Absorption / Deflection

"In modern democratic nations, we usually don't actually kill our leaders; we periodically throw them out of office and replace them with revitalized substitutes. But the decline in potency of the leader, his inexorable abandonment of us as we grow still is felt today. This is because the leader is a less a figure of authority than he is a delegate, someone who tells us to do what we tell him we want done, someone who "takes the blame" for us. As poison container for our dissociated alter, the leader is expected to absorb our violent feelings without collapsing. Many societies actually designate "filth men" to help the leader with this task, relatives who exchange blood with him so they can "intercept" the poisonous feelings of the people directed at him. In modern nations, cabinet members are our "filth men," and are regularly sacrificed when the leader is under attack." (Llooyd DeMause, Psychogenic Theory of History)

Is is possible that Jon Stewart and his gathering crowd are attempting 
to serve as "filth men," in the way Lloyd describes? Jon Stewart has 
Obama on his show to cement the link, and then gathers his crowd in 
Washington to intercept / counter poisonous feelings ("insanity") 
directed at him (Obama) during this unnerving midterm election. 
Obama, we know, is losing Rahm, and for the most part seems more 
"naked" than he does at other times (casual self in "supplicant" / 
lower position on "Daily Show"). Tea Partiers will get their place; 
they will find office at a time when Obama is less potent than he will 
likely at some point once again become; but a considerable body has 
manifested itself near the same time in Washington that shows it 
exists to absorb / counter some / much of the hatred that Obama might 
for the moment be imagined as not quite being able to handle without 
"collapsing."

Different thought: We know that after long periods of growth, when 
we're about to enter that horrifying stretch of time that follows 
manic growth, the termination of the historical cycle, we're all 
inclined to merge back with the engulfing mother and sacrifice 
substitutes of ourselves to Her.

Is this move into government, in near proximity to socialist / 
engulfing Obama, means for the Tea Party movement to in fact become 
part of Her (Obama as agent of Mother) (something Jon Stewart is also 
doing, and perhaps ultimately for the same reason, in his own massing 
on Washington)? Should we expect them to function as Gingrich et al. 
once did and continuously oppose the president? Or will they at some 
point -- after he has suffered and endured their anger, accepted their 
presence within government -- essentially serve as extensions of him, 
and cripple -- believe it or not -- other righteous "crazies"? Should 
we expect Tea Partiers to in fact quickly become denatured -- offering 
up their own potency to Obama, perhaps -- a non-story, and begin its 
own Obama-lead crackdown on people who behave pretty much exactly like 
they did (excited, angry, claiming) before their ascension to 
Washington?

Last thought: If Obama is Hoover -- someone elected principally to 
ensure the Depression, and not "lead" our way through it -- he will 
never become more present, less distant, in our lives. This will fall 
on our subsequent delegate. From the beginning I remember Pat 
Buchanan saying that Obama doesn't speak with heart; maybe rather than 
a messiah, we rejoiced in the erection of a thoroughly / already known, 
pretty place-holder, which would content / assure us as we isolate 
ourselves and slowly succumb to the psychological modifications that 
would drift us towards a simpler, more emotive, less complicated 
leader. As is obvious, I'm not sure of what exactly we truly wish of 
him, just yet.

Patrick

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Amendment:

Concerning my last thought: It may be that what we need time for 
isn't just to slip into a more disassociated state, but to make a 
forthcoming long Depression, extensive sacrifice, less guilt-arousing, 
something we may in fact be doing by the likes of the apparent 
scholarly return to / redemption of "culture of poverty" thinking, 
which -- as it suggests government is limited in what it can do to 
change people, and has historically been used to effectively 
stigmatize the poor as being largely responsible for their own debased 
condition -- works against the efforts of near-undeniably, wholly-
conscious, good people like Paul Krugman to make us feel like some 
foul part of us must actually want sacrifices to not now allow the 
spending we know from history would have prevented the Great 
Depression from ever occurring in the first place.

Patrick

- - - - -

Further thought: If a Depression was ensured during time of a Democratic president and congress, this might prove far too guilt-arousing for actual-sacrifice-wishing liberals to take, even if they had already begun to make poverty a near-"natural," deply-ingrained "condition," via the resurrection of culture of poverty theories. A Republican-lead congress would abate all guilt, entire. "We were just 18-months in, and were prevented from the further progress we would surely have effected!"

My sense of most liberals now, is that they would feel very 
uncomfortable if they actually were able to forestall the depression 
and initiate a period of unrepentant, all-benefiting growth. 
Reason: Mother looms, and is ready to destroy any show of an 
unwillingness to just go along with the curtailment of individuality. 
What they want is the guaranteed depression, guaranteed sacrifices, 
then -- like they did in the last great depression -- to join the 
masses, imagining them not now as "crazies" but as the 
unjustly suffering -- the folk. I feel the compulsion toward this narrative is 
very powerful, and hope that there are enough of the advanced 
psychoclass out there to show that very visibly, some liberals have 
now almost entirely escaped the need to shift from being innovative 
thinkers to being depressed ones. Who wants to wait for the 
termination of a ten-year depression, and some giant war, for liberals 
to once again show their stuff? Show instead that instead of being 
incarcerated, rendered invisible, this generation of the more evolved 
can frustrate the grotesque compulsions of the regressing middle.

Krugman has escaped, and believes Republicans could thwart Democratic 
wishes. As I have been suggesting, it is possible that Krugman is in 
error about the desires of Democrats, and mistakes for sure conflict 
what might end up proving -- complicity. If so, use this to find your 
own, Krugman, not abandon all in astonishment and disgust.

Patrick

Link: "Deflection and / or absorption" (realpsychohistory, 30 October 2010)