BREAKING BUSH’S SPELL
by Paul Levy
It is profoundly important to recognize that the arena that the election is taking place in is the psyche, which is to say that it is dealing with our perceptions. The election is an expression of as well as revealing something deeper about the psyche and the nature of our perceptions. The election is showing how any of us, at any moment, can become unconscious, as if we have fallen asleep or under a spell. Seen as an expression of a deeper process unfolding inside the psyche that has both literally, as well as symbolically, externalized itself (gotten ‘dreamed up’), the election is revealing how those who are interested in power can actually manipulate others through their weak points and blind spots so as to control them. This darker, shadowy energy that is playing out in the election is a reflection of certain tendencies deep inside the soul of humanity- abusing power over others is a process that exists deep inside the unconscious of all of us. This inner process is simultaneously getting acted out unconsciously on the world stage and thereby visibly revealing itself “for all who have eyes to see.” Seeing and naming the evil that is enacting itself in the election is the creative act that ‘dis-spells’ and de-potentiates the destructive consequence of this energy. This is the power of the word, the logos.
George Bush is a master hypnotist who skillfully puts people under his ‘spell.’ Bush ‘charms’ people, dis-arming and entrancing them, so that they will trust him and give their power away to him. Bush ‘hooks’ people by playing with their fears, which is how he is able to control and manipulate them. By evoking a primitive emotion such as fear, Bush de-potentiates the linear and logical part of the brain, and speaks directly to the reptilian, right part of the brain which is pre-verbal and has to do with our primal, animal instincts for survival.
Bush mesmerizes people by using simple, repetitive phrases. To quote Nazi propaganda chief Goebbels “Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious…..keep repeating them in this simplified form despite the objections of the intellectuals.” Bush’s talking points, his buzz words, are his ‘incantations.’ These ‘magic words’ act as opiates to the fearful masses. To quote ex-Harvard University President James Bryant Conant “Some of mankind’s most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.” This is, again, the power of the word. And how do we make a word? We ‘spell’ it.
Bush’s slogans, repeated again and again, to quote George Estabrooks, author of the classic book Hypnotism, are “‘burned’ into the receptive subconscious minds with the permanence of an image engraved on a photographic negative.” People’s minds then become ‘branded’ and ‘imprinted’ with Bush’s ideology. It is as if he has ‘hooked’ a part of their attention, so to speak, with which he can then control them. It is as if he has ‘captured’ their self-reflective, discriminative awareness, .and has restricted the range of their consciousness, which is the signature of a master hypnotist. Once entranced, just like members of a cult, Bush’s followers, just like Hitler’s, give their power over to him and become passive, subservient, and incapable of discerning truth from fiction. They become Bush’s ‘minions.’
Another mind-control technique that Bush, like any hypnotist, uses is to give out a double signal that is confusing and incomprehensible to the listener. Bush subtly contradicts himself, or says one thing while he is doing another, placing the listener in a double bind. This is very reminiscent of a parent who gives a conflicting message to a child: either the child is aware of the double message and is able to not get confused by it, or they collapse into an unconscious hypnotic state in which they have dis-connected from their true self. Doing something, while at the same time explaining that he’s not doing it, is both ‘crazy-making’ while at the same time being the mark of a ‘black magician.’ Bush’s flawless illogic, if followed unthinkingly, will ‘lull’ the listener into a state of somnambulistic trance, as if they have fallen asleep. Once people become ‘bewitched’ by Bush’s spell, there is no talking with them rationally, as the logical part of their brain has been dis-armed.
Bush is so completely dissociated from certain parts of himself that he has fallen into the pathological state of lying and believing his own lies. To quote Jung “Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself.” Like a typical fundamentalist, Bush has the certainty of someone who is only identified with one side of a two-sided polarity. This gives him a charisma that is very seductive. Bush is unconsciously identified with and projects out the image of the all-powerful, divinely inspired ‘positive father,’ who saves and protects his children from evil. His supporters want to believe this to feed their own adolescent fantasies of wanting to have a positive father figure to take care of and protect them. Because of this need they invest, so to speak, in Bush’s delusion, which just confirms to Bush all the more that he indeed is God’s instrument. Bush and his supporters, with their mutually simplistic and psychologically under-developed view of ‘good and evil,’ reciprocally feed and support each other’s unconscious fear and narcissism. It is as if, to quote John Kerry, they are living in a “fantasy world of spin.”
Bush is embodying an insidious pathology that is contagious and very malignant. Bush’s malignant narcissism is such that he is able to ‘con’ and seduce people into believing his own narcissistic delusions, which just feeds and supports his psychosis. Bush’s pathology is so extreme that he is actually able to transform and ‘dream up’ reality as evidence that confirms his delusion. People who support Bush are actually complicit with and enabling Bush’s madness in a co-dependent, self-reinforcing feedback loop that is ‘closed,’ which is to say it is insular and not open to any feedback from the ‘real’ world.
Bush supporters are not merely disinterested in seeing that they are in denial of reality; on the contrary, they actively don’t want to look at this, which is to say they resist self-reflection at all costs. All of Bush’s supporters mutually reinforce each other’s unconscious resistance to such a degree that a collective, interdependent field of impenetrability gets collectively conjured up by them that literally resists consciousness. Insanely, Bush and his supporters perversely interpret any feedback from the real world which is reflecting back their unconsciousness as itself evidence that proves the rightness of their viewpoint.
People who have fallen under Bush’s spell and support him have gotten unwittingly ‘drafted’ into supporting a madman’s delusion. Once people become entranced by Bush, they become part of and absorbed into a self-generating ‘psychic epidemic’ whose basis is fear and unconsciousness. This is why Jung says “The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger.” Jung felt strongly that “political mass movements of our time are psychic epidemics, in other words, mass psychoses.” It is important to recognize that Bush and his supporters are all suffering from a ‘collective psychosis.’ Once we recognize this, we snap out of our spell and go from being part of the problem to part of the solution. In other words, if you don’t see Bush is crazy, you’re crazy!
People who are following Bush as he leads us off a cliff are actually entranced by their mind’s own projections, hallucinating that Bush is a good leader no matter how much overwhelming evidence there is to the contrary. People who support Bush have had their critical, discriminative faculties dis-abled by Bush’s spell- Bush supporters are clearly not able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. They simply split-off from and ignore the cognitive dissonance between what Bush is saying and what he is actually doing.
People who can’t discriminate between fantasy and reality? People who can’t tell the difference between their hallucinations and what is real? Sounds like we’re describing people who are ‘crazy.’ It is quite a shock to realize that if we had supported Bush we had fallen asleep, as if under a spell, and to say it more forcefully- had gone ‘temporarily insane.’ What else would we call supporting a madman and criminal for our leader? Realizing that we had suffered a temporary ‘break from reality’ is a completely shattering experience that is to be avoided at all costs. Because this realization is so painful to the ego, there is a dis-incentive to open our eyes and look.
This is why there is such incredible resistance among Bush supporters to simply self-reflect and look at the real-world evidence: they would then come face to face with the devastating realization that they’ve been ‘out of their minds’ to support Bush. They would be like a cult-member who snaps out of the collective brainwashing of the cult- it is simultaneously a liberating and traumatizing realization, creating a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. The trauma of this realization, to quote Jung “is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” It is therefore resisted at all costs.
To see through our false illusions and imaginary projections and realize that Bush is actually a madman and criminal is an extremely shocking experience. To realize that we have given away our trust and power to a wolf in sheep’s clothing is mortifying to the ego. To realize that we have been conned, swindled and our pockets picked if we had supported Bush is an infuriating, humiliating and humbling experience. To realize that we’ve been hoodwinked into ‘selling our soul’ is horrifying, truly our worst nightmare.
Realizing our complicity in Bush’s evil gets us in touch with our guilt, shame and sin. Interestingly, the experience of guilt, shame and sin is the very thing that Bush himself seems so unable to experience. To quote Jung “If only people could realize what an enrichment it is to find one’s own guilt, what a sense of honor and spiritual dignity…..it is indeed no small matter to know of one’s own guilt and one’s own evil……without guilt, unfortunately, there can be no psychic maturation and no widening of the spiritual horizon.” Consciously experiencing our guilt, sin and shame cuts our arrogance to the quick, wounds our narcissism to the core and humbles our ego. Seeing our own darkness gives rise to genuine remorse, which interestingly enough, is the very feeling that George Bush himself seems unable to experience. We realize that to support George Bush is to fall under the dark power of delusion and is thereby a genuine ‘sin,’ whose inner meaning is ‘to miss the mark.’
To see the evil that is coming through George Bush, however, is to realize it is a reflection of our own evil. In supporting an abuser like Bush, we ourselves had become the abuser. This reflection is the very thing that we all look away from, as it shatters our image of who we imagine we are. To look in the mirror, whose inner meaning is ‘shadow holder,’ is to see our own dark side, the ‘other’ in ourselves. Just like a vampire can’t stand the light of consciousness, the darkness in ourselves can’t stand to be seen, as to be seen takes away its autonomy and omnipotence. Once illumined, the darkness can’t act itself out through us unconsciously anymore. This is why Jung says “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” If we want Bush and his supporters to see their own darkness, we have to model this realization for them and see and embrace the darkness inside ourselves that they are a reflection of.
It is truly ‘dis-illusioning’ and ‘dis-enchanting’ to realize that someone we trusted, such as George Bush, does not have our best interest in mind. It is totally ‘mortifying’ to see our own potential for self-deception, and, even worse, for evil. We are at a ‘crisis’ point in history, which medically speaking, is the climax of an illness. Will we all become suicide bombers as we unconsciously collaborate in destroying the planet, or will we see through our projections and wake up?
To quote Jung “We are threatened with universal genocide if we cannot work out the way of salvation by a symbolic death.” And what is this ‘symbolic death’ of which Jung speaks? To see through our fantasy illusions and withdraw a projection from the world is nothing other than the ‘symbolic death’ that Jung is referring to. When we see through and withdraw our projections, it is like a part of us that was living in illusion has died. The ego resists this ‘dis-spelling’ of our illusions, as it demands that we change, which the ego equates with death. This shattering of our projections, however, has a positive aspect, as it is simultaneously a liberation out of our spell of delusion into a deeper, more expansive level of awakening.
To quote Jung “If the projected content is to be healed, it must return into the psyche of the individual, where it had its unconscious beginnings. He must celebrate a Last Supper with himself, and eat his own flesh and drink his own blood; which means that he must recognize and accept the other in himself……Is this perhaps the meaning of Christ’s teaching, that each must bear his own cross?”
Paul Levy is a spiritually-informed political activist. He can be reached at paul@awakeninthedream.com. Please visit his website at www.awakeninthedream.com, where his article “The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis” is available. Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. © Copyright 2004.
