Andrew M., the Eisenstein essay you linked to, before you deleted the post, in the General Talk thread, was eloquent on the need to avoid demonization. I copied this bit from it: “It is time to stop feeding hate. Next time you post on line, check your words to see if they smuggle in some form of hate: dehumanization, snark, belittling, derision.., some invitation to us versus them.”
Trump is the arch-demonizer, often flagrantly accusing his enemies of his own sins, thereby exposing the psychological dynamic of demonization: i.e., a projection of one’s own unconscious faults onto others. Trump is so unconscious of his own processes that his whole personality is effectively structured around demonization. It is all too easy to demonize Trump in turn, but the dynamic is the same. It just reinforces the destructive pattern. The trick is, to discover a truly constructive alternative.
Eight years ago, Obama’s election evoked a wave of hopefulness, much as the fall of the Berlin Wall had done years before. Things are going in the right direction! Everything is going to be OK after all! What a relief! But it was just a swing, in one direction, of the pendulum. Now it swings the other way. Rejoicing in one direction, lamenting the other, is a sucker’s game. The pendulum itself is the problem. If you identify with its motions, you are part of the problem. The trick is, to discover an emotion, a motivation, which is not identified, is independent. I think Wilbur, in his way, is trying to do this, not only in the quoted poem but in all his work. It’s one of the tasks of poetry, as opposed to rhetoric.
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