Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread # 104
Trump Attraction Syndrome (4 parts)
Part 3: Daddy Issues

1/ A Twitter friend--the one who puzzles with me about why scores of millions of people stick with Trump after so much of his evil is so plainly in view...

2/..sent me a helpful resource: George Lakoff’s podcast about “framing” in the time of Trump. It’s about 30 minutes long:

…llpolitical.sfchronicle.libsynpro.com/george-lakoff-…

3/ Here’s a great Biblical text for our moment, a text that puzzled me greatly before but now seems perfectly accurate. It’s a bit longer than I usually cite.This is Matthew 13: 13 - 15. Jesus is the speaker: “This is why I speak to them in parables...

4/..."because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says,
“‘You will indeed hear but never understand,..

5/"and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, & with their ears they can barely hear, & their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes & hear with their ears & understand with their heart & turn, & I would heal them.’”

6/ This is Jesus quoting Isaiah, who was channeling God at the moment. That warrants some listening.

7/ What blocks us from seeing, from listening, from feeling? Obviously the sheer volume of input coming at us all the time is so overwhelming that all of us have to block out most of it most of the time just to stay sane.

8/ We all have filters, thank God. But sometimes we filter out really vital stuff right in front of us.

9/ In Biblical times, folks didn’t talk about unconscious and conscious parts of our mind; they talked instead about our heart and our mind. Isaiah and Jesus said we couldn’t perceive and register stuff in our heads because our hearts had grown dull.

10/ The way George Lakoff and other astute contemporary observers say “our hearts have grown dull” is to say that most of our mental functioning is unconscious--stored learning that guides us as we navigate our present. We do lots of storing as we grow up.

11/ How is the world organized? Who should run things? About these questions and much else, we absorb and then store stuff from our family, then from our schools and friends, and sometimes even from our places of worship.

12/ What the big words mean--family, duty, etc--we learn and store. Think of those basic notions we carry so effortlessly as frames we use to organize our experience of incoming events. We often talk of our country as a family. That’s a frame.

13/ The nation says it sends its sons and daughters off to battle. Notice, though, that what that means to us personally depends a lot on the family we knew growing up.

14/ Some parents understand their task to be helping the children to live in safety, to discover their gifts, and to learn to thrive by developing their gifts. If you grow up in that family, you’ll assume that the proper role of the government is to help the people thrive.

15/ Other households have a different agenda--the child is to be taught to obey, and especially to revere, without questioning, the father, the author of law in the home.

16/ The father’s power is often made manifest through violence and other means of fear-filled discipline. Folks raised in households like that, where "Father Knows Best", tend to love law’n order, and struggle with the idea that any law is bad.

17/ What happens, though, when the source of order, discipline, & rightness turns out to be deeply flawed? What happens when dad’s affairs or the drinking episodes are revealed? What happens when news of his arrest for embezzling or check-kiting must be explained to the kids?

18/ At first, the ones in the family who see it don’t talk about it. Then comes word that he’s ok -- the lawyer got him off, he promises never to do it again, etc..

19/ And then something else happens. They rationalize it. Why? Because the one who is the law in the family cannot be wrong -- it’s too dangerous a thought.

20/ It is out of such families that most of the hierarchical structures emerge and get support: God over man, humanity over nature, male over female, white over everyone else, wealthy over poor, Christian over Jew -- ad nauseam.

21/ Who did we elect, after our first (apparently terrifying) experience of a non-white President? The whitest, richest, male-est person EVER. Trump’s victory ratified the mostly unconsciously held value system of our history. But he was deeply, terribly flawed.

22/ Right now a few people within Trumplandia are whispering that something is really wrong with old dad.

23/ What’s next?

24/ Denial systems do crack. As a pastor, I’ve counseled several older guys in prison or rehab, & asked how they lost their family. Many answered: “At first nothing happened. They forgave me & I promised to be better. When it finally broke, it didn’t take long, & I was alone.”

25/ Feels to me like we’re a while from that moment. Perhaps it will be something as gentle as a Democratic majority able to check Trump’s recklessness starting next January followed by a decisive defeat of the administration in 2020.

26/ Perhaps it will be more dramatic, something like an impeachment trial or a resignation. (Because Mr. Pence seems at least as unhealthy as Trump, I’d prefer the first option.)

27/ Either way, this wreck of a father figure, if not checked, will hurt the American family for generations to come. I pray his presidency will end. I think the gathering self-destruction is now on the horizon.

28/ When those eyes and ears finally open, those hearts will be really hurt. Yelling at them will be very tempting. Very tempting. But it won’t help. They’re family, too. Perhaps we’ll need to find a form of Al-Anon for the Trumpsters.