The current posturing of GOP presidential candidates has revived the fears and fueled the tensions that wracked the United States nearly fifty years ago in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement. This is eerily highlighted by the release of the brilliant new movie, “The Help”, making us wonder how far we really have come since Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream with America.
The right wing cultural myopia and insularity fears science, people of color, people of “foreign extraction”, intellectuals, all government (not controlled by the “right” people), the possibility that biblical literalism is intellectually and theologically untenable or a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose, nature, and content of scripture- and a host of other things. They have a fanatical but factually wrong insistence that all taxation prevents economic growth, that the wealthy willingly and automatically create jobs that grow the middle class; and that government support of citizens’ basic needs is misguided, invasive, and counterproductive to our well-being; and that words like “liberal”, “progressive”, “socialist”, and “compromise” are expletives in the Republican lexicon of dirty words, (suggesting a whiff of infernal sulphur at their very mention). It is only a baby step to move from the right to deviate from their norm to being a deviant in their eyes.
This kind of mental rigidity evinced by the political right has all the irrational, narcissistic, paranoid earmarks of a pathological condition. They appeal with passionate conviction to a romanticized bygone era that never really was. They seem disconnected from the reality of the life experience of the majority of Americans, yet feel narcissistically convinced that they speak for everyone when they express their views. This is a delusional fantasy, the sign of serious dysfunction.
In therapy, for an emotional block or disorder to be healed, the patient has to come to terms with the traumas and beliefs- no matter how unreasonable or unjustifiable- that drive his or her behavior. In the now famous 12-step model of Alcoholics Anonymous, (and its innumerable offspring)- there is a fundamental premise of success: No matter how obvious it may be to others that someone has a drinking problem (or any other compulsive behavioral issue), NOTHING can be done to heal it without the afflicted coming to terms with the reality that the problem exists as a result of their own behavior and choices- whether conscious or unconscious. Ignorance of the facts is no excuse.
The almost total lack of evidence of objective self-reflection on the part of right-wing ideologues speaks to the issue of unconsciousness being ferociously self-perpetuating. Notwithstanding, at some point we all must stop and examine ourselves- face our fears and the traumas from which they spring.
In the Civil Rights Movement the nation underwent major culture shock as the racial assumptions underlying the nation’s social contract were confronted and found to be seriously flawed, fueled by phobic misinformation and ignorance. As a member of the generation that grew up during that upheaval, in hindsight I think few of us were able to recognize how deeply traumatic that actually was for many people. As my favorite bumper-sticker says, “Denial is not a river in Egypt”, but it is a fundamental and common psychological response to trauma.
In our struggle towards true cultural competence, we need to come to a deeper understanding of the nature of that trauma for our country to move forward. Why was it so painful, and why does it continue to be, despite the social progress and generally greater racial tolerance we have achieved? What is the underlying conditioning that does not permit us to be wrong about our past assumptions without it provoking an identity crisis? With what have we so misidentified ourselves that the discovery that it is not our true identity becomes devastating, rather than liberating? We have been brainwashed, or more accurately, we have brainwashed ourselves, but it has not made our minds clean. We need to understand how and why, so we can make better choices for the future.
Coming to a deeper understanding of ourselves and others is not a nice idea- it requires us to be vulnerable, uncertain, uncomfortable- but it is necessary if we are to change the dynamic that perpetuates fear, hatred, and distrust running our lives and our governments. This is our greatest political, social, economic and spiritual challenge today.
