06 Dec It’s Not Trump Who is On Trial: We Are
With all the hullaballoo about the Narcissist-in-Chief, the focus continues to be on him – Trump and his phone calls, his lawyer, his articles of impeachment, his defying the subpoenas, his affairs, his Wall, his embarrassing behavior, not to mention, his infamous Tweets.
And with high crimes and misdemeanors clearly committed, these things should be examined and prosecuted.
However, I just returned from a month overseas. To the outer world, it is America that’s on trial right now. Those who cannot vote in our elections – yet are affected by our decisions – are shaking their heads, perplexed, over the American people.
“What is the matter with you folks over there?” they ask. “Why haven’t you gotten rid of this guy already?”
Having a corrupt politician is not a mystery to much of anyone. Most countries know what it is to live through a bad administration. This scenario runs through history like water through a sieve. That it happened in America is no surprise.
What people can’t understand is why Americans are not overwhelmingly united in getting this Trump out of office. To them, Trump is just a bad apple. Rather, it is America that has lost its moral compass.
But few foreigners really understand the complexities of our political system.
If we take our attention off Trump for a nanosecond, we see how that system is easily exploited: voting machines that can be hacked, a gridlocked two-party competition, and a winner-take-all ability for one man to put the most heinous people in charge of our various government institutions, drive up the deficit, reward his cronies with tax relief, put children in cages, and deny 700,000 people their food stamps and possibly their Christmas dinner.
And this is just the short list.
If Hitler taught us that a dictator could rise to power and commit unfathomable atrocities, Trump is teaching us that our political system (and our attention) is overly centered on the power of a single person.
That he can defy Congress’ decision to send military aid to Ukraine; that he can build his wall with Pentagon money despite no support; that he can refuse to reveal his tax returns, resist subpoenas and testimonies, and manipulate the media to his personal benefit, should alarm us all. Let alone the ability to pull out of the Paris Climate and commit the entire world to an irreversible path of self-destruction.
Like a cancer, if we merely cut out this corruption without changing the system, it will just pop up somewhere else.
Trump is our nation’s Identified Patient – which isn’t to say I have any sympathy for him – but in family systems theory, the acting out child is seen as a symptom of a larger, dysfunctional system. If the system itself is not addressed, the focus of attention will continue to be misplaced, and the dysfunction continues.
Our monarchical power system, that gives so much power to one person is fatally flawed. Our Electoral College is flawed, as is our two-party system – which even our founding fathers warned us about as evident in the quotes below.
George Washington, in his farewell presidential speech, said (emphasis mine):
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
“The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”
Our second President, John Adams, said:
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
These warnings, uttered more than 200 years ago, are playing out in plain sight today, at a time when the stakes are not only national, but global.
Yes, we need to get Trump out of office on moral as well as legal grounds. But even more important, we need to examine the system that put him there in the first place, and allowed him to do this much damage in three short years.
If we don’t, we can look forward to the fall of America, a climate catastrophe of unprecedented horror, and the shame of having not stopped it when we could.
george noble
Posted at 00:58h, 07 DecemberThoroughly Well Said. Anodea. Thank you! Now what’s our next step? Getting to change.
As I’ve listened to the democratic debates, I’ve WISHED there were some way to quickly implement a governance by committee, enabling ALL (or several) of the debators to COOPERATE, rather than COMPETE, trying to outdo or put down the other “debators”, during their discussions. Kudos to Riane Eisler for her “Partnership” book which lays an ideological and concpetual foundation for this new way…. Each candidate, clearly has her or his own strengths and unique abilities. I don’t know how to bring about such a change however. Amendments? A Constitutional Convention, creating a NEW constitution?
The closest I could come, making use of our existing framework, was to imagine Marianne Williamson becoming President and the others as her Cabinet members. This still leaves inequality in the social system.
I would be inclined to leave OUT the Republicans, most of whom are entrenched in separateness. & competition. I think the democrats CAN cooperate….and DO know we’re all part of the same one thing, maybe Marianne is helping with this.
Mike Gastaldo
Posted at 03:25h, 07 DecemberRight On, Anodea.
I stand with You.
Michael Moon ~ Dreamtime Poet
Posted at 06:17h, 07 DecemberHello Dear Anodea,
“The American Nightmare”
Yes, Trump is a “ corrosive selfunrealised ugly ego”…
Destroying and encouraging, a rippling, unprecedented,
massive, unstoppable global meltdown.
Unfortunately his self interested simplistic fascist postcapitalism,
is showing off the way of excessive bad behaviour, of a non or post democracy,
with the classic Seven Deadly Sins, propaganda,
cruel non health care for the poor and desperate,
Unfathomable other lifeform suffering,
sexism towards women and Mother Earth…
I cry with the obvious knowledge of this third word war ~
The cruel needless war against nature, life, decency,kindness and universal love.
Americans and this world’s privilileged,
need to understand that “W E” are all killing Us.
All the privileged “Spiritual” people and their followers are
“Flying for spiritual Highs”… All my friends are killing “We”.
Fires, floods, Landslides…Wild Weather… our soils are drying out and blowing off the land making my oxygen generating new 50,000 treed, sandalwood topia a desert outpost.
Michael Moore’s ~ “Were to Invade Next” is brilliant hope,
with an America that uses alms, chemicals pharmacy and nuclear control
for its wealth creation and next geography lesson.
When one understands that “Americas Intent Wealth Cult”
is financed off the slavery of our worlds poor…
50% of this worlds resources and wealth is owned by
1% of selfish Americans, who believe and evangelise as role world model citizens.
So Dear Anodea, stopping here, before this omnisoul breaks our mirror,
I appreciate your graced effort, your brilliant Chakra Contribution,
I despair in our carbon flying
(please don’t retort the offset propaganda)
until electric planes kick in.
(however i do not cast the first stone.)
I deeply regret that all my friends
are simply killing the “We” with our lifestyle ignorance.
In Radical Omniversal Hope,
MICHAEL MOON
DREAMTIME POET
QUARRALUNA
Delcia McNeil
Posted at 09:18h, 07 DecemberDear Anodea – thank you so much for this piece of writing. We have something of our own version here in the UK with two opposing parties, a system based on conflict and opposition that involves insulting and denegrading the other. In my opinion we are in a crisis related to the solar plexus chakra which by definition has to include the other ‘out of consciousness’ chakras (root, sacral). Until we move into the heart chakra collectively we are stuck with these dysfunctional political systems. I feel that climate change – such a global issue – will force those in power to come together. Although some human beings will be more badly effected by global warming than others, everyone will/is being faced with it one way or another. The planet will continue fine without us humans on it so I feel now’s the time those of us working in this field of healing and therapy need to hold strong, do our work, bring our spirituality into politics and do whatever we can to visualise and hold the intention of us all creating a society that can produce leaders with integrity, maturity, and emotional and intellectual intelligence and systems based on co-operation and diversity.
Sonia Nelson-Cole
Posted at 11:57h, 09 DecemberA very good article which hits at the truth, and highlights the cause of the situation in America. Also it mentions the inadequacies of the systems which have caused the problems. If heeded, these may be corrected and the best solution implemented.
Mark Sommer
Posted at 14:31h, 13 DecemberWell said, Anodea! I agree with what you say needs to happen but am not optimistic that it will. The loss of faith in democracy, exacerbated by generations of self-centeredness and alienation from one another, have weakened our collective immune systems in ways that make it exceedingly difficult to respond effectively to clear symptoms of threat and decline. Those of us who can see what’s coming must do what we can while we can, and whether we succeed or not, the effort of doing so helps soothe the grief we feel for our world.