Once there were two brothers, both dirt poor and with more kids than they could feed. One of the brothers went into the forest to gather nuts he might sell at market. The other collected poppy seeds with the same idea. On the way to market they met and agreed to exchange sacks, though each cheated the other. The one substituted ashes for the poppy seeds and the second handed over half a sack of oak apples instead of nuts. When they got back to their respective homes the two brothers are furious to find out what the other has done. They stomp off to confront the other armed with pointy sticks with which they then beat one another mercilessly.
The brothers then go to a rich man’s house seeking employment. After just three days of work the rich man gives them each a plate full of gold which he draws out of a deep well. Overjoyed, they are about to head home when the one says to the other, ‘why don’t we come back at night and steal the rest?’ which seemed to be a great wheeze. So they crept back once it was dark and the one lowered the other down, though when he was down he wondered how he might get out since his brother would surely leave him there and take off with the gold, so he put himself in the sack as well.
The weight of the sack is so great that the one carrying it has to rest before long and while he rests the other climbs out and runs off with the gold. They steal it from one another like this all the way home.
The brothers think of themselves as very different from one another. The fact that they are like peas in a pod is obscured by all the dust raised in their scuffle. Likewise the argument between extreme elements of the left and the right around the world seem to want the same thing, the wish not to have to play by the rules whilst being furious with the other guy for wishing the same thing. Irrespective of their political inclinations, parties of every hue somehow manage to produce the same monochromatic tyrants.
Russian socialism produced Stalin. Chinese communism spawned Mao. The French revolution produced Napoleon. The Zimbabwean liberation struggle birthed Mugabe, Philippine democracy elected Duterte, a broad swathe of the political spectrum yet each one first and foremost an autocrat. How does it happen? Why do the people support those whose prime directive is to crush them? Something is operating besides political affiliation. What could it be?
It seems that despite our collective yearning for equality and the rule of law there remains an unacknowledged collective need to have our leaders be beyond accountability, that might have right, even if its our own necks the jackboot finally comes down upon.
Until such a time as these things can be contemplated the Nixons and the Trumps will get away with behavior that would land you or I in jail. We won’t really understand why, other than to reassert the hackneyed corruption of a few senate enablers, carefully leaving the rest of us all out of the equation.
The underlying issue, a collective and regressive desire to be told what to do, gets no airtime at all, an easy omission to make given that it is dressed up as its opposite, the radical self determination of, ‘don’t tread on me’.
Western democracy is developmentally about twelve. When Ghandi was asked what he thought of western democracy he said, ‘it would be a good idea’. We really aren’t there yet. We’re still steeped in pubescent angst, in the need for parental boundaries/instruction, urgently identifying with father figures whose power is then our power, most necessary to offset the rank insecurity of not knowing who you are or what is going on which goes with being twelve.
And yet… the argument for Trump simply being the logical outcome of narcissistic culture and reality game show mentality defending wish fulfillment as entitled birthright… seems insufficient.
Why?
Because the secret weapon of the autocrat is that he is the people’s hotline to god. The king is always divinely appointed. If anyone steals the crown then they are king and that is also divinely appointed. The theft of the rich man’s gold is about the exclusive and autocratic arrogation of divine power to oneself. The mob allows for individual concerns and insecurities to melt away, certainly, but that is not all. The glorious leader is identical with god. If we are identical with him and doing his bidding that means we are also god… or at least his right hand.
And so the hollow pit is both stilled by the sweaty warmth of collective identity and then topped up with Divine Intervention and Old Testament Brimstone. Caught on camera at the Capitol, ‘kill the infidels!’ This is not about politics or due process. It’s about where, how and with whom you pray.
The brothers begin with splitting and projection in order to live with themselves but it doesn’t end there. The inner gap created by the casting of One’s demons on the Other is then filled up with the ill-gotten gains of the gold bearing well, a quintessential image of the divine feminine which the brothers jointly plunder, causing them to entirely lose their moral compass.
In the end the brothers decide that since they were both cheats they should be friends and divvy the loot, forgetting it was for the same reason they were so recently at war. Needing to make sense has been superseded by convenience, the idea of being above the law and getting away with the stolen gold. It’s as though some wise soul at the dawn of the male sky god era saw the danger and crafted a tale to warn of what might come.
