Last night I went to my second meeting of the “Jungian Study Group,” and I almost vowed never to return ever again. I felt I was losing IQ points as I sat and listened to our facilitator drone on in the most clichéd and banal ways. Additionally, besides me and the facilitator, the group now consisted of just four other women. So it was six older women, of whom one was not the same as the others.
As the two hours proceeded I actually looked at my watch and wondered if I could leave. Conscientiousness, politesse, and courtesy bade me stay. Then, after the first hour the level of conversation actually did get more interesting, and so I stayed. But the facilitator relentlessly traded in clichés. For example, she retailed this wacko, but allegedly solidly sociological theory (retailed by her as scientific fact), about how “the patriarchy” got started. (It was all about some prehistorical matriarchal idyll which men destroyed in a mad power grab.) I really wanted to scream. A woman I rather liked, to my right, thought the facilitator was referencing the novel, The Mists of Avalon, whereupon the facilitator had to reiterate, “No, sociology! Science! Fact!” Aargh…!
I mean, I don’t mind a bit of fantasy and all that, but don’t present it to basically extremely agreeable women ready to swallow anything (aside from the bitch, yours truly) as fact. Talk about it as speculation, as thinking prompts. I’m probably far too mannish for an all-women group. Part of me, interestingly, wants to take over. But then my sisters-complex takes over. (See Evernote entry for November 13 in “Commonplaces” notebook.)
The facilitator of course also couldn’t stay away from the topic of Trump, and insisted on “analyzing” him as a person out of his depth, whose self (or ego?, can’t remember which she said) has been obliterated by his narcissism complex. That was another point of my almost leaving. Not because I don’t like critiques of Trump – I just don’t like the wrong critiques. How can you say he doesn’t know what he’s doing and come up with what amounts to a pop-culture “analysis” when you’ve never actually met the guy, ever talked to him? So it’s not a professional analysis in any sense, and you’re basing your analysis strictly on what he wants you to see (namely, his tweets) and the legacy media’s reactions?? Just how blitheringly stupid are you?
And, seriously, who’s “constellated” or in the grip of a “complex” here?
At the end of the session, and without showing my hand or insulting anyone, I did manage to sow some doubt with an injection of reality-prompting questions. That is, I pointed out that you can’t have it both ways: that he’s helplessly in the grip of his own “narcissism complex” (facilitator’s “professional” opinion) and that he’s so manipulative as to be able to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes (which was the opinion of some of the other women).
One woman (facilitator) says he’s a dangerous clown, and everyone agrees with her, and some of the others (participants) say he’s an evil manipulator (and everyone agrees with that, too). Which is it? It can’t be both at the same time.
Are you saying he oscillates? How about instead considering that he was wildly successful in business (as someone put it, his debt level doesn’t matter), in entertainment (blew other reality shows out of the water), and now wants the third area, politics?
How about he’s manipulating the media with his apparently “crazy” tweets, and the media lap it up? It gets him in the news again and again. How about he exactly (or sort of) knows what he’s doing; the media is triggered, …and in turn the media triggers us? How about we put some of the blame for all these headfucks on the incompetent, triggered media?
That did sort of get them thinking, or at least broke the spell of uniform adherence to the “he’s literally Hitler” narrative.
Of course, in reality if he is a lot smarter than the bien pensant sheeple think, he is actually closer to Hitler in some ways. The latter was no buffoon, either. Supremely dangerous, yes. But then, Trump is no Hitler.