Again, I say, I don't like discontinuities. Nothing comes from nothing. How is it that the most fortunate people ever, we Americans, can be seduced by meanness? How can we be so resentful?
Our lives feel inauthentic and unrooted, no doubt, and that is the undercurrent expressing itself through attachment to oversize embodiments of the fear created by the feelings of vulnerability.
The vulnerability is imaginary, a hallucination. It's the result of a lack of self-knowledge, the fear of ourselves, so we're out there seeking ourselves in all the wrong places, through identification with iconic characters.
Donald Trump, for example, represents our worst suspicions about our subliminal selves and our inadequacy. Through him we vicariously live out our anger, fear and resentment. We are trying to encounter ourselves.
And we do. It's pathetic and unseemly, a country-club culture trying to redefine privilege as a right, betraying the legacy of the relatively responsible people who preceded us and who knew about work and adversity.
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