Louis C.K., in his recent letter undressing Donald Trump, said a few things that I think struck at the heart of the whole Trump debacle: “Trump is a messed up guy with a hole in his heart that he tries to fill with money and attention. He can never ever have enough of either and he’ll never stop trying… He’s a sad man.”
Or, as my brother put it today--"That guy must not have a lot of love for himself if he’s putting out so much hate onto other people.”
Sure, Trump irks me. But it’s more that I think he would make a disastrous president, not that I hate his guts as a human being.
When people are incredibly violent, it’s mostly because they have experienced an incredible amount of violence in their life, either at the hands of others, or internally, inflicting violence upon themselves.
If it’s not coming from others, we inflict violence upon ourselves when we’re out of touch with our needs.
While we all possess the same basic physical (food, shelter, water) and emotional (respect, identity, love) needs, our specific combination of needs is unique for each of us. Introverts need more time alone than extroverts. Some people need more information (scientists) and some people need to be more creative (artists). Some people need to spend more time outside, some people need to feel more physical touch than others. Those are all things we need on some level, but the intensity of the need ranges depending upon your unique makeup as a human being.
But if you’re unaware of what your personal needs are--and, goddamnit, I wish they taught this type of personal development in school--and spend your life engaging things and people that don’t get your needs met, then you are inflicting violence upon yourself. This might sound trite, but compiled over years and years, this can do quite a bit of damage. And more often than not, we--as wonderfully flawed and messy creatures--project that violence outward onto others.
Back to this Trump character.
Now, taking a compassionate stance towards Trump might seem unrealistically or unreasonably enlightened, or somehow impossible. Or as an excuse to condone what he says, and how he is saying it. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Rather, that it’s simply a bit easier to understand why someone would say such things when you consider that they have the same needs that you have (albeit a specific combination), and maybe those needs aren’t being met.
I think Americans are scared to see that their country could be coming to this. More importantly, many Americans are scared (or proud) to admit that they’ve got a little Trump in them.
Trump scares a lot of people because they don’t want to believe that this could possibly be part of reality--their reality. More specifically, they don’t want to believe that they themselves could ever be like Trump. That they could think thoughts like that, let alone speak them aloud.
But honestly, we’re all pretty messed up. We all have habits and patterns and belief systems most of which we’ve developed before ever employing a fully functioning rational thought process. No wonder we make so many mistakes. No wonder we have mood swings and have phobias. No wonder we’re so, SO messy, at times. And that’s the crazy and infuriating and beautiful part about being human.
We all have irrational fears and desires. We all have terrible, fucked up thoughts at some points in our lives. Some of us act on them, some don’t.
Trump happens to not only think a disproportionate amount of those type of thoughts that you don’t want to admit you might have thought, or have the potential to think, but also acts on them. Regularly. Flaunts it, really.
The question is--what does reflecting back the same type of hate that he puts out do for us? What does it do to us?
Trump is the subconscious nightmare that we all don’t want to admit that we, as a nation, have birthed. Will things detonate? Certainly. Will things get very, very ugly? Without a doubt.
Yet he’s also the current linchpin in our national healing process--more than anything, Trump presents an opportunity for self-acceptance. Both individual and collective. This is an unfathomable test of our humanity. And if we see it like that, it will, if anything, make our lives a little less complicated, or at least we won’t spend so much time consumed by hate. Because who consciously wants to live their life like that?
Now, am I any good at this? Not really, but awareness is always the first step. And do I want him as our next president? HELL NOOO!!!!!!!! That would be TERRIBLE.
At the same time, next time we’re spewing back the very same brand of venom he’s doling out, maybe we should take a second to consider from what part of our own psyche that hate is coming from. And to remember that we can choose how we react.
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