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October 17, 2017
The Trump Phenomenon America's Balloon Karma Payment Has Come Due
By Steve Bhaerman
"The problem with knee-jerk reactions is that you usually end up kneeing the wrong jerk." Swami Beyondananda
As more and more awakening Americans are coming to realize, the "Trump phenomenon" -- as toxic and horrific as it is -- is a symptom of a much more insidious and deep-seated condition. It is a result of several threads of history that have entangled themselves into perhaps the most knotty and gnarly problem this country has faced since its inception.
So what is this "balloon karma payment" and how and where did it all begin?
We can set the way-back machine to 1455 when the Pope issued a decree giving Portugal permission to invade and colonize West Africa. After Columbus's voyage to the Caribbean, a similar papal bull was extended to Spain in 1493. This "Doctrine of Discovery" empowers the "civilizing forces" of the Church to claim any and all lands it "discovers" in the name of the Pope and the Church.
In this sense, Columbus "discovered" America in much the same way that Willie Sutton "discovered" banks. With little regard for Native peoples or the natural world, this exploiter / extractor archetype has toxified the ecological, economical and political climate we live in today.
When A Truman Supplanted a Truer Man
For our purposes, I want to highlight a more recent turning point, one that specifically has given us the post-war world most of us grew up in. This moment happened in 1944, and if you've taken my hint and watched Oliver Stone's documentary on the Untold History of the United States (available on Netflix here) you'll recognize this pivotal event as the Democratic Party convention. Knowing that Franklin D. Roosevelt was already ill and unlikely to last another full term, the "dark powers" successfully nudged progressive visionary Henry Wallace from the ticket as Vice President and replaced him with a more malleable candidate, Harry S. Truman.
As Stone describes in his documentary, Harry Truman agreed to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Gen. Eisenhower was against it ...) and initiated and empowered the military industrial complex that Eisenhower later warned against.
Yes, the issue of whether Japan would surrender without the bomb is complex, as were the issues facing President Truman in regards to post-war Soviet Russia. As Stone suggests, however, Truman was a man of limited vision and perspective, more driven by past programming than vision for the future. So it was that the leading nation of the "free world" was the first and only power to deploy these weapons of mass-destruction, and over the past seventy years has become the largest manufacturer and purveyor of weapons in the world, to the tune of $70 billion a year.
And ... let's return for a moment to the Democratic Party convention of 1944 to highlight a key point. It was the DEMOCRATIC PARTY -- the party we are led to imagine is the protector of we the people against the excesses of exploitative capitalism, that sold us down the river and put into power the corporate state -- the deep state, if you will -- that continues to overrule our elected rulers to this day.
Note too that it was a Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, that got us enmeshed in Vietnam and his would-be successor, Hubert Humphrey was planning to follow the same path. Had Robert F. Kennedy lived to win the nomination, the antiwar vote would likely have put him over the top. Instead, Humphrey's unpopular view on the war led to his defeat ... giving us Richard M. Nixon, the Donald Trump of his era. Does this sound familiar? The one candidate offering a pathway forward, Bernie Sanders, gets the shaft both by the Democratic Party establishment and timid voters swayed by the idea that Hillary was the "safe choice".
What if Red Tribe and Blue Tribe Became One Purple People?
Meanwhile, an interesting yet rarely-discussed phenomenon has further complexified the shituation. Have you ever wondered how the Republicans became "red", and the Democrats "blue"? Remember the Red Scare back in the old days? No, these people were not in fear of "hot" right-winger Joe McCarthy. They were in fear of communism, as in "Red China". So ... how, all of a sudden did the conservatives earn "red", and the liberals the cooler "blue"?
My sense is there has been a concerted effort to stoke and cultivate anger on the right, and passivism on the left. Consider the domain of talk radio over the past 25 years or so, with the angry voices of Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and their ditto-head wannabes. On the other hand, consider the mild-mannered approach of NPR, which has become over the past decade just another corporate shill, starting with their unwillingness to confront Bush-Cheney over the Iraq War.
The message seems to be, let's keep those conservatives "hot" -- so they can be mobilized against enemies, real and imagined. And let's make sure the progressive side stays "cool" so they are unable to incite either revolution, or a movement of any kind.
And that is what has led us to Donald Trump, rogue elephant.
We have an angry population on the right, willing to entertain the most outlandish conspiracy theories ... and an intentionally pacified left unwilling to acknowledge even the most obvious ones. Thus, the "crooked Hillary" and "Hillary's kill list" and "Pizzagate" memes were able to overtake and override all of the "real" information on Donald Trump's nefarious nature. And ... the timid Democratic Party establishment continues to betray the American people at every turn. (Did they, for example, confront the anomaly of 75,000 votes in Detroit mysteriously having "no candidate" marked for President? They most certainly did not.)
So, now what?
As with any condition, becoming aware of and acknowledging it puts us on the pathway to healing. It's not that America or Americans are "bad". It's just that our carefully-cultivated ignorance combined with self-serving exceptionalism have allowed the toxic forces to take full power in the United States. Resistance or no resistance, the Republicans no longer have to pretend they care about the American people and they have control over all branches of the Federal government, and have insured through gerrymandering they have undue influence at the state level as well.
And the Democrats?
Their cowardly branding, "we're not as bad as the other guys" has condemned them to be losers even when they win.
And the good news is ...
The American people ARE awakening to the shell game ... yes, there is despair, apathy and helplessness. And sobriety. The hopium has worn off, and a new independent and forward-looking consciousness is emerging. It's not on the radar, but it will be soon.
Mock my words ... the current UNPOPULARITY of the Democratic and Republican Party establishment is a sure sign of the upwising. More awakening is sure to follow.
A Note to Co-Hearts and Supporters
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Steve Bhaerman is the slightly-more-serious alter ego of cosmic comic Swami Beyondananda. He is the author of seven books, most recently Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There From Here with Bruce Lipton. Steve has been writing the Notes From the Trail blog since 2006, and can be found online at http://www.wakeuplaughing.com/
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