11/15/2024
"The rise of what Donald Trump represents is not an American phenomenon. It’s Orbán in Hungary, it’s Erdogan in Türkiye, it’s the rise of the right in Germany and France and Italy. Autocracy and patriarchy, no matter what the body of the patriarchal leader, is experiencing a grand resurgence throughout the globe, and democracy is on the ropes.
"Since the Industrial Revolution, the rise of Robber Barrons, the “self-made man,” America has worshipped social Darwinism. For years pundits wondered how Trump could be so popular despite his clear lies, cons, racism, and misogyny. By now, it should be abundantly clear he is not popular despite these traits but because of them. He is grandiosity unleashed—and, just as he claims, he gets away with it. Those of us who choose him don’t really think he’ll look after us - we want to be him. The true, unacknowledged American Dream is that fame and money will transform us, render us more than human: a celebrity, a deity, a star.
"For half a century, psychotherapy has been obsessed with helping people rise up out of their shame, but we’ve paid little attention to the importance of helping people come down from their grandiosity—the other self-esteem disorder, the one that fuels entitlement, selfishness, control, abuse. We pass by grandiosity in silence—taught to be nice, to nurture and excuse. No wonder conventional wisdom sees narcissism as “untreatable.” Nothing in our training has equipped us to know how to honestly deal with it. Patriarchy protects perpetrators.
"I work every day with enormously successful, powerful, unhappy men. I do my best to teach them the difference between gratification and relational joy. Gratification is a short-term hit of pleasure: an investment wins, a colleague flirts with you. Relational joy is the deeper down pleasure of being connected: being a parent, a spouse, a member of a community. Think of parenting. Sometimes it’s gratifying and sometimes it’s a royal pain. The joy of it goes deeper than such fluctuations.
What ails us—as individuals, as spouses, as families, and as a culture—is the replacement of real joy with the grandiose self-medication of gratification. We believe that enough achievement, success, money, power will somehow fill up the gnawing emptiness we run from—the hole where connection should be.
"So where does this leave us now, at least those of us who want something more? Do we sink into silence, inaction, neutrality? No! I believe in the deepest recesses of my heart that patriarchal power is atavistic. Long as some might for the good old days of certainty and privilege, we all live in an interdependent world. We live within nature, not above it. We must learn to care for it, and one another, or face a catastrophic future. As individuals and as a collective field, we must promote an alternative to dominance, to advocate for it, to learn to live it. We must trumpet a call to sanity wherever we can. Our rights will be assaulted. Count on it. Our environment will not be protected. Count on it.
"The only thing left standing between the triumph of autocracy is us, and our beating hearts. Now, our greatest political resource is the beating hearts of one another. Let this night vitalize our resolve toward action."
15 minute listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59nS7VmnSE4
https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/article/terry-real-responds-to-trumps-reelection/
Terry Real offers his reflections on Trump's reelection, and what we can do to promote an alternative to dominance.
