Donald J. Trump is Evil. That’s more of a conspiracy theory than a diagnosis, but it is the perspective that I’m about to argue here.
The perspective from which I make this claim is quite personal, but informed by my own life and work. Donald Trump and I were born one week apart in the summer of 1946. He in New York, and I in Chicago. Whatever differences between he and I, we had a major Karmic intersection in June of 1968. We graduated from college. He had bone spurs, and I had a commission in the United States Navy. I went on to serve 5 years, some of it in Viet Nam, and he “got a small loan” from his father and ...
I actually don’t think that “the rest is history,” because my argument is apocalyptic. How crazy is this: I think that we are witnessing the demise of the Patriarchy. Trump is, particularly because of The Wall, easily seen as Trumpty Dumpty, to wit, All the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men, couldn’t put Trumpty together again. He’s not going to get out of this without being transformed, but there is also no good reason to assume that he has a Phoenix like trajectory, because there will be no ashes to rise from. A great seer from the past characterized this as “not with a bang, but a whimper.”
Nothing but a yolk that’s no longer funny.
I obviously don’t like the President. I’m a family therapist in San Francisco, a city he will not set foot in. My congressional representative, The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, as speaker of the House, just hoisted him onto the rail by which in another time, he would be run out of town. It is because this clearly won’t happen in McConnell’s Senate, that I am convinced that my argument holds at least, a rhetorical truth.
You can’t impeach the Devil.
There is no person in there to impeach. None of us have been able to find him yet, and I don’t think anyone will. He is simply not a Human Being
I am not suggesting that he is a member of a different species. He is quite clearly a member of our species, homo sapiens, yet he does not walk with the rest of us. Nor, as nearly as I can tell, does he run or play anything at which he cannot cheat. I am trying to get at the idea that he doesn’t really have a soul, he more has a purpose.
He has a Dark purpose.
It is this Dark purpose that his supporters seem confused by. The idea that he is supported by evangelical Christians who simply overlook his mysogyny (which they prefer to think of as “pro-life) is a data point. They are quite willing to “give the Devil his due” and forget about his inclination for sexual dominance and exploitation. I really don’t think that plays well with #MeToo folks. But Trump counts on this pass in a way that reflects entitlement, not political savvy. He is not a thnking being, he is an archetypal form of Male Dominance, which I and others have argued is an essentially cultural phenomenon.
But back to me. It’s the summer of 1966, and I’m doing my 2nd Class Midshipman cruise at the Naval Air Station in Beeville, TX. Mostly I remember getting to fly the jet trainer to the disgruntlement of others in my company who knew I wasn’t going to opt for Naval Air (our pilots were bombing babies at the time), but it was insanely exciting to have command of a vehicle like that, if only for a while. I remember obstacle courses and Marine DI’s who were interested in implanting obedience in us, and I remember getting drunk in some cheap hotel room with a high school girl who I somehow felt the need to protect while listening to Mick Jagger singing “Paint it Black” and “Under my Thumb.” Later that summer, I was at Camp Pendleton on the West Coast, learning why I didn’t want a commission in the USMC. On a training patrol in the back country, I realized that the guy who was leading us not only was a killer, but he loved it. He was my age. Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name.
1966 was a dark time.
Because I was a Regular NROTC student at Kansas University, I had 6 to 8 week “midshipman cruises” every summer. Each of them took me closer to my role as a commissioned Naval Officer, defending the constitution of the United States at the pleasure of the President. I know that Trump is evil because of his deification of Eddie Gallagher, the crazy SEAL Chief whom his own team spoke up about because he is so Trump like.
There simply is no accountability in this world where the Devil get’s his due.
As a young man, I lived a life of accountability in a work place that was only interested in what I could do, not what I thought about the mission. I had the kind of background and performance reports that would have (with some due diligence) taken me to flag rank. But my soul was deeply troubled. That’s why I don’t think Trump has a soul. He just doesn’t have doubts. He is always ready to attack.
“The Killer awoke before Dawn, he put his boots on. He took a face from an ancient gallery, and he walked on down the hall.” Jim Morrison, dead a few years later, sings this in 1967, as Donald and I are in our senior years at college. The music was trying to warn us that boys like us were on a diabolical path toward something evil deep inside but Trump seems never to have listened to Music. More evidence of soullessness.
The best way that I know to account for Trump’s diabolical credential is to see him as an Avatar of the Dark Feminine.
He is the destroyer of worlds, but it is his own world. I am not pretending that he doesn't’ have power over the world that we all share. Knowledge of this can leave us hopeless, but I am saying that he is simply too puny to avoid the apocalypse. He is only the President because the deal has already gone down. And he will take his enablers down with him. They know that, but they are commanded (by Evil) not to say anything. They are doomed.
There is no Real Donald Trump. He is a twitter handle.
As a family therapist for 40 years, I have seen and been part of this transformation of men’s lives through accountability practices. ln my work. For me, it started with substance abuse as a public health problem, followed by HIV and the necessity of seeing “others” from a perspective that involved keeping one’s heart open.
The Women’s Movement claimed space in Family Therapy while I was still in training, and now it dominates the profession. It has required that as men, we come to know the nature of our inner life, and to speak from that place with respect. Have you ever heard the President even come close to that?
We are engaged in a moral universe and the question arises: what’s the right thing to do?
Trump actually says that he alone knows the answer to that. Who says stuff like that? Only God or the Devil. I see no evidence that Trump is God. I more see him as a Karmic turn in human civilization that has been a long time coming and may, as these things happen, be too late to save the planet. Personally, I think we are about to see something amazing.
Peace Out.