Note: If, as you read this article, you think I'm saying 'don't
worry, be happy' or 'just laugh it off' or 'forget all the suffering in
the world,' you're viewing it from the wrong angle. The 1968 riot at
the Democratic National Convention was very serious, and it did nothing
to shorten the war in Vietnam. It might have prolonged it. In this
article, I'm talking about a basic psychological and spiritual
inhibition that keeps people from a kind of mass reaction they believe
is unthinkable---but a reaction that would change reality in a
revolutionary fashion, if it came from their deepest core...
I could write a few thousand pages as a mere introduction---but I want to focus on one factor:
what people project into their leaders.
Yes, I know, that sounds a bit odd. But stay with me. I'll make it pay off.
For example, in the US, Republican voters and supporters project a huge
amount of faith and energy into their Republican leaders. If you could
see this, you would be watching a stunning "light show." I'm talking
about streamers and arrows and rays of energy.
And in this particular light show, there are messages: defund Planned
Parenthood; cut off money for massive migration programs; stop Obamacare
funding; don't give money to the climate change payout program; stop
bankrolling sanctuary cities.
That's what these Republicans want from their leaders. That's what they're projecting with great insistence.
And this isn't some kind of misplaced crazy light show, because guess
what? Republicans control the US House of Representatives by a wide
margin. Republicans: 246. Democrats: 188.
So when a massive federal spending bill ($1.1 trillion) comes up for a
vote, as it just has, Republican Congress members can call the shots.
They can respond to all those light rays being projected at them by
their supporters all over the land. They can do it in a second. No
problem. They can make their people happy. They can carry out their
people's wishes.
But...they didn't. In fact, they just voted to fund all those programs I just mentioned.
They pulled a vast switch. That's right. That would be like all those
Stars Wars characters, with their light sabers, suddenly projecting
them through the movie screen right back at their adoring audience in
the theater and burning them. What a message that would be.
Has your government ever done something like this in your country? I bet they have.
When it happens, the people, the voters, the supporters, who were sure
their leaders would respond to them...well, to say they're shocked would
be a vast understatement.
However, scanning the newspapers and news broadcasts in America today,
so far I find no reports of massive Republican demonstrations in the
streets. Millions marching on Washington DC? Thousands? Hundreds?
Dozens? Four? Two?
One guy in a Star Wars costume with a light saber trying to stop traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue?
Try to imagine the amount of energy and faith Republicans in America
have been expending and projecting at their leaders---with this Big
Switch as the result.
And then consider this: the Republicans in the US House of
Representatives---many of them---never intended to go to war over this
massive budget bill. It was never in the cards. They wear special
shields, and the shields ward off all the projected rays coming at them
from their faithful flock.
It's not just the Republicans, in case you think I'm taking sides. What
about the huge Democratic support for the invasion of Iraq under George
W Bush? Did you see a few million Democrats in the streets right after
the nearly unanimous Congressional vote to launch the planes and send
the troops?
Wherever you live in the world, I'm sure you've seen this sort of
thing. "Vote for Joe. He'll do this and that." Joe wins, and then
doesn't do either this or that. He was never going to. He was always
wearing one of those shields that protected him from what his supporters
were projecting at him.
This is called a joke.
That's right. It may be a painful, repellent, nasty, killer joke with horrendous consequences, but it's a joke.
The structure that is supposed to yield up "what the people want" is actually another structure whose features are unreported.
And the joke is, the people fall for it. Not just once, but over and
over, on and on, year after year, decade after decade. It doesn't
matter what the evidence says. They fall for it.
And then, as another punchline, when some of those people stop falling
for it and defect from the structure, they're called strange and odd and
weird and possibly dangerous.
"Don't you get it, you strange person? You're in a stage play. And
your role involves going along with the charade. The real machinations
are occurring behind the stage, and they're not part of the play at all,
but we don't think about that. We keep projecting our energy and
desires and faith into our purported leaders. Haven't you read the
script? The play falls apart if we don't do that. It makes no sense if
we don't do that. A leader isn't a leader if he doesn't have adoring
supporters who project their hopes and fears and desires and energy into
him. That's the way it works. So get with it."
Now, possibly you think, when I talk about "projecting energy," this is
just a metaphor. I have news. It isn't. This is as real as waves
breaking on a beach. It's happening all the time. People are doing
it. They don't want to stop doing it. It's a habit that, for them, is
harder to break than a heroin addiction.
One way or another, everybody is projecting energy. Of course, if they
know that, they can decide where and how. They can, as individuals,
create those projections in connection with achieving their deepest
desires and dreams. In which case, there is a very good chance this
would be a better world.
On the other hand, if they remain in the stage play and accept their
assigned roles, they get jokes. And they're the target of those massive
jokes. And they don't laugh. Generally, they go into a state of
psychic paralysis, because they can't figure out what just happened.
They might consult the news to find answers. That's another joke. In
the case of the $1.1 trillion budget bill that just passed the House in
the US, they would encounter this: well, you see, the Republicans were
trying to show support for their new Speaker, Paul Ryan, who is in favor
of the bill, and if they didn't vote for the bill the federal
government would have to shut down because it would have no money for
operational expenses, and the bill does allow the US to export crude
oil, which is very important.
These are the added punchlines, which ought to send any sane person rolling on the floor with laughter.
You can laugh or cry, it's your choice. But keep in mind that
this joke really belongs to the people who launch it,
and they don't care which way you respond. To them, it's still
hilarious. And when they think about the millions of people who still
vote for them, they put in a call for medical staff, because they're
going to laugh so hard they might need oxygen.
Sure, they leave Washington for a while, to "spend time with their
families over the holidays," just in case there is some nasty pushback
from loyal voters, but they're having a very merry Xmas, in part because
they're still chuckling and chortling about what they just put over.
George Burns once said:
"In acting, sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made."
In politics, the launching and projecting of the joke is handled by the
politicians and the media. They work hand in hand to conceal the fact
that it is a joke---which is what makes it so funny to all of them.
I can take this out much farther. Consensus reality, which is the
lowest possible common denominator to which the planet can be reduced,
in order to suck in the faith and projections of the largest number of
people, is its own kind of joke. You can find such an awareness at
least as far back as ancient Greece, in the person of Hermes, the
trickster god.
Hermes, among his other duties, was the protector of wit. He was the
upsetter of apple carts, the vast joker who, in his own way, if you read
between the lines, was trying to show people they were living inside a
continuum of the big con, the big hustle. He was, you could say, the
grand defector. He moved among various realities. He knew the world
was a badly written stage play that, on the heels of honest reviews,
would have closed down after opening night.
Hermes' powers were formidable. He had the juice to become king of Mt.
Olympus, but he never wanted that job. Instead, he flew hither and yon,
tearing holes in consensus reality, for his own amusement, but also to
wake people up.
He was not always popular with leaders of the day.
If he were alive in our time, what might he do? I can imagine him
trying to engineer, at a State of the Union Address, or during a
Presidential debate, a massive amount of laughter from the live
audience. Yes, he might attempt to promote a trick like that. All of
sudden, out of nowhere, in a trickle, a little stream, then a river,
people are laughing. It builds to an oceanic roar. It spills over to
the television audience. No one is sure why, but they're laughing at
the President and candidates, and they're having the time of their
lives. On some level of happiness and joy, they're finally responding
to the joke. At last.
They get it.
Hence the old phrase, "He was laughed off the stage."
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