I walked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, “Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604.” And I went up there, I said, “Shrink, I want to kill, I mean, I wanna—I wanna kill. Kill. I wan—I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill. Kill. KILL! KILL!” And I started jumpin’ up and down yelling, “KILL! KILL!” and he started jumpin’ up and down with me and we was both jumpin’ up and down yelling, “KILL! KILL!” And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, and said, “You’re our boy.”  Arlo Guthrie, Alice’s Restaurant

The dark side is in our nature.  Star Wars

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.  Mark Twain

Let’s say you don’t like bullies, arrogant braggarts, narcissists, know-it-alls. Can we add cruel and selfish people who exploit the less fortunate? Surely you don’t condone torture, murder and rape? Would you admit it if you did? Of course not, you are a good Christian or at least you’re not one of those “dirty little atheists” as Teddy Roosevelt called Tom Paine. There are aspects of your personality you hide from but what might you be capable of under the right or wrong circumstances?

The shadow self is a concept that originated with the psychologist Carl Jung. It has been explored among other places in a popular self-help book by Debbie Ford called The Dark Side Of The Light Chasers. Ford presents a theory to explain why suppressed emotions and unresolved internal conflicts lead to behavior that continually unseats politicians, destroys celebrity careers, destabilizes the economy, and affects the lives of millions each year.

Carl Jung said “I’d rather be whole than good.” In other words we humans are complicated beings. Ignoring the complications leads to mistakes. The poet William Blake put it another way: without contraries there can be no progression. 

What do I mean by the right or wrong circumstances? Well, I dare say you’ve heard of “the end justifies the means” or “God is on our side.” Have you ever been swept up in a “popular delusion” or “the madness of crowds” by some conspiracy theory or alternative fact? Racism, sexism, fanaticism, prejudices of all types—are you really immune from these? Think carefully. As Socrates says: “Know yourself.”

Sometimes we are given an opportunity to act out fantasies that we normally hide. War is the most obvious. Rape, murder and plunder almost always show up during a war. (Mai Lai, Abu Ghriab, Russia in Ukraine) But, any national emergency, crisis or threat will do. Economic factors also play a role. Slavery, the massacre of native Americans, exploitation of workers—these are uncomfortable truths that lie behind the DEI framework that the Trump administration is so anxious to obliterate. Why is there so much anger against the DEI concept? Are we ashamed? Embarrassed? Are we afraid to own up to a past which is glorious, yes, but also marred with intermittent episodes where we failed our high moral standards? Is refusing to acknowledge our dark side really in our best interest?

Crusaders often go too far. Consider the example of Senator Joe McCarthy who was undermined when Joseph Welch confronted him in public hearing with “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

The cause of anti-communism, which united millions of Americans and which gained the support of Democrats, Republicans and independents, was undermined by Sen. Joe McCarthy … McCarthy addressed a real problem: disloyal elements within the U.S. government. But his approach to this real problem was to cause untold grief to the country he claimed to love … Worst of all, McCarthy besmirched the honorable cause of anti-communism. He discredited legitimate efforts to counter Soviet subversion of American institutions. William Bennett, President Reagan’s Secretary of Education

Obsession, an inability to let go, the fact that “everyone else is doing it”—these are not justifications for bad actions. The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo and The Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt are two famous studies of why “all too human” humans fail at times. Charles Mackay in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds in the “Witch Mania” section asserts that this was a time when ill fortune was likely to be attributed to supernatural causes. Mackay notes that many of these cases were initiated as a way of settling scores among neighbors or associates, and that extremely low standards of evidence were applied to most of these trials. Mackay claims that “thousands upon thousands” of people were executed as witches over two and a half centuries, with the largest numbers killed in Germany. America had its own witch trials.

Hannah Arendt argues that evil is not monstrous, but banal, and that it thrives when people stop thinking critically: The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.

In a passage that applies to Donald Trump with astonishing accuracy she describes Adolf Eichmann at his trial: What he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. (Note: The above passage is from Maria Popova LINK HERE)

To tap into the power of the dark side [is] to indulge in raw emotions such as passion, anger, vengeance, and hatred. The dark side [is] greed, the fear of change, and the inability to let go. By holding on to things, one [becomes] angry and hateful, which in turn [leads] to suffering. Those who [are] unable to conquer their dark side [are] devoured by it. (Dark Side Of The Force)

Given what we’ve seen over the past three months from the Trump administration and the feckless Republicans who have enabled him, one could make a good argument that America has been enthralled by its dark side and may be in danger of being devoured by it. We have turned our back on the rule of law, ignored due process, began an assault on history, art, culture, science and education where we were once the envy of the world, insulted our foreign friends, and most recently shot our economy in the foot with inexplicable tariffs. “Have you no sense of decency, Mr. President, at long last?

Let me ask you again. What might you be capable of under the right or wrong conditions? Have you ever been swept up in some conspiracy theory or alternative fact and done something you regret?

Americans are among the wealthiest most productive and most creative people in the world. Our life style, our freedom, our generosity and our ability to lead mankind to a better future has endeared us to an admiring world. All of that has now been wagered on a questionable economic policy and a Project 2025 that wants to return us to the 1950s. 

A focus on heterosexual, married, procreating couples is everywhere in Project 2025. “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-­ordered nation and healthy society,” writes Roger Severino, the author of a chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services and a former HHS and Justice Department staffer. (The document is structured as a series of chapters on specific departments or agencies, each written by one or a few authors.) He argues that the federal government should bolster organizations that “maintain a biblically based, social-­science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,” saying that other forms are less stable. The goal is not only moral; he and other authors see this as a path to financial stability and perhaps even greater prosperity for families.

The so-called Arrow of Time indicates that we can go forward but not backward. So Project 2025 is doomed to failure. Eventually. But the attempt to bring it about can cause a lot of pain in the present.

Our President has called himself a “very stable genius.” Even if true that does not prevent him from making stupid mistakes. In fact, there is some evidence that “clever people make more stupid mistakes than most.” Overconfidence, the inability to admit error, the inability to listen and the tendency to push too hard are a few of the reasons why.

I was going to end this riff on the dark side with a much overused quote by George Santayana: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But, I found a better quote by John Steinbeck. Hang in there, the tide will change.

“All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die.” John Steinbeck