EDM:
Trump has a lot of people fooled. To quote him: "I love the poorly-educated".
Brian >>> EDM:
I didn't get the quote in context - but does he love them, or does he 'love' that it is dim enough for him to be able to seem to get away with things that cant happen in the light?
A lot of people want to fool Trump into enacting this role?
A lot of people want to fool themselves?
I feel a true education is always a timely beginning and starts out from a true desire to learn rather than presumption to already know.
That is not so common even if it is at root, common sense.
(See bottom of page for Bruce providing fuller context of the quote - and my reply to Bruce)
EDM >>> Brian:
Trump loves that they are not critical thinkers. He loves that they can latch onto the simple concepts he repeats over and over. He loves that the USA is a consumer culture and the buyer is pre-conditioned to accept any premise without question as part of the sale. He loves that the media will help him spread his message for free because he is a carnival barker, the PT Barnum of 2016.
Brian >>> EDM
Lets say that that is so for the sake of making a point; who is running for election that is any different?
You are simply describing the State of the Nation - no?
I don't feel to defend or attack him. But to recognize the forces at work through the forms that they take.
Perhaps he represents the last grab at restoring the American Dream - which usurped a pioneering spirit to indeed become the way you describe. You may be right - yet he still may be the only focus for many to give voice where they have felt denied and deprived of a voice - regardless of his personality traits. The image that comes to mind is of a charge that seeks discharge toward balance via the path of least resistance. That may be dangerous - but so is persisting in the denial and deprivation of humanity under the deceit of governance.
Sanders is the other somewhat outsider - for those who think along different lines - but just reading of his conformity to vaccination agenda suggested to me that he has no idea of the way power operates these days - or is part of its presentation. Whereas Trump plays the same game and so is less inclined to trust what very clever people present as critical thinking - and yet may also be part of its presentation.
As an Englishman, I perceive the USA has sort of mutated in its worship of presented or affected image - to a level that caricatures itself - and yet passes as 'normal'. Ron Paul is wise and unassuming and courageous - and yet does nothing to keep the inflated imagery that so many seem to aspire to or are compelled to maintain.
These times are marked with the flip into the absurd passing off as normal. In a way this has almost always been so - but the exclusive focus in ego or self-image has become so disconnected with anything that it is become a house of cards that simply cannot be presented as credible and only becomes the more grotesque the more it intensifies.
When making bridges of trust and communication with someone who is dissociated from true relational responsibility, one has to enter into their mythology and use it on behalf of gaining attention, opening a reliable channel and restoring perspective to a focus in a true relational presence. I see this as the Power behind all apparent powers.
EDM >>> Brian:
Do you want to understand Trump? Do you want to understand the USA? Then I suggest the 1970 movie "Little Big Man", which explains the mythology cum reality of this person and place. Donald Trump is playing the part of snake oil salesman "Allardyce T. Merriweather". Watch how he evolves during the story...it's exactly the trajectory of Citizen Trump.
Brian >>> EDM
I invite understanding of the script writer. I don't isolate characters from the script-in-play and pretend I am also a free puppet!
I have read that the Rockefeller dynasty was founded
in the sons of a snake oil salesman - and that Tea tree oil was sold in Oz because it is effective against snakebite but dishonest salesmen diluted or cut it to be trading false currency of exchange.
I don't gain understanding when getting or reinforcing reactive identity against something else. But I get that you have fixated on Trump in a way that makes him a special hate figure in your script. That's as you like it - but where does it then go?
We all develop some private mythological scripting mind that judges others in terms of our own person. This becomes a subconscious and almost autonomous routine - that we can confuse with reality - like a movie where we write our own bias into the script. Like a communication that was effective before we adulterated it with personal bias of a private agenda - running without any real governance.
EDM >>> Brian
I am not isolating tRump. I am seeing him in the context of the society that produced him and produced the masses yearning for a more effective snake oil at a reasonable price of 2.99. Watch the movie, it nails the entire history of this place.
Brian >>> EDM
Whilst I am not understood, I am neither surprised.
EDM >>> Brian
You don't understand context...at all.
Brian >>> EDM
Well go with what you can use towards the best outcome you can - and understanding expands in unexpected ways. None cannot understand what their starting point does not support - and the only way to understand one's starting point is from a perspective prior to and beyond it's scope.
You might ponder why almost no communication occurs between us. I simply do not share your presumptions - which are the context of the perspective that then logically unfolds or extends from that foundation.
The Ideas of the Age are in ruins - or rather have become lost to derivative concepts of Idea that connect with nothing but Who Says So.
EDM >>> Brian:
You want me to read every word of your drivel yet you won't do a simple task I assign you? Where did you become so privileged?
Brian >>> to EDM and a wider attention!
But you are free to read or not as you please. I am addressing the wholeness of attention - as it freely alights to join here at the Daily Bell. If it is nothing to you - let it be nothing to you - and it is!
False currency is simply valueless - meaningless. Any attempt to reconcile it with the true will GIVE it the power of its face value. But at the cost or indeed the demand for the sacrifice of the true.
If it is not true of me - I don't have to get rid of it.
If a sense of hate rises in resonance to hateful intent, I don't have to reinforce it in myself by reaction.
I use the event to serve the purpose I choose - and withdraw allegiances from any hate that had lain hidden until triggered.
I fully feel whatever I feel - as my own being - my own Conscious Experience, and open it to fresh perspective.
I feel a horror that this reflects a part of the wholeness 'Me' that has chosen to unfold its own experience within hatred. That is not my choice and I thank the reflection for clarifying a choice that has no belonging in me - for every time I consciously don't choose it, the pathways of my natural preference are restored to a free and thoughtless creativity.
I am blessed in my true inheritance and keep it in awareness by extending it - and keep vigilance against inducements or deceits by which to hate. It is always myself that I attack. Don't be fooled by the 'hit' of a momentary satisfaction that passes off as righteous vindication. It fuels the identity-cycle of war and the illusion of power to export the cost of self-hate and self-pain.
Better to draw it out in the open - and resolve it where it is, than project it out into terms that ensure it will never be healed. But hate will not allow that while it thinks for you. There has to be a relinquishment of using hate-thinking, as a result of a recognition that rises within a choice or shift of focus within our being. It is what we want that aligns and colours our perception.
Ernesto has what he wants - not from me - but because he wants it enough to make his world on it. When enough people conspire secretly in hate, the 'world' that is presented and 'traded' as consensual reality, becomes full of the witnesses to hatefulness, lovelessness, unworthiness. The rot works through the whole batch.
But although born and acculturated to such a 'world', I have a deeper sense of value that stirs at what I can only call a depth - somehow beneath thought and appearances. I treasure the witnesses to the 'real' world - real because it isn't manufactured distortion - but more than an absence of hate - it speaks the qualities of being - of a true appreciation of Conscious Existence - right here amidst the 'ordinary'.
Blessed are the self-impoverishing - for their true inheritance is not their power to change - but only to lose sight of in fixation on the false. This is an ancient habit that has to become recognized as a habit and thus transformed to a conscious choice. Making choice against the grain of ingrained habits calls for discipline of self-worth - and when there is no other real choice available - discipline comes naturally. Its a matter of self-honesty and desire. The rest follows.
Notwithstanding the horror of the human world we inherit and participate in, I hold a sense of Humanity in desire for Life on Earth in a true freedom of being. Not a bunch of concepts - but a primal force of Life Itself. I use words - but they will never substitute for an intimate recognition. A moment of which is richer in information than linear mind can formulate in a lifetime. But then we only need to know, what we need to know, when we need to know it.
The power that aligns or facilitates this is not 'lording it over anything'. That was the image of self that raised a false sense of 'control' over the denial of true feeling being.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Bruce C. >>> Brian:
FYI: The context of the quote was in his "victory speech" after winning the primary in South Carolina he was exclaiming to his critics (and celebrating with his supporters) that he received the majority of votes in every single (I think) "demographic" political category - 'wealthy people, poor people, older people, younger people, men, women, blacks, whites, hispanics, well educated people and poorly educated people', etc.
He said, "I love the educated...I love the poorly educated", etc. I thought it was funny, and it felt genuine.
Brian: Bruce C.
Thanks Bruce. In which case Trump is being inclusive - albeit within the context of those who voted for him and his platform or indeed for his spanner in the works.
Whatever anyone SAYS - it will be what they do that reveals where they are really coming from.
If I write longer than you want to read - just follow your inclinations. Attempting to articulate some of what I feel is beneath or behind the 'human drama' is having to find vocabulary in new ways - because the existing ways are so predicated on mind-control.
It is easier to appeal to people's frustrations and angers and fears than to elicit their free willingness. Because anger writes a blank cheque to 'the enemy of my enemies'. (Remember the use of 9/11 to destroy Iraq - among many other restrictive and destructive agenda).
The action/reaction re-enactment of conflicted self, externalized and suffered, is not where I see any movement for qualitative change - but in the very midst of reaction is the moment of opportunity to pause from running on the same old program and open perspective upon it.
So to me the persistence of the struggle of powers is not wrong so much as misdirected. And predicated upon a false - but heavily imprinted - conditioned sense of self. It is not wrong for powerlessness to seek to regain power, for example.
It does not require a 'good education' to smell a rat, have nothing to do with it within yourself, and thus live a perspective that is true of you. And, there are many mythological stories (personality constructs) through which to live that are as valid as the results in life lived - that need no justification or apology. But if any one operates as an exclusive 'truth' and undermines all others so as to seem to become unchallengeable power, then there will be rage on behalf of the movement of Life Itself - which experiences itself in infinite richness and diversity of perspective - each valid AS a perspective.
Free will is the core human quality from which Spirit recognizes Itself in embodied reflection. But a loveless self-concept, operating as dominant, controlling and conforming imposition upon Will - (and upon experiencing Life), is the basis of an 'anti-Life' principle. However, it has no power but that which is given it in acceptance of self in its terms.
If rage is identified with hatred of OTHER - then the pendulum swings. But in the noticing of the qualities of rage is the opportunity to open a feeling connection - an inner recognition of hurt. The opening of emotional honesty and communication within is the shift from the control-minded definition to a more compassionate willingness that step by step opens and aligns a quality that the control-minded cannot know - much less embody.
In any moment of reaction is the opportunity for mindfulness of embrace rather than a false but very very quick and clever mind of mapping, defining and controlling.
Trump is an embodiment above the radar of controlled media-mind of a rage that demands to be engaged with.
Whether that is lost to the machinations of devious deceits is a matter of standing in integrity and refusing to be baited (or recognizing the error and simply restating and realigning in integrity).
Communication with emotional integrity, is deceit, But communication restored automatically works to undo deceit and take the covers away from that which cannot operate in the open - or must openly reveal its hate in raw terms.
If one does not in a living way say "No!" to hate, it corrupts and despoils any appreciation of Everything - because it usurps the self. But I have to feel its nature within myself to know it does not belong within my current desire and simply - and wholly engage in focussing in my desire without giving power to fear of the rejected self - because I haven't rejected but embraced and moved on.
So I acknowledge feeling hatred as the context in which to own and release it. Which is not 'spiritual or political correctness'. Whereas the mind-denial of hate feelings suppresses that discomfort AND healing from occurring by asserting a pseudo-conformity of assertive identity in concept.
I felt it worth reaching for these meanings with you for anyone who looks beneath the first reaction in desire for a greater perspective than what we think we know.
I don't give Trump the power. I see power in each and every one's willingness to align truly in power for Life or re-enact the destructive illusion of power over Life. It is a heart-sense that cannot know its power unless it lives from it - hence the aborting or subverting of any such Movement.
On the other hand 'power over Life' must keep its hostage alive though powerless because without anything to deny and thus "Lord it over", the very notion of such 'power' is nothinged. It feeds on victim-hood whilst masking its victimizing behind self-justificatory narrative of claiming victimhood and accusing the Other of its own 'sin' and WANTS to believe it true.
Once we made (defined) power in our own image we fear it because it has all the power of our initial investment, and all the reinforcement of conditioning through experience thereafter.
So be careful - indeed truly mindful - of what you/we give power to - because it will come back to us in unexpected and unrecognised ways. Properly understood, this is the secret of Life. Not a conceptual construct, but a relational appreciation of expanding perspective.
Hating and fighting symptoms, or killing the messengers, is the error by which false power denies a deeper communication by dividing us from our own intimate experience with a loveless rule - with the mind of judgement - which is or asserts to be the usurping of power to define all things to a personal private dictate in place of a true willing.
The idea of Jesus - illuminates that of pausing the first so as to feel and know the second. It doesn't matter what path or modality serves such a willingness - it is the fruit that matters - which is an intimacy in motion and not a frozen closeted idea. I feel not to use "Jesus" as a 'power' to hide in or behind - for that is how to lose awareness of the power of love. Love of humanity - through our Own - cannot pre-set qualifications of worthiness - nor make special some at expense of others.
Hatred of humanity is very active in Our World - through the same in ourself. Perhaps only on the recognition of death's approach can love remember that which was lost - unless being right is clung to as hate's defiance and death the proof of victory.