Emerald

Thank you! Yes, it is. I am a huge fan of Jungian depth psychology, and have incorporated dreamwork into my life and into my practice as a life coach.

They do enjoy being the victim. But they genuinely don't recognize their victim's mentality. Others can see it clearly, as is always the case with the Shadow. But they do not. It's easy to see the mote in someone else's eye, while being totally oblivious to the log in your own. Most of these people who are falling into Fascist ways of thinking HIGHLY value personal responsibility as part of their ideology... and they believe that themselves and the in-group are the only ones taking personal responsibility. They just don't recognize the ways that their scapegoating and grievances are a means to relinquish personal responsibility. They do not see that their finger is pointing back at them. The Shadow operates in the unconscious this way.

The dream makes me think of this... Another dynamic that makes authoritarianism run is the sense that we are not ourselves an authority over our own life. And so, we need to find some external authority figure to make decisions for us and govern our behavior. When, we are connected to our sovereignty, we have no need of a king to make decisions for us. But if we are not connected to our sovereignty, we will look for a king. And sovereignty over ourselves and ability for self-governance has to do with the Queen Archetype while leadership over others has to do with the King Archetype. And if we are not integrated with the Queen's internal sovereignty, we will look to the leadership of external Kings to give up our freedoms to in hopes that they will lead and govern us... and that we may absolve ourselves of personal responsibility for our actions by just following the king's orders. And in this dream, the key relates to your own sovereignty and freedom. And you are instructed (by some external authority (King) who wrote the letter) to give this key to a higher authority (King). And you are choosing Donald Trump to play that role in the dream. And this is largely why Trump is popular. He's playing the role of the big floating green head in the Wizard of Oz that claims to be Oz the Great and Powerful with absolute certainty. But of course, all kings are just the man behind the curtain. External leadership is always a game of pretend. The only real authority can be found within at the deepest depths of our personal sovereignty. And the true King only arises within us when we integrate the Queen at the deepest of depths that it can be integrated. And given that you go to find the King (Donald Trump) to give your key (your freedom, power, and sovereignty) to... this could show you that you are looking for an external authority figure to submit to so that they make decisions for you. And you can relinquish your power and responsibility to so that they can be the father and you can be the child. But when you go looking for the King (Donald Trump)... you instead find the Queen (Melania Trump). And she angrily refuses your key as she is angry at you for disowning your sovereignty and rejecting your inner Queen. And she's trying to kick you out of the house of power... because you are trying to find an external King archetype to relinquish your power to in the form of the key. And the Queen (who represents your own sovereignty) rejects you and tries to throw you out of the house of personal power and sovereignty because you have kicked out your own Queen in favor of the illusion of external leadership figures. And then you have some kind of sexual interaction with her, which likely represents integration of the Queen Archetype. And the desire is probably there because there is also a clamoring to reclaim your inner Queen (sovereignty and self-governance.) So, I see this dream as a reflection of a tendency within yourself to look to external authority figures to follow and to submit to... and to relinquish your sovereignty, power, and responsibility to. And this is a childlike stance that comes from self-doubt and uncertainty. And it shows you that, when you're in this frame, the Queen (your personal sovereignty and power) rejects you until you decide to integrate with this element of your Feminine side. My advice is to watch the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is a great representation of the sovereign Queen archetype who never gets cut off from her instincts (Toto), while the Wizard of Oz is a representation of the positive and negative sides of the King archetype as well as the powers and limitations of the King.

I just got off of a coaching call with one of my clients about an hour ago. And it shined a bit of a light onto how Fascism arises in individuals... which then coalesces in widespread collective Fascist patterns. And he brought up that he has been noticing some troubling patterns coming up in himself that he doesn't like. (Which is synchronistic because I've been thinking a lot about the topic of the underlying vulnerabilities that lead to the collective rise in Fascism, and he happened to bring up something highly relevant to my contemplations.) The pattern he spoke about is this... He consciously doesn't agree with racism and bigotry and never has. And he was raised in a family with liberal values. But he finds these emotional reactions arising where he'll feel all this anger and hatred towards immigrants and the LGBTQ community and see them as engaging in victim's mentality and taking what doesn't belong to them. And it's creating a fair amount of resistance and cognitive dissonance because it had never been the case prior to the past several months, AND he consciously is a very kind and caring person who doesn't agree with these perspectives. But there is a more emotional part of himself where feelings of hatred are beginning to arise and intensify in relation to groups that he didn't previously have an issue with. And upon deeper exploration during our session, it became clear that there is a part of himself that he's been repressing that has childlike and vulnerable parts of himself that are in need to assistance and attention. It's a part of him that needs compassion and care... like a child that needs their parents to care for them and kiss their boo boos. But because of his strong revulsion towards Victim's Mentality, he doesn't let himself ask for help and meet those needs and he represses the vulnerable parts of himself. And he doesn't let himself seek attention unless he has achieved something that people like or approve of. And he doesn't exercise any sympathy towards himself or seek for it from others. And it is his "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality and a dedication to a kind of self-sufficient stoicism and personal responsibility and strength that causes him to gloss over the needs of this more vulnerable part of himself that needs unconditional compassion, love, and care. And now, there are lower Shadowy expressions of this vulnerable part of him arising since he hasn't integrated his vulnerabilities in a more conscious and exalted way. And the repressed Victim's Mentality is coming up where he is feeling victimized by the presence of these groups of people... and part of himself is reveling in the ability to relinquish personal responsibility and cast blame onto external scapegoats. And he consciously is the type of person who takes responsibility for EVERYTHING. But this Shadowy expression of Victim's Mentality is happening specifically because he has repressed and neglected to practice self-compassion in order to avoid "playing the victim." It's like horse-shoe theory, where his strong revulsion towards Victim's Mentality and hyper-identification with strength and self-sufficiency has caused the Shadow of Victim's Mentality to sneak in under the radar of his consciousness as he feels like a Victim in relation to people he sees as not taking personal responsibility. And because the judgment is about the other person playing the victim and not taking responsibility, that he wasn't realizing his own Victim's mentality at play. And upon further reflection on what came up in our meeting, there is perhaps even a deep-seated jealous drive because he feels he needs to earn every shred of support that he gets, while marginalized groups are advocating for their rights from the stand-point of rights being something that all people deserve. He only allows himself positive things through doing and earning... while advocating for human rights is all about being and an inherent sense of validity. And I know that he isn't the only person feeling this. I've been seeing lots of people being pulled towards the siren song of the collective Shadow of Victim's Mentality and getting sucked into Fascism. And this arises as a result of a total rejection and revulsion towards Victim's Mentality. Then projecting the repressed inner Victim onto marginalized groups... and then feeling victimized in relation to these marginalized groups. It's a common pattern. This client is just more aware than most and more willing to face his Shadows than most. But this is how the Shadow works. The more you push parts of yourself away with strong judgments and revulsions, the more Shadowy the expression of those parts becomes. And when people are collectively doing that, we can end up in some "human death spirals" where we end up falling into very maladaptive movements where we very well could destroy ourselves. So, my plea to you is to be kind and compassionate towards yourself. And if you deny yourself this kindness and compassion, it will lead to a world that denies kindness and compassion to all. So, here is a video that I made last year about "Victim's Mentality" and the opposite inverted dynamic of "Anti-Victim's Mentality Mentality."

Here's an interesting video that I just watched...

You may be joking, but if you worked directly with people to help them explore their unconscious, it's genuinely not that far off from how it actually is. Once I was working with a coaching client who was surprised to find herself voting for the far right party in her country. And when she told me this, I asked her questions to help her explore that deeper. And eventually she stumbled upon the realization that the leader of the party reminded her of her dad and his absolutist authoritarian personality. And consciously, she felt a lot of negative feelings towards her dad and felt rebellious towards him and his authoritarian ways since her teens. But as a child, she saw him as all knowing and had very positive feelings about him, that got repressed because of a variety of different circumstances that happened in her pre-teens and teens year. And once she realized that she was transferring her repressed positive feelings and illusion of perfection about her dad onto this leader, it broke the fever for her. And for me, when I was really involved with canvassing for Bernie Sanders during the primary that he lost against Biden, I got super involved. And on Super Tuesday, when the Democrats all got together and dropped out and endorsed Biden and screwed Bernie over, I had a lot of grief come up. And I cried on my couch. And I realized that, despite having genuinely progressive values, I had been using the idea of getting Bernie elected to avoid my own problems by getting my hopes up about more macrocosmic problems. And when I lost hope for Bernie, all the sadness that I was distracted from came up to the surface. So honestly, my estimate is that 80% of politics can be chalked up to individual and collective psychological dynamics.

Men technically didn't vote her out. Donald Trump sustained about the same numbers from 2020 (74,223,975 in 2020 vs 74,831,719 in 2024), while Kamala just failed to excite her base and under-performed Biden's 2020 numbers. That said, it was mostly left leaning suburban white men who stayed home... probably because they didn't feel like Trump was that much of a threat to them AND because Kamala is just your run of the mill establishment Democrat. Also, they might have felt more identification with Biden because he's a white guy, while Kamala is a black woman. So, they might not have been as energized to elect someone of a different race and gender to them. Plus, all across the world EVERY SINGLE incumbent party declined because of inflation. I see this as the biggest reason that depressed the Democratic vote. Also, Kamala didn't engage in identity politics at all. Hilary leaned into identity politics in 2016 without giving a strong populist message, which made her campaign particularly weak because her slogan was "I'm with her". And she didn't have much focus on bread and butter issues. And she thought it was enough to get to the White House to skate in on the idea of being the first female president. But Kamala didn't do ANY identity politics at all because she was intelligent and avoiding a Hilary situation. Whenever Trump tried to bait her into talking about race, she'd just dismiss it and say "Same old show." And she didn't talk anything about gender either. She deliberately avoided identity politics altogether. Her message was one of general unity and the idea of "not going back" while also talking about her policies for gradual improvement like a child tax credit, adding home care to medicare, $25,000 for first time home buyers, etc. But it didn't really matter. Because she's a black woman, most people just assumed she was running on identity politics because people will project what they think is there. It was really Donald Trump who was doing all the identity politics... while male identity politics. And that sustained Donald Trump's numbers from 2020. And it made him a darling of the male identity podcast circuit. But I disagree that no one has been catering to that demographic. Trump and Republicans have been leaning into white male identity politics heavily and overtly since 2016... and subtly before that. And the MOST popular podcasts and YouTube channels are all about putting the male identity up on a pedestal. It's literally everywhere to where I even get served a bunch of male identity politics stuff despite my political viewing habits being decisively on the left. And Trump's campaign was hyper-focused on race, ethnicity, gender, and calling anyone who wasn't a white male a DEI hire. So, the lesson is that identity politics IS a winner... as long as you cater your identity politics to white men. And this has, of course, always been the case. It is nothing new. White male identity politics has always been super popular. That's why most people get upset when anyone else tries to do identity politics because male identity politics is the default and everything else an aberration.

Political movements are almost always formed (at least partially) in response towards collective psychological patterns or as a means to compensate for and balance out collective psychological patterns. So, you cannot separate politics from human psychology as there is a reason why people gravitate towards the movements they gravitate towards. And with what the poster that I was responding to said, they were describing that they noticed themselves having a magnetic pull towards Fascism. And a pull towards a pattern like Fascism is usually as a result of some internal drama playing itself out externally. For example, someone might project their authoritarian parental figure onto a Fascist leader... or authoritarian leader more generally. And this can activate a child aspect of them that still sees the parent as perfect. And this gets projected onto a given politician. Or, they can play out traumas around unfairness and scarcity from childhood... and scapegoat and project that onto people of different groups who they perceive as getting unfair treatment or taking up all the resources. And these are just a couple examples that are more straight forward. Here's one that's a bit less straightforward. A person has authoritarian parents. And they come to rebel from those parents... and develop a contrarian way of thinking. And if a political figure comes on the scene that comes across as anti-establishment, the person may feel "an enemy of my enemy is my friend." And then, the contrarian can begin conforming to this anti-establishment dictator figure. And then, the contrarians repressed conformity starts to bear its head in unconscious ways.

It's good that you're aware of that tendency within yourself. The ability to recognize your Fascist Shadow can help you avoid the collective pull towards Fascism. It is those that identify with goodness that think "I could never be a Fascist" that are the most susceptible to being weaponized by a demagogue. But don't let what I just said make you complacent. Now is the time to explore and discover the vulnerabilities and patterns that that Fascist impulse arises from. Ask yourself "Where does that pull on my psyche come from?" "In what ways does the pull towards Fascism feel like it will serve or protect me? "What is it about macho stuff that feels appealing to me?" "Why does Fascism feel alluring?

Even if that is the case, my point still stands. There's plenty of evidence that Trump is just as much of a war monger as the next president... if not more of one.

We weren't even really talking about the "right way" to be Masculine in the first place. I was just saying that right wing guys don't come across as any more Masculine than the next guy. They just pedestalize Masculinity more than the next guy, and they believe that that makes them come across as more Masculine. But with regard to the dehumanization of the other, these are Shadow-Masculine qualities and are unnecessarily petty and harmful... and maladaptive given the post-industrial environment. And perhaps at war, there is a necessity to callous one's self to the other side in order to win. But the majority of wars that are happening now aren't actually benefitting anyone. It's just how governments are wielding their power to steal resources from other places. But in the 21st century first-world, where war is rarely about defense of your loved ones, these are maladaptive tendencies that come from peasant-brained willful ignorance that reflect a lack of social and emotional development. And they only divide the working class populace and make us all more susceptible to being dominated and controlled by the wealthy and powerful. It's the working class white guy who will let himself be oppressed and sell all of his power to a dictator if it means he's allowed to be on top of the hierarchy of oppressed peasants. And this guy will make himself lower just so he can bring others even lower than him. And I never met a person who was an out and out racist or xenophobe that possessed positive Masculine qualities. It was always the most ignorant people who were lacking the most with work ethic and standards of ethical values. Because of this recognition that I had as a teenager that racists are just a bit ignorant... I even had come to the conclusion of, "Who cares about racist people. I don't like it. But they're just ignorant but harmless. They might run their mouth off about this, that, or the other group, but they're not actually going to do anything." And individually, that was true. Most of the racists that I knew from my hometown were not evil... just gullible. But I made the mistake as a teenager and early-20-something of under-estimating the power of large groups of stupid people. Now, of course, many people who weren't out and out racists/xenophobes who conceptually valued tolerance and kindness still had their blind spots and unconscious biases. And many of them, I'm sure, will be weaponized if we become a truly Fascist state... mostly because they aren't consciously aware of what path they're going down. And they don't recognize their unconscious Fascist impulses. And it's easy to trick people who aren't aware of the unconscious biases. But anyone who was out-and-out bigoted was always the least developed, well adjusted, and well adapted people. So, it's important to not put Shadow-Masculine behaviors up on a pedestal and find a positive reason for it to exist. This is what happens when Masculine values go out of alignment.

People are unaware and take what he says at face value. They don't realize they're being lied to.

That's a very specific conjecture that I can't really see the logic behind. Why do you pair a guy like Leo with an aggressive curvy basketball playing woman? What is your rationale?

If being mean works on a woman to pull her closer to you, she probably has parents that treated her very mean since childhood. And so, now she has been conditioned to associate mean-ness with the drive to seek connection and love. But a healthy woman who lacks that trauma or has healed from that trauma will disappear super fast if you treat her mean. The same is true for men, of course. Everyone is subject the allure of a repeat of abusive familial patterns. It's not really a gender thing.

I wanted to post this as its own thread because I see a lot of people who are operating under the misconception that Donald Trump is a dove and that his administration was more peaceful that other presidents and that his new administration will be more peaceful. Here's everything he was responsible for (that we know of)... He did 432% more drone strikes than Obama's 8 years as president in just the first 2 years of his term alone (then he slapped down the mandatory reporting requirement to hid the records of his military actions, so he very likely did even more in the latter 2 years of his term.) He kept us in Iraq and Afganistan Had a 330% increase in CIVILIAN deaths in Afghanistan under Trump's presidency He bombed Syria twice He bombed Somalia He wanted to occupy a 1/3 of Syria to "take the oil" He let Israel illegally annex the Gollon Heights He illegally assassinated the top Iranian Commander Sulemani (who was fighting against ISIS). This led to retaliatory strikes on American soldiers that led to many of them getting traumatic brain injuries. He tried to coup Venezuela He armed Saudi Arabia as they did a genocide in Yemen... and vetoed cutting off our weapons to Saudi Arabia. (Trump has business ties to Saudi) Trump has said that he wants a war with Mexico in his second term He wants to do airstrikes against drug cartels He has received millions of dollars in political donations from Miriam Adelson who he has promised to annex the entire West Bank for in exchange for that money He dropped the MOAB on Afganistan He let Neo-Cons (like John Bolton) run his foreign policy His first military raid as president killed a small American girl He signed a pro-torture executive order