A friend of mine is the principal partner in an accounting firm. He told me that when Trump won in 2024, one of the female CPAs in the firm, a Democrat but very good at her job, was so distraught that she had to take leave time. We both found this passing strange*: had Trump lost, my conservative friend and I would not have been pleased, but we would have taken it in stride. The CPA’s behavior is not atypical. We all know lefties who reacted similarly. Why is this? Here’s my theory.
Although leftism is not a religion, pace Dennis Prager and others who do not share my concern for precision in the use of words, it substitutes for religion in the wholly secular psychic economy of leftists. Because leftist politics is the most important thing in their lives, their “ultimate concern” to borrow a phrase from Paul Tillich, in the way that religion is the most important thing in the lives of the truly religious, leftists freak out when their candidates lose. The feel that they are losing everything, or at least the most important thing. If the very meaning of your life is wrapped up in ‘progressive’ politics, and an uncouth America-first braggart of a billionaire, a crude unclubbable gate-crasher, a crass self-promoter, a man with no class, wins all seven swing states and the popular vote to boot, your world comes crashing down. The degree of freak-out and world-collapse will of course vary from individual to individual. An extreme case is that of Rosie O’Donnell who self-deported to the Emerald Isle where she spends her days obsessing over the Orange Man. Poor Rosie thought the grass would be greener there; it turns out, however, that the legal weed she enjoyed in LaLaLand (Los Angeles) was not to be had in Ireland. “In 2008, O’Donnell said that she was not an alcoholic, and had temporarily given up alcohol to lose weight. She wrote on her blog: “‘Cause I was drinking too much, ’cause I didn’t want to any more, ’cause it is hard to lose weight when drinking, ’cause I can never have only one.”[177] She started drinking again following President Trump’s first election victory in 2016, revealing, “I was very, very depressed. I was overeating. I was overdrinking … I was so depressed.”[178]
My theory also helps explain why leftists are so vehement and unhinged (as witness Robert de Niro’s shameless histrionics) in their blind hatred of Trump. If politics is (or rather functions as) your religion, then, since religion presents to us saintly and divine beings such as Jesus Christ meek and mild*** for emulation, lefties thoughtlessly suppose that political figures should satisfy a similar need: they should be polite, conventionally nice people that our sons and daughter should be able to admire and look up to. Leftists, most of then anyway, want a POTUS who plays a quasi-religious role, something like a Sunday school teacher. (And not just leftists; Never-Trumpers do as well.) Now the last such Sunday-school POTUS was James Earl Carter, and you recall what a disaster he was. A good man, a nice man, but a lousy POTUS. Wasn’t he involved hands-on with Habitat for Humanity? Can you imagine Trump being so involved? He’s a builder, but not that kind of builder.
In sum, two main interconnected points:
A. For the secular left — and most leftists are secularists — politics plays in their lives the all-important roles that religion plays in the lives of the truly religious. This explains why they get so excited about politics and why they are so crushed when their ‘progressivism’ suffers setbacks.
B. And because progressive politics is (or rather functions as) their religion, lefties look to politics to satisfy their need for people to look up to and emulate. Since Trump doesn’t fill the bill, they hate him mindlessly and won’t give him credit for the numerous great things he has done for the USA and indeed the whole world, where Midnight Hammer is an example of the latter. He’s not a ‘nice man’ by cat lady standards. He doesn’t look into the camera and smile like the fraudulent and phony Joey B or clown around like Kamala. He scowls. I call it the Scowl of Minerva.
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* It’s an ersatz or substitute religion, where ‘ersatz’ and ‘substitute’ function as alienans adjectives. See here for more on such adjectives.
** The phrase “passing strange” originates from William Shakespeare’s Othello, where Desdemona describes Othello’s dramatic war stories as “strange, passing strange,” meaning extremely strange or very unusual. In Early Modern English, “passing” functioned as an intensifier, equivalent to “exceedingly.” [AI-generated]
*** Agnus dei qui tollit peccata mundi. The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Lambs are meek and mild.
Bill,
What you say in this post makes sense to me, and pondering it last evening and this morning, I realized the utility of the Jungian category of enantiodromia (running counter to), a term which Jung borrowed from the extant writing of Heraclitus and which he defined as “the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counter-position is built up, which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control.” * When this “one-sided tendency” remains unconscious, that is, pathological or compensatory, it very often takes the form of the Shadow, the dark-side of the personality, “the thing [one] has no wish to be.” ** Specifically, the Shadow consists of those aspects of the personality that the ego finds unacceptable. The more the ego identifies with the persona, its public image or social role, the more violently these unacceptable or opposite qualities must be repressed. For instance, many on the Left, proudly regard themselves and parade about as civilized, compassionate, altruistic, norm-abiding, moral, and so on, while ignoring the shadow contents that clearly contradict these conscious self-conceptions and which repeatedly break through in their words and deeds, from aggression, to rule-breaking, self-interest, vulgarity, and deceit. When such persons encounter the persona of Trump, who, to use your words, appears as a “braggart of a billionaire, a crude unclubbable gate-crasher, a crass self-promoter, a man with no class,” he functions, in Jungian terms, as the perfect “hook”–the real or perceived characteristic in an external object, whether it be a person or a group, onto which an individual unconsciously projects his own rejected, repressed Shadow. And the emotional intensity, in this case TDS, that is a stamp of Shadow projection must necessarily be of a kind that goes beyond what is normally found in political disagreement, since it is psychic in nature, being one part of the self that has been disowned and repressed and that is reflected back in the persona of another.
Vito
*Jung, Collected Works, v, 6, p. 593 (https://jungiancenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Vol-6-psychological-types.pdf).
**Jung CW, v. 16, p.345 (https://jungiancenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Vol-6-psychological-types.pdf).
P. S. In other words, with TDS, we have, in Jungian terms, the collective manifestation of the archetype of the Shadow.
Vito
Vito,
There is a certain Jungian synchronicity to your responses. As you know, I have a deep and abiding interest in Thomas Merton, his inner conflicts, and his relationship to the Zeitgeist of the ’60s. A few days ago I began re-reading Robert Waldron’s *The Wounded Heart of Thomas Merton* (Paulist Press, 2011) which the author describes in his preface as “a Jungian interpretation of the life and work of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton.” The book contains a glossary in which Jungian terms are defined. SHADOW: “Unconscious characteristics or traits of the personality that the ego tends to reject, deny, or ignore.” EGO: “The center of consciousness, which in the first part of a person’s life is dominant.” The task is then to bring about “the ego’s realization of the Self.” SELF: “The archetype of wholeness, which is also the regulating center of the personality. For Western man the Self is Christ.” WHOLENESS: “The mature and full expression of all aspects of one’s personality.” Waldron goes on to say that, for Jung, wholeness is holiness, and that Christ’s “Be ye perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” means: “Be ye whole as your heavenly father is whole.” For the ego to realize the Self, it must become whole. To become whole is to achieve integration. And so the task of individuation is “awareness of the Self.” “Wholeness is possible for people, perfection an ignis fatuus.” IGNIS FATUUS: “(Latin, foolish fire). Will-o’-the- wisp, delusive hope. Jung considers a person’s search for perfection as a delusion; in a lifetime a person can only hope to achieve wholeness.”
Two questions, Vito: Is the above in line with your understanding of Jung? Second, is Jung telling us that psychic health, wholeness, requires accepting the evil in us? The shadow comprises traits that we reject, deny, or ignore. Not wanting to face up to them, we project them into others. The propensity to lie and slander, for example, which is widespread among leftists, as when they call us racists, xenophobes, fascists, etc. Does Jung’s theory imply that these leftists should accept their evil traits so as to achieve wholeness? That would do away with their inner psychic conflict, but I should think that some inner conflict is good. I would deny that self-acceptance is unqualifiedly good.
And so I resist the tendency to conflate perfection with wholeness. In one sense of ‘perfect,’ the perfect is complete or whole and the imperfect is incomplete. But ‘perfect’ as standardly used also has a normative accent. The goodness of a good man is more than his complete self-integration and Self-acceptance.
Bill,
“Is the above in line with your understanding of Jung?” Yes.
“…[I]s Jung telling us that psychic health, wellness, requires accepting the evil in us?
No, since the Shadow, once made conscious and integrated into the ego, undergoes a profound transformation, both in terms of its form and its relationship to the conscious personality. First, it forfeits much of its autonomous, compulsive power. Before integration, the Shadow, unconscious, often possesses us, as when we fall into moments of great anger or rage, project onto others, undermine ourselves, or fall into unexplainable moods. Much neurotic, damaging behavior is the result. Once its contents, whether—for example–repressed aggression, repressed sensuality, or repressed egoism–are consciously recognized and accepted, it loses its power to hijack emotions and behavior. The dark, feared parts of the Self are drained of their force. In this process, the Shadow becomes less archetypically monstrous and more human. In dreams, for instance, the repressed Shadow often appears as a demon, monster, or some other type of hideous figure. But as it is confronted and accepted, the force that the archetype carries is softened, appearing as a figure or figures with recognizable human limitations, susceptibilities, and instincts. Its once repressed contents, exaggerated as demonic or monstrous, are seen as human and drained of their terrifying power. As a result of this process of integration, much of the psychic energy that was formerly bound up with the Shadow is released into conscious productive activity, from creativity, to sensuality, to appropriate assertiveness, etc.
So, what emerges now as part of the ego, the conscious Self, is not “evil,” in the sense of being harmful to others or oneself. This does not mean that inner conflict ends, since, for Jung, integration is never complete. As we age and undergo life changes, new layers of the Shadow emerge, but these can also be progressively integrated, if hopefully our conscious attitude toward them is one of acceptance rather than rejection or denial. So, yes, the inner conflict that makes for the emergence of the Self remains ongoing until our deaths.
Vito
Vito,
Suppose a serial rapist is motivated by a raging lust, not so much for the intense pleasure of orgasm, but by a burning desire to dominate and humiliate women. If that desire is an ingredient in the Shadow and is evil, then it cannot be integrated into a healthy whole: it needs to be destroyed completely. No?
Bill,
“If that desire is an ingredient in the Shadow and is evil, then it cannot be integrated into a healthy whole: it needs to be destroyed completely. No?”
Well, it certainly needs to be contained, since I believe that Jung would regard the behavior of such a serial rapist as evidence of an overwhelming pathological domination by an unintegrated and autonomous shadow. The shadow has become archaically inflated and fully or partially possessed by collective archetypical forces. Such a pathological state would emerge in a person whose ego is too weak or disassociated to mediate between the conscious and unconscious. The absence of effective ego mediation permits the shadow to act autonomously, often in compulsive, violent, and ritualized ways. Here, we have the manifestation not of the personal shadow contents of the neurotic but rather a manifestation of elements of the collective shadow, including the collective human potential for brutality, domination, and eroticized violence.
The ego of the psychotic lacks the strength to encounter and assimilate gradually the unconscious shadow and the archetypes, in the hope of progressively sapping them of their raw contents and integrating them into consciousness. Although Jung’s views altered over time, he always cautioned against imposing psychic integration on psychotic patients. Analysis in such cases was potentially dangerous for both patient and therapist.
Vito
Can politics also function as religion for some on the right too ? Idolatry and worship of non-Deity is an affliction all humans succumb to no?
I’d say so. Consider those on the Right who respect religion but simply cannot bring themselves to believe in God, the soul, post-mortem rewards and punishments, etc. They are nonreligious without being anti-religion. They concede that it has an ‘immanent’ value for the conduct of life in this world, but no transcendent reference. For some of these people politics could function for them as a substitute for religion that gives their lives meaning and purpose. If the main thing in a person’s life is conservative political activism, then one could say, loosely, that such pol. activism is that person’s ‘religion.’ And that would surely be better than if golf or chasing women was his ‘religion.’
I do not disagree with you on your first assessment, one can see the value of religion while not believing in God because if God did create perfect laws and precincts, it is logical that the framework outlined by God for life is objectively the best one. On your final assessment, however, while it may be better than other idols, politics (right in this case) as a substitution for faith is still worship of non-Deity. You cannot remove Deity from that which is meant to be the worship of Deity and expect no change to the essence.
While the religion of the left is abhorrent, I would argue that when you look carefully at the ‘religion’ of the right (in its most virulent form) you can trace back its foundations to atheistic world views and philosophy (Nietsze, Darwinism) and even some pagan ideology that was against Christian teaching not dissimilar to what ultimately drives the left. At the end of it , extremes meet.
Vito,
There are two things I am trying to understand regarding the psychology of our pol. enemies. One is why many of them become so pathologically upset when their candidates lose. They turn to drugs, the bottle, suffer psychosomatic ailments, can’t function, etc. The other thing is why they boil over with mindless rage against conservatives like Trump. Of course, these two responses are related but different.
Your Jungian theory explains the second response. As you say, >>many on the Left, proudly regard themselves and parade about as civilized, compassionate, altruistic, norm-abiding, moral, and so on, while ignoring the shadow contents that clearly contradict these conscious self-conceptions and which repeatedly break through in their words and deeds, from aggression, to rule-breaking, self-interest, vulgarity, and deceit. When such persons encounter the persona of Trump, who, to use your words, appears as a “braggart of a billionaire, a crude unclubbable gate-crasher, a crass self-promoter, a man with no class,” he functions, in Jungian terms, as the perfect “hook”–the real or perceived characteristic in an external object, whether it be a person or a group, onto which an individual unconsciously projects his own rejected, repressed Shadow. And the emotional intensity, in this case TDS, that is a stamp of Shadow projection must necessarily be of a kind that goes beyond what is normally found in political disagreement, since it is psychic in nature, being one part of the self that has been disowned and repressed and that is reflected back in the persona of another.<< The gist of your theory is that the Trump hater unconsciously projects into Trump the rejected and repressed contents of his own Shadow. By offloading these despicable traits of himself onto Trump, he avoids having to acknowledge them in himself. And so by hating Trump he is able to feel good about himself, indeed far superior to the fascist! the Nazi! the dictator! the white supremacist! the racist! The intensity of the hatred is explained by its rootage in the intrapsychic conflict in the Trump hater. Sane people take pol. disagreements in stride, as 'par for the course,' but the Trump hater cannot do this because for him the political disagreement is really an unconscious disagreement with himself . So I believe you have explained the second thing I mentioned --assuming we accept the Jungian background theory. But I don't quite see how the Jungian explains the first thing, namely, the pathological depression of those who ceased functioning, took to the bottle, etc., upon hearing of Trump's victory.
Bill,
I am obviously no expert in these matters, but I believe that Jung would explain these sorts of self-destructive behaviors as instances in which an extremely repressed personal shadow grows in energy and becomes autonomous, eventually breaking through the control of the ego. Here, the disowned energy is no longer projected outward onto scapegoats, who normally serve as psychic hooks, but rather inward and is manifested as self-harm or self-punishment. Remember that Jung viewed the psyche as a self-regulating system; whatever is excluded from consciousness will in one way or another be expressed. The psyche seeks to restore balance by punishing a highly restrictive one-sided conscious stance.
Vito