Trump Happens
Savage Grace, Chapter 2 (Snow Moon March 2018)
A year ago, we did a binding ceremony on President Trump. It’s over a year since he took the helm and like PTSD’d war vets, we still wander around asking the question, “How did this happen?”
Our Beguine mothers were scholars who believed that one must either understand history or be condemned to repeat it. So here we stand, after a full year of Trump at the helm, still trying to understand how he happened.
“We are not better than this. We are this. The man was elected President. Ipso facto, America is this, we are this. I say this not to suggest that we must be blamed, or that someone who did not vote for Donald Trump is just as culpable as one who did. What I keep trying to point out to friends, to anyone who will listen, is that too few of us are willing to acknowledge responsibility – not necessarily to accept blame, but stand us and say ‘this thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine’”
What does this mean?
“It means accepting that we live, participate in, and collude with a culture that worships only money and success; that adores power, and denigrates love, compassion, and justice; and that each one of us has been contaminated by this culture’s complete lack of conscience, responsibility, and obscenely superficial values. It means that we have learned to lie for our own advantage, to scheme to ensure our domination of others and build our security and that we are paying the spiritual prince in paralysis, cynicism and despair. “
“ . . . the only legitimate ground on which to stand as we resist a neo-fascist agenda is the ground of intimate connection with the Self, each Other, and Earth.” Aho.
Savage Grace (p20-21)
It is now beyond dispute that climate change itself affects our mental health and in fact makes the world more violent . . . to recognize our madness is to ‘befriend the dark emotions’ and to open our hearts to our grief, anger, fear and despair. In fact, we are incapable of seeing our madness or the madness of the culture and our complicity in it unless we are committed to the journey of emotional healing and shadow work and unless we have a robust bulwark of support for doing this work.” (postscript to Victor Frankl, p80, Savage Grace)
