of the invisible hands, economic cycles, and how insignificant a single president’s role is, but they can perfectly sense the hypocrisies and empty promises. The uneducated are not stupid. The educated are not wise. That’s what bring us to where we are today.
| Individuals | Educated | Uneducated |
|---|---|---|
| Feeling | ?% | ?% |
| Thinking | ?% | ?% |
Notes
[1] But unfortunately the egocentric strongman foreign policy can cause harms to Americans! I don’t know what caused the extremists to turn anti-American leading to 911 and I don’t register emotionally with the atrocities of the Israle-Hamas war, but when United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and one of the journalist victim looked like what the dream girlfriend to a lonely foreign graduate student, I protested on RPI campus and got a visit from the FBI. Some hacker hacked some US government website and hanged the poster I made there. Top down, the poster listed the smiley face of the victim, her dead body, and a poem ending with below lines:
When you’re strong enough to do anything anyway
Think how everything decay[3]
and the day when you have to pay
From the lack of self-reflective attributions of the causes of 911, politicians will never be wise enough to learn.⤴
[2] I feel obligated to share the police brutality (don’t worry, no guns involved!) I experienced first hand when I stole six pieces of flagstones in broad daylight from the construction pile (shown below) in my neighboring neighborhood. Some good Samaritan called the police and my car was parked in front of a preserved historical barn (the reason I went there) at the other end of the neighborhood from the crime scene. When questioned by the young white police officer I readily admitted my stealing and offered to bring them back to the pile. The officer, pleased with my cooperation, was almost sorry about the fine he must impose on me. But things changed to the unexpected after another more senior white officer arrived. After the two deliberated for quite a while, the senior officer handcuffed me in front of my wife and young children and sent me to the county detention center! During the pre-trial, talking to himself while looking through my case files: “Don’t they have better things to do? and how am I gonna prove the stones are taken from the pile?”, the district attorney dismissed my case and my arrest record was later expunged. But the PTSD was done. A decade has passed and I still don’t feel comfortable driving near a police car on the road. Posting my experience here I hope will help me completely get over it.
[3] A note within a note : ) Readers familiar with Plato’s apple throwing epigram will readily see where above lines of mine are plagiarized from:
I throw the apple at thy,
if you love me, take it,
and share with me your girlhood virginity;
but if you do not, still accept it,
then consider how things decay,
and how short-lived is beauty.
It certainly sounds threatening, but understand the philosopher was so immersed in truth, logic and reasoning, that he probably knew nothing about feelings. I guess after the girl threw the apple right back at his face, poor Plato resolved to platonic love for the rest of his life : ) ⤴