I agree that a lot of what underpinned the result was rage, incandescent rage.
What I’ve noticed speaking to friends here in Australia is that we’re projecting our own garbage onto US society rather than looking at ourselves.
We all desperately need to find the ground beneath our feet in this physical plane. I recognise many of your listeners are better than most at this. I can say for myself, the quest for grounding is something I commit and recommit to.
Lots of love to you Eric and many thanks to Jeff and Daniel for their wonderful insights the other evening.
Indeed. And I'd say that projection has been cultivated for decades. It's a two way thing. As England declined the US became our "protector" and was happy to extend the hand of cocacolanisation and regional strategic positioning. I live in NZ now and it's the same: both vassal states of the US.
I grew up in a TV-watching family and knew as much about US geography and culture as Australian.
Considering the blanket coverage of this US election by the Australian/NZ mainstream AND alternative media this is clearly what we're being groomed to be concerned about.
I hear your frustration. The misdirected rage is strong and quite irrational. Introspection and critical thinking not apparent. All symptomatic, or at least encouraged by digital as discussed here by Eric, Jeffrey etc al.
Sorry about first posting a comment from another blog first before commenting on the content right here, i wanted to make sure the link didn't get lost.
Eric, this is solid gold superb!!!
"Digital technology radically alters and destabilizes the “sense of self” of both individuals and societies, making it anywhere from difficult to impossible to feel and experience who we are. The effect of digital technology is to take people out of contact with themselves, and leave us stranded there.
It has created a kind of emotional plague where many don’t understand how unfulfilled they are, and how desperate for sincerity and trust and physical experience of life, and of one another.
Digital creates a sense of parched thirst without understanding there is such a thing as water. Then we get tyranny. This keeps happening. It is exactly what happened in the 1930s. The charismatic leader swoops in and pretends to rescue people from their own desperation.
Digital seems to offer so much, but it's ultimately depleting, adding a little fee and a little plastic to everything. You get something to eat, but the box was shaken, and the food is lukewarm, and contaminated. People remember throwing the package in the trash more than they remember eating the meal. Washing someone else’s dishes would be more fulfilling.
Trump has known how to harvest that sense of desperation since he first entered electoral politics in 2015. That’s how he ran the nation by Tweet (during the Uranus-Eris conjunction). Digital is a hungry ghost environment, with the phantoms seeking to attach themselves to any free-floating rage that might come along. "
The powers-that-be pretend we're being given the opportunity to rearrange our minds, when in fact they are disarranging them. (Apologies to Jagger and Richards for the appropriation)
The Politics of Cultural Despair. It is despair that is killing us. It fosters what Roger Lancaster calls “poisoned solidarity,” the intoxication forged from the negative energies of fear, envy, hatred and a lust for violence. Chris Hedges, 11/6/24.
In the end, the election was about despair. Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialization. Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs. Despair over austerity programs and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs. Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated under neoliberalism or embrace New Deal type programs that will ameliorate this suffering. Despair over the futile, endless wars, as well as the genocide in Gaza, where generals and politicians are never held accountable. Despair over a democratic system that has been seized by corporate and oligarchic power.
This despair has been played out on the bodies of the disenfranchised through opioid and alcoholism addictions, gambling, mass shootings, suicides — especially among middle-aged white males — morbid obesity and the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the Oprah-like belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires. These are the pathologies of a deeply diseased culture, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls an aggressive despiritualized nihilism.
Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay. He expresses a childish yearning to be an omnipotent god. This yearning resonates with Americans who feel they have been treated like human refuse. But the impossibility of being a god, as Ernest Becker writes, leads to its dark alternative -- destroying like a god. This self-immolation is what comes next.
Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, along with the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which allied itself with Harris, live in their own non-reality-based belief system. Harris, who was anointed by party elites and never received a single primary vote, proudly trumpeted her endorsement by Dick Cheney, a politician who left office with a 13 percent approval rating. The smug, self-righteous “moral” crusade against Trump stokes the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. It reduces a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It refuses to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. It allows Democratic politicians to blithely ignore their base - 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support an arms embargo against Israel. The open collusion with corporate oppression and refusal to heed the desires and needs of the electorate neuters the press and Trump critics. These corporate puppets stand for nothing, other than their own advancement. The lies they tell to working men and women, especially with programs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), do far more damage than any of the lies uttered by Trump.
Oswald Spengler in “The Decline of the West” predicted that, as Western democracies calcified and died, a class of “monied thugs,” people such as Trump, would replace the traditional political elites. Democracy would become a sham. Hatred would be fostered and fed to the masses to encourage them to tear themselves apart. The American dream has become an American nightmare.
The social bonds, including jobs that gave working Americans a sense of purpose and stability, that gave them meaning and hope, have been sundered. The stagnation of tens of millions of lives, the realization that it will not be better for their children, the predatory nature of our institutions, including education, health care and prisons, have engendered, along with despair, feelings of powerlessness and humiliation. It has bred loneliness, frustration, anger and a sense of worthlessness.
I agree with your long-time-view of how the digital has changed humanity in a negative way.
But here in this situation IMHO, it has saved humanity.
Jeffrey's comment "....The charismatic leader swoops in and pretends to rescue people from their own desperation..." Is too simple an explanation for Donald Trump. This isn't the 1930's at all.
Trump is no dictator. The media has mis-represented who he is. However, it is the digital that has preserved what he has actually said, allowing people the opportunity to find out for themselves exactly what he said in each particular situation where the media misconstrued and took out of context his words. Dictator from the first day, fine people on both sides, etc. The media and the digital created their version of him. But in the end the people were able to use discernment by looking themselves.
The country has been destroyed thus creating desperation in its people by progressives (and Marxists, socialists, communists - all of which lead to death on a large scale.)
Tyrannical censorship, over-regulation, control over our lives, in our faces daily with their progressive views of using abortion up to 9 months as birth control, and cutting off penises and disfiguring girls. They hypocritically mandate vaccines, while screaming my body my choice. This is all so cruel.
Telling fragile women lies - you won't ever vote again. ou experience a (God forbid) miscarriage, you won't get healthcare because abortion laws will prevent it. Women will lose all of their rights! (Said Oprah). If your 17 year old gets pregnant she is going to be forced to have the child. Trans people will be hunted down. Your 6 year old can't get hormone blockers. Your 12 year old won't be encouraged to transition without parents knowing. These pre-pubescent kids will be forced to live with parents who won't go along with their demand for transition, instead of the state taking charge of them an making sure they get the surgeries. The cruelty of what has been going on - the reverse justice. The punishing of the victims. People have had enough of it.
They went to far in many ways. They have no regard for history. Beauty - in nature, in others, in art - has been debased. Teachers are talking gender, and telling kids their own life journey from male to female. Little kids' innocence is being stolen by the state!
It is the traditionalists who have won this battle along with common sense and people who do have a sense of who they are, what their role is - woman the nurturer, the life bringer - men the protector, the provider. People really yearn for a re-alignment - a balance as you say - of male and female.
I find your perspective on things so enlightening, and I have benefited greatly from you wisdom,
but you have to admit man, that people are feeling the squeeze like never before, in their personal financial situation, in the violence that is happening in the street, in the wars, and in the attack on their children and their rights as parents. This is not a digital issue. This is life in 3D.
Their ideas of foreign policy were shit and dangerous. They are war mongers for goodness sakes! The Ukraine could have been negotiated right from the start. They sent Harris to talk to Zelensky right before the invasion. Now that we have seen who Harris is, we can see why there was such a failure in leadership to prevent what was about to happen. There are a myriad of dark reasons why our leaders have the marching orders to send our money there instead of using it here to help our people. People are sick of that too.
The scenes now on social media of emotional women joining the 4B club . No sex, no giving birth, no getting married for the next 4 years. Women shaving their heads. Talk about getting a blue tattoo, or wearing a blue bracelet, so they can recognize other members of the club.
Really? The world is shaking to the core, this is what you do?
But the digital does allow us to see the world outside of our own bubble if we choose.
Scenes on X of incredibly creative, funny, ironic, sarcastic, and just, IMHO, wonderful people who in groups, or alone, are just showing what they are feeling about not so much electing Trump, but also it is a soft revolution against the Progressive agenda and crazy dangerous policies.
The tictoks and x videos I have seen are just so uplifting to see. It isn't the boomers so much. It Gen x and Gen z. They are the ones saying, life is precious, no more endless wars, no more killing babies in the womb and selling their body parts to make vaccines. Nor more life sucking chemicals in our food and our skies.
Donald Trump is the face of the MAGA/MAHA movement, but even without him, this movement is not going away. Tired of the UNI-party, this movement has dreams, and visions for a beautiful future. The malcontents will always have something to complain about. And lucky for them they will reap the benefits. America is no longer on its way to 3rd world status, and however it is we got here, thank God we dd.
This is from someone I follow: He does point out how relevant the memes are. They encapsulate the message of the creator in a clever way in a short digital burst of creativity. So perhaps you are correct when you say he Trump couldn't have won without the digital. The visual MSM would have had complete control of the narrative.
"This is a terribly funny encapsulation video outlining the effective cultural war combat strategy of the 2024 MAGA movement.
I have shared before my research into the election coalition that took place, specifically as it relates to two generations: Gen-X and Gen-Z. The data from the election shows that Gen-X was easily the largest voting block this cycle, they simply turned up like never before. In the background of the social media war, Gen-X trained, tooled and empowered the Gen-Z energy, and the outcome is exactly what this video shows.
The angry Democrats in 2024 never stood a chance against the totally organic “so what” snarky memers. The sarcastic humor, ridicule and resulting fun simply started to catch fire in the social media world. Corporate media didn’t understand it, Big Tech couldn’t control it, Hollywood was overwhelmed in a space they did not influence, and the speed of the movement was too fast for the IC to catch or block it."
Michael Cohen Discusses Effectiveness of “FU MAGA” Winning Political Cultural War
<< However: Jeffrey's comment "....The charismatic leader swoops in and pretends to rescue people from their own desperation..." Is too simple an explanation for Donald Trump. >>
This is my comment and I am referencing Wilhelm Reich. See "The Function of the Orgasm."
At the risk of embarrassing myself by not being in your league of experience, expertise across many areas, and education, I am going to say:
I know covid/lockdown/vaccine has totally fractured our trust toward the President Elect. But, as of now the desperation people are feeling - including being mandated to vaccinate - has been caused by the folks running the show for the past 4 years, not Trump. I don't think/believe he is pretending.
I'm at a loss as to what your comment is.
The world is not having enough orgasms resulting in us collectively being emotionally, physiologically, and physically unwell. We are losing touch with our inner selves, no longer loving ourselves or each other. Is that your point?
I agree that a lot of what underpinned the result was rage, incandescent rage.
What I’ve noticed speaking to friends here in Australia is that we’re projecting our own garbage onto US society rather than looking at ourselves.
We all desperately need to find the ground beneath our feet in this physical plane. I recognise many of your listeners are better than most at this. I can say for myself, the quest for grounding is something I commit and recommit to.
Lots of love to you Eric and many thanks to Jeff and Daniel for their wonderful insights the other evening.
You make a good point about the cultivation of this.
Indeed. And I'd say that projection has been cultivated for decades. It's a two way thing. As England declined the US became our "protector" and was happy to extend the hand of cocacolanisation and regional strategic positioning. I live in NZ now and it's the same: both vassal states of the US.
I grew up in a TV-watching family and knew as much about US geography and culture as Australian.
Considering the blanket coverage of this US election by the Australian/NZ mainstream AND alternative media this is clearly what we're being groomed to be concerned about.
I hear your frustration. The misdirected rage is strong and quite irrational. Introspection and critical thinking not apparent. All symptomatic, or at least encouraged by digital as discussed here by Eric, Jeffrey etc al.
🙏🏼
Sorry about first posting a comment from another blog first before commenting on the content right here, i wanted to make sure the link didn't get lost.
Eric, this is solid gold superb!!!
"Digital technology radically alters and destabilizes the “sense of self” of both individuals and societies, making it anywhere from difficult to impossible to feel and experience who we are. The effect of digital technology is to take people out of contact with themselves, and leave us stranded there.
It has created a kind of emotional plague where many don’t understand how unfulfilled they are, and how desperate for sincerity and trust and physical experience of life, and of one another.
Digital creates a sense of parched thirst without understanding there is such a thing as water. Then we get tyranny. This keeps happening. It is exactly what happened in the 1930s. The charismatic leader swoops in and pretends to rescue people from their own desperation.
Digital seems to offer so much, but it's ultimately depleting, adding a little fee and a little plastic to everything. You get something to eat, but the box was shaken, and the food is lukewarm, and contaminated. People remember throwing the package in the trash more than they remember eating the meal. Washing someone else’s dishes would be more fulfilling.
Trump has known how to harvest that sense of desperation since he first entered electoral politics in 2015. That’s how he ran the nation by Tweet (during the Uranus-Eris conjunction). Digital is a hungry ghost environment, with the phantoms seeking to attach themselves to any free-floating rage that might come along. "
The powers-that-be pretend we're being given the opportunity to rearrange our minds, when in fact they are disarranging them. (Apologies to Jagger and Richards for the appropriation)
Chris Hedges is clueless about very important matters, including 9/11 and 3/11 (3/11.20, when the "COVID" Psyop started), but he nails this one.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-cultural-despair
The Politics of Cultural Despair. It is despair that is killing us. It fosters what Roger Lancaster calls “poisoned solidarity,” the intoxication forged from the negative energies of fear, envy, hatred and a lust for violence. Chris Hedges, 11/6/24.
In the end, the election was about despair. Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialization. Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs. Despair over austerity programs and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs. Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated under neoliberalism or embrace New Deal type programs that will ameliorate this suffering. Despair over the futile, endless wars, as well as the genocide in Gaza, where generals and politicians are never held accountable. Despair over a democratic system that has been seized by corporate and oligarchic power.
This despair has been played out on the bodies of the disenfranchised through opioid and alcoholism addictions, gambling, mass shootings, suicides — especially among middle-aged white males — morbid obesity and the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the Oprah-like belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires. These are the pathologies of a deeply diseased culture, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls an aggressive despiritualized nihilism.
Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay. He expresses a childish yearning to be an omnipotent god. This yearning resonates with Americans who feel they have been treated like human refuse. But the impossibility of being a god, as Ernest Becker writes, leads to its dark alternative -- destroying like a god. This self-immolation is what comes next.
Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, along with the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which allied itself with Harris, live in their own non-reality-based belief system. Harris, who was anointed by party elites and never received a single primary vote, proudly trumpeted her endorsement by Dick Cheney, a politician who left office with a 13 percent approval rating. The smug, self-righteous “moral” crusade against Trump stokes the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. It reduces a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It refuses to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. It allows Democratic politicians to blithely ignore their base - 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support an arms embargo against Israel. The open collusion with corporate oppression and refusal to heed the desires and needs of the electorate neuters the press and Trump critics. These corporate puppets stand for nothing, other than their own advancement. The lies they tell to working men and women, especially with programs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), do far more damage than any of the lies uttered by Trump.
Oswald Spengler in “The Decline of the West” predicted that, as Western democracies calcified and died, a class of “monied thugs,” people such as Trump, would replace the traditional political elites. Democracy would become a sham. Hatred would be fostered and fed to the masses to encourage them to tear themselves apart. The American dream has become an American nightmare.
The social bonds, including jobs that gave working Americans a sense of purpose and stability, that gave them meaning and hope, have been sundered. The stagnation of tens of millions of lives, the realization that it will not be better for their children, the predatory nature of our institutions, including education, health care and prisons, have engendered, along with despair, feelings of powerlessness and humiliation. It has bred loneliness, frustration, anger and a sense of worthlessness.
I agree with your long-time-view of how the digital has changed humanity in a negative way.
But here in this situation IMHO, it has saved humanity.
Jeffrey's comment "....The charismatic leader swoops in and pretends to rescue people from their own desperation..." Is too simple an explanation for Donald Trump. This isn't the 1930's at all.
Trump is no dictator. The media has mis-represented who he is. However, it is the digital that has preserved what he has actually said, allowing people the opportunity to find out for themselves exactly what he said in each particular situation where the media misconstrued and took out of context his words. Dictator from the first day, fine people on both sides, etc. The media and the digital created their version of him. But in the end the people were able to use discernment by looking themselves.
The country has been destroyed thus creating desperation in its people by progressives (and Marxists, socialists, communists - all of which lead to death on a large scale.)
Tyrannical censorship, over-regulation, control over our lives, in our faces daily with their progressive views of using abortion up to 9 months as birth control, and cutting off penises and disfiguring girls. They hypocritically mandate vaccines, while screaming my body my choice. This is all so cruel.
Telling fragile women lies - you won't ever vote again. ou experience a (God forbid) miscarriage, you won't get healthcare because abortion laws will prevent it. Women will lose all of their rights! (Said Oprah). If your 17 year old gets pregnant she is going to be forced to have the child. Trans people will be hunted down. Your 6 year old can't get hormone blockers. Your 12 year old won't be encouraged to transition without parents knowing. These pre-pubescent kids will be forced to live with parents who won't go along with their demand for transition, instead of the state taking charge of them an making sure they get the surgeries. The cruelty of what has been going on - the reverse justice. The punishing of the victims. People have had enough of it.
They went to far in many ways. They have no regard for history. Beauty - in nature, in others, in art - has been debased. Teachers are talking gender, and telling kids their own life journey from male to female. Little kids' innocence is being stolen by the state!
It is the traditionalists who have won this battle along with common sense and people who do have a sense of who they are, what their role is - woman the nurturer, the life bringer - men the protector, the provider. People really yearn for a re-alignment - a balance as you say - of male and female.
I find your perspective on things so enlightening, and I have benefited greatly from you wisdom,
but you have to admit man, that people are feeling the squeeze like never before, in their personal financial situation, in the violence that is happening in the street, in the wars, and in the attack on their children and their rights as parents. This is not a digital issue. This is life in 3D.
Their ideas of foreign policy were shit and dangerous. They are war mongers for goodness sakes! The Ukraine could have been negotiated right from the start. They sent Harris to talk to Zelensky right before the invasion. Now that we have seen who Harris is, we can see why there was such a failure in leadership to prevent what was about to happen. There are a myriad of dark reasons why our leaders have the marching orders to send our money there instead of using it here to help our people. People are sick of that too.
The scenes now on social media of emotional women joining the 4B club . No sex, no giving birth, no getting married for the next 4 years. Women shaving their heads. Talk about getting a blue tattoo, or wearing a blue bracelet, so they can recognize other members of the club.
Really? The world is shaking to the core, this is what you do?
But the digital does allow us to see the world outside of our own bubble if we choose.
Scenes on X of incredibly creative, funny, ironic, sarcastic, and just, IMHO, wonderful people who in groups, or alone, are just showing what they are feeling about not so much electing Trump, but also it is a soft revolution against the Progressive agenda and crazy dangerous policies.
The tictoks and x videos I have seen are just so uplifting to see. It isn't the boomers so much. It Gen x and Gen z. They are the ones saying, life is precious, no more endless wars, no more killing babies in the womb and selling their body parts to make vaccines. Nor more life sucking chemicals in our food and our skies.
Donald Trump is the face of the MAGA/MAHA movement, but even without him, this movement is not going away. Tired of the UNI-party, this movement has dreams, and visions for a beautiful future. The malcontents will always have something to complain about. And lucky for them they will reap the benefits. America is no longer on its way to 3rd world status, and however it is we got here, thank God we dd.
This is from someone I follow: He does point out how relevant the memes are. They encapsulate the message of the creator in a clever way in a short digital burst of creativity. So perhaps you are correct when you say he Trump couldn't have won without the digital. The visual MSM would have had complete control of the narrative.
"This is a terribly funny encapsulation video outlining the effective cultural war combat strategy of the 2024 MAGA movement.
I have shared before my research into the election coalition that took place, specifically as it relates to two generations: Gen-X and Gen-Z. The data from the election shows that Gen-X was easily the largest voting block this cycle, they simply turned up like never before. In the background of the social media war, Gen-X trained, tooled and empowered the Gen-Z energy, and the outcome is exactly what this video shows.
The angry Democrats in 2024 never stood a chance against the totally organic “so what” snarky memers. The sarcastic humor, ridicule and resulting fun simply started to catch fire in the social media world. Corporate media didn’t understand it, Big Tech couldn’t control it, Hollywood was overwhelmed in a space they did not influence, and the speed of the movement was too fast for the IC to catch or block it."
Michael Cohen Discusses Effectiveness of “FU MAGA” Winning Political Cultural War
Oh - BTW, is that not Siri Cruise at 1:53?
https://x.com/listen_2learn/status/1855640752623136878
<< However: Jeffrey's comment "....The charismatic leader swoops in and pretends to rescue people from their own desperation..." Is too simple an explanation for Donald Trump. >>
This is my comment and I am referencing Wilhelm Reich. See "The Function of the Orgasm."
At the risk of embarrassing myself by not being in your league of experience, expertise across many areas, and education, I am going to say:
I know covid/lockdown/vaccine has totally fractured our trust toward the President Elect. But, as of now the desperation people are feeling - including being mandated to vaccinate - has been caused by the folks running the show for the past 4 years, not Trump. I don't think/believe he is pretending.
I'm at a loss as to what your comment is.
The world is not having enough orgasms resulting in us collectively being emotionally, physiologically, and physically unwell. We are losing touch with our inner selves, no longer loving ourselves or each other. Is that your point?