People elected Trump because they thought he was Don Draper. COVID is good for you because it’s toasted.Trump is a Zen Koan: a rat stuck in a bamboo tube unable to go back, unable to go forward, and unable to stay where it is. Through the media we keep working and working with this enigma, trying to break the code. No matter what we come up with, it always ends up in MU!
Trump is the personification on the media screen of the pure image man, the American psyche caught in its own selfie, a hall of mirror reflections going into a vortex.
The Image Man must keep climbing higher to avoid falling. But the elevator always has a down.
My vision, understanding, of Trump is not gathered from information on the media, from the split screen of the talking heads. Trump is beyond this or that, this fact or that fact, this or that evidence because the evidence is always equal but opposite. No matter how much weight you put on the Bad Trump, the Good Trump restores zero. The teeter-totter keeps going up and down. Trump is the fulcrum.
I can only understand Trump from the viewpoint of the park bench that sees the whole teeter-totter, not from one end of the board or the other, the left or right end.
What is the Image Man, this modern self or self-image America has created? What is an image but a reflection in a mirror? What does the image need? The Image needs the Mirror to know it because the image knows it is not real. The image needs others to see it, to like it, and if not like it, to hate it. But the main thing is to be seen, to be known by the other, for it is through the eye of the mirror that the Image knows it is real, that it exists. If no one sees the image, if no one sees ME, then I fear I will not exist. So I keep reaffirming myself in the mirror of the other one way or another. I must get the mirror’s attention.
The fallacy here, the lie, the illusion is the mistaken belief that the Mirror of Knowing is in the eye of the Other. “Are you looking at me?? If that eye is a. stranger, we are terrified, but if it is the eye of a lover, we are rapturous. Same eye.
We want to be known, to be liked, to be somebody. For the image man, it is only the Eye of the Other, the eye of the public that can validate me. Otherwise, I’m falling, falling like Don Draper.
The Image Man is a lie. We know in our heart of hearts, in our basic knowing that I am not an image. I am the mirror. I am Knowing itself. I am the Mirror in which my image is created. But when I believe that I’m separate from my own Knowing, my own mirror mind, then I project that Knower onto others and try to get others to know me, see me, make me beautiful and respected, and famous, or just somebody.
The image wants a body. The image wants to be reall, but it looks for its validation in the wrong places.
Is not everything a reflection of you? You like this, you don’t like that. That is that but not a reflection of you. You like the doughnut. You want the doughnut. You want you. Whatever you desire, is you. We always desire ourselves, the image always desires what it believes will complete it, make it real. But what we desire is an image of ourselves, a reflection in our invisible mirror.
You see that? What I see is a reflection in the Knower that is me. I know it. I see it. I want it. I don’t want it…it is all what I know…I am the mirror…yet I see myself not.
Oh…wonderful…wonderful to see that. Where can I go that I am not?
Where is the Knower of ME? We fall in love and for a while, my lovers knows me as I know myself, and in each other’s eyes, we soar to the stars. But the mirror gets dust, and the up that had no limit comes down, back to earth, and I feel I have lost the Knower of Me.
Do we look for the Knower in the wrong place? Does the reflection, the image look for its mirror in the wrong place? Is the truth out there? Is the mirror out there? is the knower of Me out there?
This is the question to ask. Who asks this question? The Image or the mirror?
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