Part Thirteen – Nov. 5th
We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and…correct the public health. – Joe Biden, April 2020
Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible. – Trumpus, 2016
The news since October 6th was dominated by the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and anyone with eyes or a heart could see that Netanyahu is a bloodthirsty war criminal. Nearly 4,000 children are dead. But the implication for the election is that Biden, who could have taken the opportunity to play peacemaker, asserted himself as an equal partner in mass murder, Bibi’s main cheerleader, a ghastly voyeur of war pornography.
Biden hides behind three prominent Black women who debase themselves by associating him with the heritage of Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter: Harris, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and U.N. ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (along with other people of color Pentagon Deputy Spokesperson Sabrina Singh, State Department Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel, House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries, who joined Republicans and 21 other Democrats to censure Rashida Tlaib, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and fellow con-man Barack Obama, who pontificated the usual “Israel has a right to defend itself” garbage). Harris doubled down on unquestioning support for mass murder; Thomas-Greenfield vetoed a cease-fire resolution; and Jean-Pierre compared non-violent Palestine activists to the racists who had marched in Charlottesville in 2017. Caitlin Johnstone wrote:
(The Democratic Party) selects a high number of women and racially diverse officials for its cabinet positions to convey the illusion that it has transcended the abusive bigotries of the past, while subjecting impoverished, brown-skinned foreigners to a nonstop barrage of high-tech explosive munitions in massacres that would be the envy of the worst white supremacist imperialists in history.
The combined AIPAC / Christian Nationalist lobby would be stronger than the military-industrial complex, if their aims were not identical. The bottom-feeder Gavin Newsome followed Biden, Blinken, Schumer, Kathy Hochul and Emmanuel Macron in visiting Israel to “offer California’s support”.
They fooled no one outside of the usual, reliable constituencies – one of which has disappeared. Biden’s support among Arab Americans has fallen to 17%, especially in swing states, marking a 42 point decrease from 2020. The latest Gallup Poll revealed that his job approval rating among Democrats dropped by 11% in the past month, to the lowest in his presidency. As progressives and young people noisily voiced their disappointment, even the NYT had to admit that “Mr. Biden is already struggling with low Democratic enthusiasm, and it would not take much of a slip in support from voters who backed him in 2020 to throw his re-election bid into question”.
With a year to go, a political scientist might argue that the DNC is banking that the usual lesser-of-two evils fear will motivate progressives such as Ralph Nader. Two days after the Gaza attack, Nader wrote – in the WAPO, which usually ignores him – that he is supporting Biden because he’s terrified of Trumpus, that the Democratic Party “isn’t fascist but autocratic”, and (exhibiting a remarkably short memory) that “they don’t suppress votes”.
A depth psychologist, however, might ask, Does Biden really want to be re-elected? (See below)
Meanwhile, even though an intruder was arrested twice at Robert F. Kennedy’s home, Biden rejected his third request for Secret Service protection. Fox News, now aware of polls indicating that an independent RFK would take more votes from Trumpus than from Biden, adopted a noticeably more aggressive approach to him. The Kennedy campaign website stated,
As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. More specifically, Kennedy vows that “We will bring the troops home…We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening.”
The website did note that “The failure to address the Palestinians’ plight has led to endless cycles of violence with no peaceful and just solution in sight.” But it did not call for a cease-fire, not even the mild humanitarian pause that even Biden has suggested. Apparently, either Kennedy thinks that Israel is not part of the empire or the bulk of his funding is also from AIPAC. His silence on the matter was both shameless and stupid, as it alienated progressives looking for an alternative to Biden.
Dementia Wars
Trumpus mixed up Jeb Bush with George W. Bush, repeatedly said “Obama” while trying to criticize Biden and called Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán “the leader of Turkey.” He warned that Biden would lead the U.S. into “World War II” and told a crowd in Sioux City, Iowa that he was happy to be in Sioux Falls (South Dakota).
Of course, he’s been doing this for years; of course it’s all about body language, smirks and entertainment, not logic; and of course his audiences love it. But that doesn’t mean he is not losing his mind. Meanwhile his campaign posted several videos of Biden stumbling or brain freezing. You probably didn’t see them, but Fox News viewers certainly did.
Nothing new here, except that these geezers are four years older and now each is literally arguing that the other’s encroaching senility is worse than his own. Four years ago, in Parts Four, Five and Six of my series “A Mythologist Looks at the 2020 Election”, I asked in all (psychological) seriousness, “Does either of these guys really want to win?”
For at least eight years Trumpus has been constantly upping the ante to see how much he can get away with, deliberately pushing the envelope of provocation and self-incrimination. I imagine his internal, unconscious logic like this: Well, they wouldn’t punish me last time; maybe this will get their attention! 
Isn’t some part of him hoping to get caught and have clear limits set on his behavior? Isn’t he proclaiming, I can’t stand myself! Someone catch me, stop me, punish me before I do something really awful! I don’t want to do this any longer! Get me out of here! Is it possible that – for his entire life – poor Donald has just been asking for help?
Conventional psychology might speak of psychological ambivalence or see his behavior patterns as indicating self-hatred. But we need a mythopoetic approach. Depth psychologist Robert L. Moore argued that just below grandiosity lies depression and that the path toward healing involves puncturing the grandiosity to allow the deeper wounds to emerge into the light and be cleansed. From this perspective, everything that Trumpus does is expressing an unconscious teleological drive toward self-knowledge.
Biden’s mode is only slightly different. Throughout his career he has continually subverted his goals with foolish and entirely preventable errors. Some of his gaffes really seem to be Freudian slippage on a monumental scale: Biden Vows He’s ‘Going to Beat Joe Biden’
Our American Innocence has conjured up these two men: one who embodies the very worst of our possibilities but who is, literally, us; and the other who models for us all the futile attempt to hide the truth from ourselves.
My image for Trumpus is the smirking, entitled but uninitiated boy-king who is so desperate to know himself, for others to know his pain (and perhaps finally be loved for who he is) that he will unconsciously invite his own – and our – destruction by provoking the wrath of the gods. What is he really saying? Stop me before I drive this red sports car into my wall!
Biden is driving that same sports car – but with his foot on the emergency brake, wondering why he isn’t going anywhere. What is he really saying? I don’t deserve to be President! I don’t even want to be President! Don’t vote for me!
What really drives these guys? Please, please don’t tell me that either of them is motivated at any level of consciousness by a sense of duty to the nation, by a desire to serve the people. To do so is to reveal your own insistence on American innocence. It is to reveal your addiction to the culture of celebrity, your willingness to project your own inner nobility onto a brand, an image of a person, not the person himself.
In the short run there’s nothing we can do to change this, but at least we can try to understand through reframing. These two man-boys are unconsciously seeking initiation, to die to their lesser selves so that their better selves may emerge and be welcomed in the world. They are clumsily modeling what this entire nation must eventually experience as they pilot their runaway sports car. But the longer they put off their descent into the underworld, the less time this world has to heal.
In West Africa, they say that problems in one world can only be repaired by beings on the other side of the veil. It’s November 5th. Some would note that it’s exactly a year until the election. Others will observe that it’s only been three days since Dia De Las Muertos, and that perhaps the veil between the worlds is still thin. May beings on the other side give us all the help they can. We can’t do this by ourselves.
madnessatthegates 