1/2
A friend of mine posted the following, originally by a man named Seth Abrams. I think it is very enlightening. For those of us who've been wondering WHY the Magats deny reality right in front of them - this is a way of changing our perceptions about the problem and it frames the phenomenon we find ourselves confronting. Changes and clarifies how to interact.
2/2
Yes, including the Trump adult children who are, for the most part, just as repulsive as their father...but part of me does have a drop of compassion for them. Imagine growing up in such a materially-endowed (yet emotionally/morally-bankrupted/corrupted) environment? Such unified familial adoration for such superficial values and such mercurial, unimpeded bullying behavior by their father. I had higher hopes for Tiffany but she has turned out to be just like the rest.
Still, each had many choices all along the way. Most thinking adults do not reflexively and wholesale assume every single value/perspective handed down to them by their parents/family/social environment. If we have a brain and half a spine, we pick and choose: those perspectives/values worth keeping and those worth rejecting...and then finding our OWN meaningful path and values in life. There is something truly arrested and sad about the Trump kids: they are like desperate squawking clones of their father, utterly subservient to his raging narcissism, sinking to any low level of behavior in order to merit an absent-minded pat on the head by their psycho Dad....
Whatever light and beauty they may have had as children was knocked out once and for all long ago...
I feel that the Trump children are too afraid of losing their inheritances, even if maybe Ivanka thinks what her father is doing is wrong -- so as long as he is alive, they will all be parroting whatever messages would be most pleasing to him. In the meantime, they are weaving their own karma in doing so, and by the time they receive their inheritances, they will also be so ingrained in this way of acting and thinking that it will become habitual for them. Cognitive dissonance is very painful to live with for very long. And the highly public nature of their messaging now will make it much harder for them to change course later on -- I mean, for one thing, they have lost all credibility with anyone who is not a Trump supporter.
So true. Their future inheritance may be uppermost in their minds... although they have undoubtedly learned a few lessons about "the pliability of truth" and "the use of cruelty" from dear old Dad...Ironically, after DT's enormous debts come due in a few years, if he doesn't find a way to pay them off, there may not be much of an inheritance left for them to pick over... and I doubt any of them (the boys in particular) have it in them to make anything of themselves without enormous money behind them. They seem like an unusually mediocre lot.
On the other hand, Rupert Murdoch's youngest son, James, has dared to diverge from the family's conservative views. I have to say: I admire his far more liberal views as well as his moral gumption...That's something you don't see everyday from the ultra-rich crowd...
Wow, thanks Laura. This is both fascinating and terrifying. Beginning to sound like a SciFi movie. The Digital/Cyber Age is becoming far more complex and is creating threats that we never could have dreamt of in a simpler time...
@laura-f, thank you for sharing such an important message from your friend. It is very disturbing that there is such a slippery slope between recreational on-line multiplayer gaming and cosplay, and alternate reality games developed for malicious purposes. ?
It's a bit tangential, perhaps, but I just love the title of this thread. I follow the I Ching more closely than I do pretty much any other mystical oracle simply because it is less about trying to decipher "what's going to happen" and more about reminding me to be centered and focused on my own responses -- ultimately, after all, it doesn't really matter what is going on "out there" as much as it matters what happens in my own heart -- things can be great, but if my response is not full of love and light for all, well, I've failed then, haven't I? And the reverse, of course, is also true.
So, anyway, back to my original tangent, before my tangential tangent derails us altogether...
Nothing can ever get to its absolute worst without, by definition, opening the door to a fun-filled bounceback to being better. There's every reason in the world to mourn when awful things happen, but it shouldn't prevent us from remembering that awful things are followed by good things. Yin flows to Yang, flows to Yin, flows to Yang. We're unraveling. Which means... we're about to turn.
I've got my tub full of popcorn, ready to watch the next act of this movie. It's quite likely to be as fun as the last one was disconcerting.
My entertainment of the day was seeing that DT just named a branch of the military (Guardians) after a comic book(Guardians of the galaxy)
May his last act of office be to create an elite team of "Power" Rangers armed with giant interconnecting robots that look like dinosaurs to fight the evil* space witch who lives on the moon.
I suspect even if he did this, many of the MAGA folks wouldn't question his "genius" or stability. After all, if America doesn't fight that space witch, who will. She's an illegal alien too. The horror of it all!
On the flip side, perhaps "Rita Repulsa / Goldar 2024!" It think it would still be better than some of the alternatives.
*I know many folks on this forum don't believe in evil, so feel free to call her a mischievous and misunderstood space witch. ?
OMG you just turned the last 4 years of the US Presidency into a episode of Power Rangers......and it didn't feel like a stretch at all. No wonder Trump is always wearing that face paint. He wants to be the Orange Power Ranger.