The State of American Souls, Must See TV and Trumpism

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Trumpism is a term for the political ideology, style of governance, political movement and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping power as demonstrated by former president, Donald J. Trump.

By Eileen Fleming

Truth seekers will be glued to the TV this Tuesday when former U.S. president D. J. Trump’s second impeachment trial begins with the charge of inciting the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol.

The former presidents defense lawyers are claiming a First Amendment defense. So far 144 Constitutional Lawyers have called the former presidents defense “legally frivolous”, which should create interesting viewing content—as would have Trump’s appearance under oath; but the former president refused the House managers invitation to speak in his own defense at his impeachment trial.

The former president’s current favorite minion is Marjorie Taylor Greene a right-wing conspiracy theorist who was elected to the House by Georgia’s 14th congressional district in the same election Trump lost.

Among Greene’s other inanities is her claim that Jewish Space Lasers were causing last years California fires. Perhaps her most deplorable actions was harranguing Parkland school shooting survivor and gun control advocate David Hogg, who now has plans to launch his own pillow company with the goal of putting the Trump loving conspiracy theorist owner of “MyPillow out of business.”

Stripped of her committees, Greene’s role inside Congress will serve the purely pro-Trump strain of conservatism known as Trumpism.

Greene is part of a growing strain of Republican lawmakers who view legislating as less important than pontificating on right-wing media and ignoring traditional media outlets that would challenge them.

The day after being stripped of her committee assignments the unrepentant repugnant republican stated two true facts at her press conference:

The GOP is Trump’s party

Teaching people to hate and addicting them to it is killing our country.

Greene claimed she “was led to believe” in QAnon, which is a cult of disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theories alleging that a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles run a global child sex-trafficking ring and they plotted against the now former U.S. president, Donald J. Trump.

This American was glued to the TV last Wednesday when Congress paid tribute to Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick who laid in honor at the Capitol Rotunda before his interment at Arlington National Cemetery.

Sicknick served 12-years on the Capitol Police force until he was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher while physically engaging with made in the USA terrorists during the violent riot at the Capitol on January 6.

The Trump loving cabal of insurrectionists also wielded pipes, bricks, chemical irritants, tasers, and American flagpoles to assaulted 125 and injure over 70 Capitol officers during the riot that this American as well as Mr Trump watched on TV as it happened in real time.

Click HERE to learn more and view the video the Trump crowd consumed just before marching to the Capitol on January 6.

Albert Einstein once talked about the illusion that is created by the belief in separation. Einstein described it as a prison that restricts our awareness of connection to the whole:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature…

According to the 1987 classic, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, Dr. Scott Peck defines the spiritual life as fluid and that one may pass back and forth repeatedly through any of the four-probably more-stages of the soul.

Stage one upon this journey -that begins from within-is essentially our infancy in the spiritual life. Like a wild child, a person in this stage reflects the inner chaotic and anti-social, unregenerate soul that is interested only in its own self-satisfaction and ego, much like the stereotypical spoiled child.

Stage one people may claim to love others, but their behavior reflects they love their own pleasure, money, power, prestige, and security above any other. For stage one people, it really is all about them.

Stage two souls seek to “let their light shine” and will live virtuous lives and do many good works. They also can be judgmental of others, self-righteous, rigid of thought, cold of heart, legalistic concrete literal thinkers and may even be guilty of a lukewarm faith.

They want to do right and they even may desire to love and please God, but they can be easily deceived because they have not opened up to their Inner Light, as Joan of Arc did when she challenged church and state and persisted in claiming that she had intuited God within -even while being fried.

Stage two souls have not yet been set fully free and prefer the security of a higher human authority than themselves for guidance. They submit to institutions, scripture, dogma, ritual, ministers, gurus, cult leaders and lying politicians.

Most theologians would agree that the opposite of faith is not disbelief: the opposite of faith is fear!

“There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. It’s true that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it’s more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They’re opposites. If we’re in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we’re in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.”– Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ros

Stage three souls have not just fearlessly awoken, they have evolved! This evolution has led them to the realization of what Jesus was really talking about in the Sermon of the Mount, which sound like crazy promises, but are all about waking people up to The Divine within themselves and all others and I have spun it this way:

About 2,000 years ago, when Jesus was about 33, he hiked up a hill and sat down under an olive tree and began to teach the people: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”

In other words: it is those who know their own spiritual poverty, their own limitations and sins honestly and trust God loves them in spite of themselves who already live in the Kingdom of God.

How comforted we will be, when we see, we haven’t got a clue, as to the depth and breadth of pure love and mercy of The Divine Mystery of The Universe.

God’s name in ancient Aramaic is Abba, which means Daddy, as much as Mommy and He/She: The Lord has said: “My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not yours.” -Isaiah 55:8

Jesus claimed, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

The essence of meek is to be patient with ignorance, slow to anger and never hold a grudge.

In other words: how comforted you will be when you also know humility; when you know yourself, the good and the bad, for both cut through every human heart.

Jesus promised: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled.”

In other words: how comforted you will be when your greatest desire is to do what “God requires, and he has already told you what that is; BE JUST, BE MERCIFUL and walk humbly with your Lord.”-Micah 6:8

“Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy.”

In other words: how comforted you will all be when you choose to return only kindness to your ‘enemy.’
“For with the measure you measure against another, it will be measured back to you”, Jesus warned his disciples as he explained the law of karma in Luke 6:27-38.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God.”

In other words: how comforted you will be when you WAKE UP and see God is already within you, within every man, every woman and every child. The Supreme Being is everywhere, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Beyond The Universe -and yet so small; within the heart of every atom.

“Blessed are The Peacemakers: THEY shall be called the children of God.”

And what a wonderful world it would be when we all seek peace by pursuing justice; for there can be none without the other.

A stage three soul will see that a neighbor is everyone on the planet and not just those who think and look the same and are born in the same geographical location. Stage three’s are seekers, doubters, skeptics, agnostics and frequently adults who grew up disenchanted with institutionalized religion.

Their inherent intellectual curiosity leads them to seek their own way towards the Mystery of the Divine through philosophy and the study of multiple faith paths choosing and discarding according to their “inner light.”

Stage three souls often become activists for social justice and reform and the increasing wave of humanitarian secularism verses the bondage of religious dogma just may be the way to change the world, as we now know it.

It has been said we are all called to be mystics in the market place and a stage four soul, such as Thomas Merton and Rumi give voice to that experience of the curtain being lifted and seeing through the glass a bit less darkly.

A mystic can best be understood as one who is in love with the divine mystery and is viscerally connected to the unity of all creation.

Mystics are not navel gazers, they feel the pain of the world within their hearts and grieve at what humans do to the other when they have no clue that The Divine is within the other as much as within themselves.

Mystics have detached from their concepts of God-not by their own efforts, but by the invitation and action of God upon a willing and simple soul in love with Pure Being, AKA: God for lack of a better word.

The mystic fool, Saint Francis, the leper kisser of Assisi, was so head over heels in love with God in everyone and all of creation that most people of his time considered him crazed, or at least, extremely eccentric.

One needn’t be a mystic or move beyond stage two on the spiritual journey to do what is good and right just because it is good and right.

Just as I was glued to the TV on January 6, I will be glued again on February 9, when even more video evidence of the former presidents inciting his fans to riot in the Capitol is shared with Americans.

I have also been ‘glued’ to this “Remember BRIAN SICKNICK” image and I keep recalling how he was described as a “hero”, “servant” and “martyr” during his memorial service at the Capitol four weeks after he did what Jesus did: laid his life down for others.

Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Brian Sicknick’s love for America enabled him to lay down his life for US All.

May we all remember Sicknick’s sacrifice and view history as it happens in the Capitol during former president Trump’s second impeachment trial.

May we all then contact our Senators to urge the end of Trumpism –before it kills us all– by convicting the former president and denying him the right to ever run for elected office again.

Eileen Fleming writes HERE