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Trump Trauma

Trump Trauma

Helena Norberg-Hodge

While we mourn the tragedy that fear, prejudice and ignorance "trumped" in this election, now is the time to go deeper and broader with our work. There is a growing recognition that the scary situation we find ourselves in today has deep roots.

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The topics of racism, xenophobia, ignorance of how government functions (and its purpose for the COMMON GOOD) and religious zealotry are not addressed anywhere in this piece and they are MAJOR contributors to the rise of demagogues here and abroad. We have been battling the power of money since our country’s inception with the Gilded Age being revisited this very day and the billionaires are winning.



Long before that. Accumulation is a primary evolutionary survival trait and it matters little whether it is the beef jerky of 200 years ago or money today. Individualistic societies foster hoarding because you can’t rely on anyone to help you out.

Helena Norberg-Hodge ranks with Vandana Shiva a one of the brilliant voices out there.


“Re-regulating global businesses and banks is a prerequisite for genuine democracy and sustainability.”

No it isn’t! Getting rid of them and the parasitic capitalist economy that feeds them is the one and only thing that will do the job. For once and for all.


Helena Norberg-Hodge always makes sense: [quote=“CommonDreams, post:1, topic:40078”]
localized economies boost employment not by increasing consumption, but by relying more on human labor and creativity and less on energy-intensive technological systems

In the circles she travels, the below may be true:

But I don’t see it in my circles. Imperialism, colonialism, neoliberalism, nationalism, capitalism, communism, globalism, industrialism, militarism . . . every damn ism out there. . . all have taken their toll on local economies for centuries. Can the world now switch to an “economics as if people mattered”?

Still, it’s good to hear Helena Norberg-Hodge’s voice of hope in the world (I originally wrote ‘wilderness’, but not sure we have any left).

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The author writes that “the forces that elected him [Trump] are largely borne of rising economic insecurity and discontent with the political process.”

I think that’s true, but it’s too simplistic, incomplete, and begs the question: who exactly are those “forces” and can they be reached?

Let’s face it: those “forces” did the impossible. They elected an outsider, a narcissistic clown; they defeated, at least thwarted, the DUOPOLY. No mean feat that.

Did they use social media to do it? Did they suddenly find a way to coopt the MSM? Did they reconnect with the “forces” that inspired the Founders to revolt? No, no, and no.

What did they do, and how did they do it?

So, until we answer those questions, don’t alienate the only “forces” that have been able to upset the applecart. Coopt them, sure, if you can. But they may be, in some strange way, the people to court and understand. They actually did what so many of us have been trying to do since we erupted in the 60s seeking truth and justice.

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The DUOPOLY was “at least thwarted” by Trump voters?

How so?

What, a billionaire who has spent decades leveraging the silver spoon in his mouth to build a business empire of casinos, gaudy resorts, golf courses while filing lawsuits against any person daring to stand up to the jerk was an “outsider” to that system? I mean, he ran as a Republican right?

He ran on increasing the military budget, giving even larger tax breaks to corporations, removing regulatory barriers to Big Energy, removing scant regulatory barriers to an already monopolized corporate profits driven “healthcare” industry, and to you Trump represented some breaking away from DUOPOLY?

Have you been bamboozled more than even Trump voters? You know those revolutionary Trump voters that salivated over all of that hate, all of that misogyny (of men being able to say what they wanted to “their women”), all of the promises to by God make torture legal and do more of it and worse?

Those revolutionaries?

What, MSM didn’t support Trump? I don’t know what MSM you are referring to, but seems to me the MSM gave Trump more unopposed coverage BY FAR than any other candidate to ejaculate his message of hate and typical neoliberal economic screed of tax cuts for corporations and being “tough on crime”.

Gosh, where have we heard all of that messaging before. Corporations supposedly are stymied by high taxes, the criminals are on the loose, it is the fault of the poor (especially brown people), the little people need to be corralled by “law and order” and the rest of that right wing screed.

That was revolutionary? Damn, where have I been? Have I missed something here?

There is no doubt that many Trump supporters only went along with all of the other dark aspects of this right wing fascist jerk known by the name Trump, because they have indeed been victimized by a DUOPOLY of corporate governance thrust upon the citizenry since the publication of the Powell Doctrine, and the advent of Bill From’s DLC spawning one Bill Clinton.

But to put these victims, and these utter fools known as Trump supporters into the same sentence as the true revolutionaries whose purpose was to fight for HUMAN RIGHTS is absurd.

No such comparisons ought to be drawn.

It will take decades to turn around the piling on of corporate governance that this fascist Administration represents. Hell, this Administration might just make a DUOPOLY look good by comparison, seeing where this all is headed.

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If you had just replied with your first two sentences, I would have answered you. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to correct your misguided inferences.


Come on you guys (or women)–the discussion and comments were starting to get interesting and lively without being grumpy and dismissive. Keep it going–in dialogue comes, sometimes, some enlightening insights. Don’t you agree?

Strange headline, considering the content.

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Hi Psychedelic_Chicken :

Lanny Cotler is a Documentarian, worthy of mention, in the same breath, as Oliver Stone or Michael Moore.

His Films are easily viewable on YouTube under “classwarfilms”.

Hi Lanny, glad to see you here, again, and always look forward to your insights and information.

Gosh kathrynh1, okay.

Next time I’ll just be happy happy while someone runs cover for a fascist jerk. Gee whillackers.

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Thanks for the information, but I don’t care. I really don’t.

Just like Michael Moore and Oliver Stone have their humongous blind spots, this filmmaker apparently is no different.

I eviscerated his CLEAR assertion that Trump represented something other than a piling on of the powers making up the DUOPOLY.

It was an assertion that was used in FAVOR of Trump for months and months and here it is being ejaculated into these forums STILL!

And for someone in the media to suggest that the MSM was somehow in large part aligned against Trump, isn’t indicative of someone who has much of a grasp of what has been happening in regard to the support this fascist had in the MSM, has now in the MSM, and in the DUOPOLY that supposedly Trump supporters “thwarted”.

As to my demeanor.

Oh well.

We have a fascist as President, and White Nationalists in the Executive branch, and a resurgent ugly racist, misogynist, right wing Fundamentalist culture, BECAUSE of Trump, I’m not going to sit idly by while someone draws parallels between revolutionaries of the 60s fighting for human rights, and Trump supporters that would have all of those rights rescinded, except theirs of course.

If I have to leave sarcasm aside, and be all respectful, well then, I’m not up to the task.

Forgive me. I have sinned.


Who’s happy, PC? The whole of humanity is on a suicidal trajectory. Trump’s mere existence as the President of the world’s most powerful country presents us with an imperative that is certainly waking everybody up, and focusing people’s minds ever more acutely on the dysfunctional nature of our governments. It is falling to the rest of us to seek solutions to the ongoing crises of our civilisations.

It doesn’t matter which part of the duopoly we have to contend with, as they are, more obviously than ever, completely irrelevant to the existential horrors we are now facing. Perhaps acknowledgement of our collective trauma is a necessary event for the realisation of our need for help. Human beings, acting as humane agents, are the only ones capable of healing the trauma.

I’m not sure that the Trump Administration is waking everybody up. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be so many people apologizing for him, or making him out to be some bulwark against “the establishment”.

What this Administration represents is a piling on of neoliberal economics and forces of Empire, and a rapid escalation of the decades long corporate takeover of governance.

The unassailable powers assembled couldn’t care less that such an “awakening” is happening.

In the power game, they are FAR out ahead of any such trivial worries from their standpoint.

Acknowledgement of our collective trauma isn’t even a blip on that radar.

And actually, the whole of society IS NOT on a suicidal trajectory. Large parts of the global society have been fighting for what is just and equitable against powers of a very small minority.

In some countries, that small minority is kept in relative check. It has nothing to do with society at large.


I like your Posts and consider you definitely one of the Good Guys.

Maybe Lanny will expand on what he meant.

Interesting that you first point out the ‘unassailable powers’ couldn’t care less about an ‘awakening’. Then you acknowledge the importance of many people working for the good. In my opinion, those people are part of the solution. Their motivation is ‘humane’, just as surely as the healers I mentioned.

I am not pretending that there is a new awakening, only that Trump’s existence is a factor in concentrating our energies. It is an ongoing process, but I am cautious about giving too much attention to the political implications. The crises have been going on for decades, as long as you and I have been living, and well before that. It is not going to get better anytime soon, unless there is some kind of cataclysmic event that nobody can predict. I am not holding my breath for that. I am more focussed on what each of us can do, and how we respond to it. Hence this discussion.