cell913blog.com #63

One of the problems with the Democrats waffling, stewing, fretting, and fussing about the future of President Biden’s candidacy, for the 2024 election is that it graphically pits indecision, waffling, stewing, fretting, and fussing as a way of operating up against a tyrannical, despotic, unthinking, testosterone-infested megalomaniac.

Irrespective of the personalities of both Biden and trump, their age and their policies, attempting to argue that ‘at least we take seriously our obligation as party members, especially in light of the threat to democracy posed by the trump cabal, too many of their numbers, based on their already-embedded enmeshment in the trump-cult, will cast aspersions of ‘weakness, indecision, untrustworthiness, and ‘wimpishness’ on the Democrats. House Republicans who are issuing subpoenas to the White House staff for misleading the country about the health and stability of the president, while on another goose-chase, nevertheless will garner a few seconds of air time, as well as a few headlines for their irascibility, petulance and pretentiousness.

And, the question of how to neutralize, dismiss, negate, and even counter the Republican lies, distortions, perversions, propaganda and the steam-roller of cash that funds their dissemination, haunts anyone and any group needing to accomplish that goal in order to defeat their nefarious, dangerous and contemptible campaign.

The more ‘bashing’ in and through the courts, through the media, through the political rhetorical attacks by Biden surrogates, that is ‘dished out’ to the trump threat, the more buoyant and uplifted and inflated are their polling numbers. It is almost comic if it were not so tragic. Ronald Reagan was dubbed the ‘teflon’ politician simply because ‘nothing negative seemed to stick to him or his reputation’.  This situation is different. All the reasonable evidence, even the promised expectations only partially contained in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, including the absolute immunity promise by the Supreme (trump-sycophant) Court, the ad hominum attacks that spew from trump’s mouth almost hourly, the promised retreat from NATO, and the support for Putin, Xi, Kim, and whatever other dictator seems to catch his fantasy….none of these radioactive threats taken individually and certainly not collectively, seem to penetrate the minds or hearts of those millions promising to re-elect this political monstrosity.

Nor does the obviously indisputable conviction that feathering his own nest, reputation, bank account and legacy at the expense of both the nation and the people of the United States. And these observations, contentions and convictions are held not only in North America but also by world leaders around the world. They are deliberately, decisively and demonstrably taking overt (and covert?) steps to trump-proof their nations as a precaution in the face of his potential re-election.

America is, to the outside world at least, possibly also to many of their own citizens, experiencing what in the psychological realm would be termed an emotional melt-down. It is almost as if the “age” of Biden is the symptom at the core of the American psyche that the nation fears most. What is it about “age” that so arrests, arouses, and incites profound, existential fear, foreboding, angst and trauma among the American anima mundi?

To be sure, there are numerous and varied monumental, even epic threats facing the planet and its people. And yet, there has historically been a kind of resilience in the face of danger, threats and even catastrophes that has characterized the American response to those dangers. What is different about this moment in American history?

Seeing itself as a young, athletic, muscular, competitive, superstar, the very opposite of the ‘old man,’ perhaps has conditioned the nation to turn a blind eye, a deaf ear and a defiant will to the point of being almost able to ‘deny’ the prospect its old age. Consciousness, too, in the form of a dominant sensibility to the literal, the empirical and the nominal perhaps has helped to seal the national psyche’s conscious conviction (almost like a religious belief) that it would never have to encounter the spectre of “old age”.

And yet, although there are serious differences between the model of “age” offered by trump (orange-dyed air (horrible hair), a ‘strutting gait, a diet of Big-Macs and Fries, a rotund swing, and a predisposition to party and philander, really the unadulterated puer!) and that offered by Biden, the former archetype is not only tolerated, but seemingly adulated, as if the nation sees it as a ‘rock-star’ unconsciously depicting itself as the adoring adolescent.

It is not only the literal task of neutralizing the lies, the deconstruction of democracy, and the danger posed to the stability of the international order that America has to ‘get passed’. More difficult, and perhaps more transformative, for its, and our, safe and secure future, is the re-framing of the inescapable truth of nature…that we do grow old. And that we can, and preferably will, do it gracefully.

Cliché bumper-stickers that read, “both are old; one is a felon,” unfortunately, do little to address the more complex and nuanced realities that wisdom with integrity, with maturity of judgement, with wells filled with relevant and applicable historic political, geopolitical and world-view memory, with circles of friends, allies, advocates and references, viewed through a lens of the mature adult, who comfortably balances his/her youth and age, easily discerns the comparative wealth of the one over the other.

For America to begin to transform the collective lens through which she witnesses, values, appreciates and honours the well-spring of care, insight, wisdom, judgement and stability that comes from the ‘senex’ archetype will not only change the way age is considered, valued and appreciated. It will also shift the way all persons are viewed. Whether the youth, (much more than athletic winners, scholarship winners, care-givers, and dependents) or the ‘old’….much more than economic and psychological drain on the family and the national budget….the very notion of the subtlety, nuance, complexity, and promise of all men and women can emerge from the shedding of these reductionistic cardboard cut-out depictions, characterizations and dismissals of whatever ‘image’  they find as a target for their presumed superiority.

Muscular, macho, masculine testosterone-infused libido, whether imagined in youth or old age is an archetype whose nefarious impact on American cultures (and others) has had mixed reviews. And its dominance is, thankfully, shifting, evolving, and the revised models of masculinity, while some are still clinging to the old  model. And as an integral component of the global leadership in this tectonic shift in both tolerance and elevation of a new series of masculinities, this election brings with it the potential to have a seismic impact on world developments.

The alpha male, as embodied (if only in fantasy) by Putin, trump, Kim, Xi and Orban, is a receding global archetype. Trouble is, that as it fears extinction, like a caged, rabid and diseased animal, it is thrashing about in the last throes of existence, the “Cheyne-Stokes breathing” pattern. And while those last panting’s of a dying archetype still cling to whatever illicit means of retaining power, we are all subject to their most dangerous fantasies.

To embrace the middle ground in between the ‘puer and the senex’ for America, is a path within reach of both its best angels and its moderate, mature, “middle”. That segment of the population has never been seduced by the rantings of an outlaw, nor the fantasies of its hallucinators. The world stands at a kind of precipice, over which trauma and fear raise their heads.

Stepping back, taking deep breaths, and beginning to chat over the back fences, the coffee-shop tables, and the pub-counters with those to whom we have not spoken in decades, would offer a first step to safety, security and stability.

The psychic archetypes notwithstanding, readjusting the lens through which we ‘see’ ourselves, as we age, without losing either our hope or our energy, is not only a step to our own well-being. It can be an even more significant step to the nation’s healing.

And not in the medical, quick-fix, medication model. This is a process that will take considerable time, patience and self-awareness. And it might involve the lifting of blinders, so that the horse-race is not the only thing that is important.