Fireworks: heated argument; conflict

The Founders crafted a republic with checks—electors, impeachment, indirect Senate elections—to thwart tyrants. Yet, these safeguards failed against a malignant narcissist whose 40,000 lies and reckless disregard for others embody the Shadow archetype run amok, as Drew Westen’s 2024 psychological profile reports.

The American psyche is a fractured carnival, its collective unconscious torn by a culture war sparked by postmodernism’s assault on gender roles. Postmodernism’s deconstruction of male and female archetypes birthed third-wave feminism’s performative zeal, alienating traditionalists and fueling a hypermasculine MAGA backlash. Trump’s brash persona, a projection of wounded masculinity, rallied those resentful of progressive fluidity, amplifying a psychic schism.

Michel Foucault’s postmodernist theory, developed in works like Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976-1984), aimed to expose how power shapes knowledge, identity, and societal norms. He argued that “truth” is constructed through discourses—socially enforced ways of thinking and speaking—controlled by institutions like prisons, hospitals, and schools. His focus was not to propose solutions but to reveal power’s hidden mechanisms, particularly how it defines normality and deviance. Foucault’s analysis of sexuality and gender as constructed categories, not natural truths, challenged traditional norms, influencing later postmodernist deconstructions of gender roles. He sought to disrupt grand narratives, showing how they serve those in power, without prescribing a new system. His work inadvertently fueled third-wave feminism and cultural debates by questioning fixed identities, but also created a vacuum exploited by divisive forces. Foucault’s agenda was intellectual disruption, not reform, emphasizing power’s pervasiveness over utopian ideals.

The disruption serves tech oligarchs aiming to supplant the nation-state with fiefdoms. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), backed by Palantir, hoards data, enabling surveillance that stifles dissent while the rich—owning more than the bottom 90%—evade accountability. Media “lie machines” and platforms like X, with 600 million users, fan outrage, drowning out the many voices that have documented Trump’s unfitness. Abbe Lowell warns of crumbling courts, with nine law firms bowing to Trump’s agenda for $1 billion. Christian nationalism and environmental neglect—2024’s record heat ignored—add apocalyptic fervor. Despite inklings of hope in inclusive movements, the republic teeters as oligarchs exploit division, crafting a cyberpunk dystopia where corporate power reigns.

Behold a nation staggering like a drunk in a funhouse, mirrors reflecting distorted images of its former self. The United States, once a scrappy experiment in liberty, now lurches toward a dystopian burlesque, its stage creaking under the weight of lies, greed, and a culture war sparked by the torching of gender roles. The deconstruction of male and female archetypes ignited a cultural firestorm, seduced women into third-wave feminism’s performative trap, birthed the hypermasculine MAGA beast, and handed the keys to tech oligarchs dreaming of fiefdoms where the nation-state once stood.

The binary roles of male and female, ancient anchors of the collective unconscious that Jung called the animus and anima, are archetypes that gave society a shared script. Postmodernists, with their love of subjectivity and disdain for grand narratives, declared these roles oppressive cages, ripe for deconstruction. Their zeal left a crater where cohesion once stood. Enter third-wave feminism, the prodigal child of this intellectual upheaval. Unlike its predecessors, which fought for votes and paychecks, this wave dove headfirst into identity, intersectionality, and cultural theater. It promised liberation but often delivered performative outrage, alienating those who clung to traditional roles like life rafts in a stormy sea. Women, lured by the siren song of dismantling “the patriarchy,” found themselves in a culture war, wielding hashtags and slogans while the real power—economic, political—slipped further into the shadows. The anima, Jung’s symbol of nurturing intuition, was drowned out by a cacophony of dogma, leaving many women caught between empowerment and exhaustion. This wasn’t just a debate; it was a psychic schism. Progressives preached fluidity, conservatives clutched their Bibles, and the collective unconscious fractured. Jung would have warned of the Shadow—the repressed rage and fear—lurking beneath this divide.

Carl Jung’s Red Book records his visionary explorations of the collective unconscious, hinting at potential societal turmoil due to psychological imbalances. His symbolic visions of destruction and division reflect concerns about modernity’s spiritual disconnection, which could lead to collective fragmentation. Jung was reluctant to share these esoteric insights publicly, and the Red Book went unpublished until 2009. His later works, like Aion, warn of ideological extremism and loss of individual consciousness, concepts like enantiodromia and the Shadow’s eruption. The current political polarization in the US, authoritarianism in Russia, Hungary, and Turkey, and rising far-right movements globally could align with Jung’s warnings about unintegrated unconscious forces fueling societal splits. While not directly prophetic, his ideas resonate with today’s crises, reflecting a collective yearning for meaning amid division.

Out of the fires of culture war came Donald Trump, a walking caricature of the animus gone feral. His MAGA movement, a hypermasculine tantrum against postmodernism’s perceived emasculation, tapped into a primal fury. Men who felt their roles as providers and protectors mocked by a world of “woke” sermons found their champion in Trump’s brash, unfiltered id. His rhetoric—crude, domineering, and defiantly incorrect—was catnip for a psyche starved of certainty. When the anima is suppressed, the Shadow’s aggression takes the wheel.

Bandy Lee saw Trump’s psyche for what it was: a malignant narcissist’s fever dream, incapable of handling loss. Her 2020 book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump predicted the January 6, 2021, insurrection, a riot that left Bill Moyers, late, great scribe of America’s soul, calling her the “least surprised person in the country.” Trump’s followers weren’t just voting—they were worshiping a projection of their own wounded masculinity. His “weave” of lies, over 40,000 since 2017, is less a strategy than a compulsion, a desperate bid to outrun a tyrannical father’s ghost. And yet, the masses lapped it up, a folie à millions where the leader’s madness becomes the nation’s.

This wasn’t grassroots rebellion but a circus orchestrated by “lie machines,” as Moyers lamented—media and social media platforms like X, with its 600 million users, profiting from outrage. These digital coliseums, owned by tech oligarchs, amplified Trump’s voice while drowning out voices like Moyers, whose dream of a documentary on Trump’s unfitness was crushed by opportunists and illness. HBO’s replacement film, Unfit, showed how truth gets buried under spectacle.

While the Culture War rages, the real winners chuckle. Tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and their ilk, have weaponized the chaos to dismantle the nation-state, dreaming of tech fiefdoms where they’re feudal lords. DOGE fused data from DHS, IRS, SSA, and more, creating a surveillance state. Partnered with Palantir, Thiel’s dystopian brainchild, it tracks migrants, flags dissenters, and even targets transgender Americans with precision. Nicole Schneidman of Protect Democracy warns of its “no undo” power, a database ripe for abuse by a regime that calls journalists “enemies.”

This is no accident. The Culture War creates distractions, while the Big Beautiful Bill decimates the 99% and continues to erode democracy. Abbe Lowell, the lawyer who shielded Jared and Ivanka from Mueller’s probe, now frets that Trump’s wrecking ball will leave “rubble” of the courts. Nine law firms, cowed by intimidation, have taken $1 billion to push his agenda, silencing dissent. The Supreme Court, stacked with loyalists, greenlights mass deportations, evoking Nazi-era outsourcing of genocide. Congress, drowning in $33 trillion debt, is a sideshow, while the top 1%—owning more than the bottom 90%—laugh all the way to the bank.

The tech fiefdoms are already here: private cities, crypto empires, platforms like X that shape discourse with algorithms. The nation-state, that clunky relic of collective will, crumbles as DOGE and Palantir blur the line between state and corporation. Our collective Shadow is a nation possessed by greed and division, its institutions—courts, press, elections—buckling under the weight.

The psychological fallout is a Jungian nightmare. Trump’s narcissism, as Lee notes, mirrors a broader societal shift toward extremism. Moyers’ “antichrists”—liars cloaking themselves in faith—dominate. Christians, Jews, Muslims: all watch in horror as fanatics like Netanyahu, Hamas, and Trump hijack their creeds, driven by what Lee calls a “lack of faith, lack of love, and lack of life impulse.” Christian nationalism, with its apocalyptic fever, sees Iran’s bombing as a step toward Armageddon, and cheers. Lee’s Prescription for Survival 2025—rejoin the WHO, evaluate Trump’s sanity—feels like shouting into a void.

The environment is, of course, also a casualty of this imperial farce. Climate change rages—2024’s heat records, wildfires, hurricanes—while the EPA, gutted by deregulation, watches fossil fuel barons toast their profits. The UN’s 2030 deadline looms, but the U.S. spends $877 billion on weapons, not resilience. Social media, X chief among them, fans the flames, its algorithms peddling lies faster than truth. Gallup reports 30% trust in institutions, while 33% of Americans flirt with authoritarianism. Like many ecosystems, the republic’s soul is in critical condition.

In this carnival of collapse, public support for inclusion—LGBTQ+ rights, minority protections—grows despite the backlash. New voices call for a “we society,” echoing the republic’s founding ideals. Lee’s and other psychologists’ pleas for global unity offer a path to manage the fall with dignity. A 12-step program to kick industrial civilization’s addiction—admit powerlessness, make amends to the land—might save us.

But let’s not kid ourselves. The emperor, with his 40,000 lies and surveillance state, holds the sledgehammer. History has seen this before—empires trading ballots for banners, then bullets, only to crash. Our systemic crises are coinciding with more frequent, sudden and deadly natural disasters, and the Shadow seems to be running the show, both within the Trump administration, and among a third of Americans—its momentum is great, and the the chances of avoiding catastrophe diminish by the day.