I hate to make such a bold statement, lest in come true, but I had to find a way to express what I think could be going on in the political leadership in this country right now. It ain’t pretty, so I won’t dress it up.

First of all, I’ll share something I heard from Brene Brown. She says that narcissists’ grandiose behavior comes from deep sense of shame. That narcissists are some of the most shame-based people on the planet, horribly afraid and embarrassed about being ordinary.

I think many of us want to rise above being ordinary, and somehow make a larger mark on the world, but I had never once attributed seemingly self-loving, self-aggrandizing, larger-than-life characters as being anything other than undeservedly proud of themselves. Her idea flipped this on its head, and made me wonder what could reach someone like this and thrust them back into humanity, especially if they appeared to be achieving their uber-godly aims.

Shame hides in closets, under beds and can’t even stand being breathed on, yet facing shame usually means getting to some kind of braver, kinder truth of the center. It’s hard, but looking at shame is like noticing the weird picture someone cast on us while they defiled our soul is curling up at the edges. Finally understanding that the horror-show mirror we thought was looking back at us, isn’t a reflection of any kind after all. That flimsy yuck tossed on us by a predatory person can feel so much like it is “ours,” but it is actually their psyche projected onto us. Oh, projection… yeah, that’s all over this particular problem.

I have spend a lot of time contemplating the soul of our president, trying to find a wisp of humanity that is not self-serving, as a way to gauge the real person underneath in hopes of ushering a shift. No one is irredeemable, right?! Although I was beginning to think there was no real person underneath, maybe this shame-based view sheds light on the layers of nasty old yuck cast upon him. A man who would usher in the end of dignity as an American virtue must have had some deeply undignified shit go down in his life. You would think anyway…

If dignity comes from the stance that you are above the fray, deservedly so, and elegant in your emotions, word and deed, then why ditch that lovely experience?* If you don’t believe you deserve a single good thing that comes your way, maybe you don’t think anyone does. And maybe they don’t. “Deserving” is a lie of sorts, but an attractive one. Maybe the truth is no one deserves much of anything other than the dumb luck cast their way and the love they put forth returning in kind. So, maybe we collectively have waayyy too much shame to face. Maybe he’s bearing it because he doesn’t know who he is. Maybe he is an effigy of sorts, a man without a center, embroiled too deeply in bearing the American shame to know his own destructiveness.

So sometimes I wonder if this person exhibiting the antithesis of dignity, is actually doing us a favor?  Could it be he is ordinary, to a spectacular degree? Someone who figured out how to “do things” with his words and deeds, intimidations and flagellations? But someone who never woke to what’s underneath his actions and transactions?  Maybe his shame is our shame.  Afterall, his family was part of a long line of ordinary western patriarchs who benefited economically from the labor —and exclusion— of others: slaves in the early days, and minorities of all kinds later on. Now he puts brown people in cages. He grabs pussies too. He appears to feel no shame about this, because he is numb to the repellent side of the feeling. Shame is his default, and dignity is both undesirable and unreachable.

Someone who is too afraid to look at his own shadow can cast a big ugly sprawl over the rest of us via name calling and insultery, but this does not mean that healing can not happen. When anyone pulls the recursive projector away, and looks at the reality of what is left, well then things can change. Maybe he could change.

Maybe I too, can change.

 

 

*There is something to be said for knocking anyone who seemingly stands “above” or “apart,” but I still feel there nothing wrong with elegant behavior. It’s a part of what makes us a civilized society. Hmm. How should we handle this one?