The Right has created itself as the Rebel, the One that is outside of the Mainstream Liberal establishment for the last 50 years. In order to take the Rebel posture, like the adolescent one has to say I am NOT the parent. So whatever the parent says, I won’t do it. I am not that, even when what the parent says is for my own good.
Trump is the personification of this adolescent posture of the immature male whose development has been arrested. He is against the mother and must control women. And he must control mother nature, always the One that is outside of the Many. Competition, the survival of the fittest, not empathy and cooperation are his mantras.
Whatever rises in the news, the Rebels must cleave it into Them and Us (rebels). Instead of restoring the cow, the rebel can only butcher it.
If science says to wear a mask, I’m not going to do it. Science is the established way of knowing, the cooperative way of knowing. The Rebel relies on his own instinct, which always says to not do what the mother wants.
The modern liberal secular world that was born in Europa in the 16th century has created a dominant objective view or way of knowing that has disappeared the subjective viewpoint of value, purpose, and meaning. When you are just a thing caused by chance in a meaningless universe, Who am I? gets reduced to being just an IT, a marble in a stupid game of marbles signifying nothing. Who am I? In this objective material universe, I am just a ghost in the machine. Science cannot answer this question because all it can do is describe you as an IT, a thing with qualities, like a butterfly pinned to the wall. But who am I, says the butterfly.
The GOP after the 60s rebellion of this subjective viewpoint that exploded then as the Baby Boomers, a generation with a burning question, Who am I? began to answer this question politically, and with the invitation of Evangelicals into the party, religiously as well. GOP became the party of values, the party of personal identity. Who am I? I am a Conservative!
And who is a Conservative? A Conservative is NOT liberal, not Democratic, Not Clinton, and Not Obama, Not Hillary, and not the parent. The Conservative movement became a rite of passage to being a true individual, a self-reliant man who is free from Mommy (Hillary).
Trump came along to give this movement a face, flesh and blood, its hero, the One who has come to is true man.
Trump mystic, his value is in his rebellion. No matter what the Parent Main Stream society says, Trump does the opposite. He scores points this way.
And along comes Corona. Now we have to listen to the parent (science and the experts) or die. Trump’s rebellion has no cause now. The evidence is plain and clear: obey Trump and die.
Corona is like diabetes. Diabetes has laws you have to follow. Diabetes is a new parent to our rebellious child. If you don’t eat the way Diabetes wants you to, you will die. Corona is like that. Corona has laws you must follow. Our rebellious child resists. “I don’t want to stay at home. I want to party.”
Corona says cooperate, play like a team, a national tribe. Our rebellious child says NO, I want to do it my way, like Frank Sinatra. That’s the American Way. The Rebel says I want to be unique, and the way I can be ME is to not be You, to disagree with you, to argue with you, to resist You. I can be ME by avoiding a relationship with the whole, with the mainstream, with the parent, with the family.
But now as the body bags pile up, the rebellion is running out of steam. We survive by going with the mainstream instead of swimming against it.
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