The power of projection.

Featured image credit Victor Fitzpatrick, click to follow more of the artist’s work.

I have a friend, who shall remain nameless, who struggled for a long time with paranoia and anxiety, would often tell me how often she would run into people who were connected to someone from her past. More than that I will not say, but the general theme is that she often projected her own insecurities and fears onto others, and then her anxiety would make connections that didn’t exist. Such is the power of projection. Rooted in fear and paranoia, it left her powerless and often defensive.

This fear has gripped our society and politics more thoroughly this election cycle than anything else. Whether it’s the Q people or the Russia hoax, what we’re seeing is the attribution of motive and inference of malice where more often than not, none exists. No matter the outcome, I don’t believe that this paranoia will die down. Instead, I fear that this paranoid frenzy will result in the escalation of violence and more deaths.

Right now the narrative about President Trump is that he is a Russian plant, a Manchurian candidate, and a puppet of Vladamir Putin. The evidence has come out that this was a rumor stirred up by the Clinton campaign in 2016, and that this became the pretext for the use of the Steele dossier used as the basis for the investigation of Carter Page and Michael Flynn by the Obama administration. This narrative was parroted by the mainstream media with little follow-up because Trump, who was well liked in NY social circles, ran as a Republican for the presidency. The narrative practically writes itself. A news media staffed by many progressive/liberals with their college degrees and insulated life experiences thought that clearly the policy agenda of the Obama administration was superior than the “rabble-rousing” agenda of Donald Trump. Used to launching character smears, the media swapped disagreement with Clinton’s agenda as a unconscious hatred for women and a desire to see the patriarchy maintained for the subliminal racism that was in vogue under Obama.

And when Trump won, the media lost their collective minds. How was it possible when they had called the race as a landslide for Clinton? What did they miss? What didn’t they see. The short answer was a lot. People in those swing states weren’t as enthusiastic for Clinton as they had projected. People didn’t like Hillary as a person, they discounted her personal foibles and personality flaws. Working people without degrees didn’t like that Clinton’s platform meant that their jobs would never come back as President Obama said. Many felt like the Democratic party had moved more toward social progressivism with the decisions on gay marriage, the individual mandate, and higher taxes. Regular everyday Americans of all stripes looked at the candidates and took a chance on an outsider as a rebuke of corporate democracy. A myriad of reasons, and yet the media, and many progressives could only see cheating and bigotry.

This year, with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, there are active calls to pack the supreme court, expanding it from the nine justices to thirteen or more. There are calls to make Washington DC a state along with Puerto Rico and Guam, cementing a Democratic majority. There are calls to abolish the filibuster and the electoral college, changing the rules of the game. In other words, to cheat. And there is evidence that Joe Biden has economic conflicts of interest with both Ukraine and China. There is documented evidence of racist remarks and bigoted behavior toward black people. And yet, from the media, crickets. Nothing to see here folks.

This is the power of projection. Living in a paranoid reality that slaps one’s own fears and foibles on others to fit a worldview that justifies connections that don’t exist. Imagining Trump supporters as vicious racists and white supremacists when it is the Antifa folks hurling racial slurs and punching black people in the mouth, calling them the n-word among other pejoratives. It is the equation of Trump supporters to German National Socialists when it is the black bloc demanding that restaurant goers stop and salute with a raised fist and scream that black lives matter. It is the media that portrays Trump supporters as deplorables when it is BLM and Antifa tearing down statues of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Hague, Washington, Jefferson, and Frederick Douglas in an ever shifting line in the sand.

And yet, the behavior, hatred, and vitriol, and deplorable action exists primarily on the left. The belief that as a whole, groups of people could never get ahead without help, that every one of a group is either an angel or a demon based on their external characteristics, that we should live in a world of ever changing hierarchies of victimhood as a power structure, that the world is nothing but a power struggle, and any interaction is just a conflict in resolving where we live in the pecking order. These are all views of the world that I reject, that any good and reasonable person should reject. But the level of paranoia and rationalization that exists to justify these behaviors makes it nearly impossible for rational thought and discussion to prevail.

So the question is where do we go from here? The short answer is I do not know. I worry that there is no way forward that doesn’t involve armed conflict and the breakup of our union. I worry that the divide has become inseparable, and the sides too radicalized in their respective dogmas to see any chance at reconciliation. I fear that darkness lies ahead, and what the future brings is unknown. But I hope that people will finally see that we can remember that we’re a country, all together, and capable of rallying together should the need arise. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.