America Must Heal First To Truly Become Great Again

English stand up comedian and creator of “The Office” Ricky Gervais presented the Golden Globes in Hollywood. Ever since I have been fascinated by what actually was going on that night, and what is going on in the States in general. The world is watching.

It was bigger than Gervais making jokes about America’s elite pedophiles flying around in helicopters. It went beyond Hollywood celebrities being in terror to be name shamed.

Stand up comedians are the jokers of society, their function is to bring to the surface that what is carefully hidden away

Ricky Gervais hit the aching nerve of America that evening. Something that has been ignored for a very long time and that is starting to rot under the surface.

Remember the scene in Cast Away with Tom Hanks in where he gets a terrible toothache? It is that pain that is hidden, and ironically, Tom Hanks symbolized it again that night in Hollywood. His face expressed it all. Stuffed away pus from a deep tooth nerve infection. Pus that wants to come out, but doesn’t know how, so the face expresses suffering while holding up good appearances and disgust for the guy that is poking the infection of America.

America holds up appearances in deep pain while it suffers from a huge denial and Ricky Gervais hit that majestically.

Ricky Gervais was telling the truth about America

Truth has become the biggest shadow for America. Lying and denial have become the pillars of America’s culture. They serve as a massive cover-up for an unbearable pain underneath.

America needs therapy. Since everything is connected these days, the whole world will benefit.

Ricky Gervais is the voice of the shadow of the US.

A shadow is something that we are too afraid to look at, we deny it, it is a part of ourselves that we can feel very ashamed about and push away in subconscious slumber. But when the underlying pain gets too strong, the contraction of society gets too severe, powers behind our control will put it outside of ourselves and forces us to look at the underlying root of the pain.

Ricky Gervais was playing out the root of the pain of America. The disgust was just the first layer of resistance. It is a breakthrough. There is more to come. The truth hurts.

It might be the first signs of a bigger turn around. When America heals, the world will heal with it.

This is how the US can heal in order to become great again.

I love America and Americans, don’t take it personal. But I won’t grab this problem by the balls with satin gloves. And yes, of course, it is not only America that needs therapy. The fact is that America is the most powerful ball in the game and isn’t acting as a world leader lately. So Houston, we have a problem.

The Problem

The US and its allies started a war based on lies. Ever wondered how much pain and trauma this has caused for millions of Americans and the rest of the world? To survive this behaviour you need to start telling yourself lies in order to survive the pain that is associated with your actions that hurt millions of innocent people in the name of a fake dogma of freedom. To lie becomes to survive.

The lie must be told every day. It has resulted in the unbearable moral silence that America has become. A vast sea of ethical absence that is drowning any word of truth in waves of fake news.

The truth, however, is still there, somewhere underneath big layers of denial and a culture that numbs itself out with the very thing that it is not, by playing big.

Lets go one level deeper and look at the root of America’s culture, its values that stood once fierce and symbolized the very best things capitalism brought the world. It is this

The survival of the fittest

This is part of the myth of the American Dream. A culture in where a paperboy can become a millionaire. In fact, has to become a millionaire. The image of the survivor that fought its way from poor life in misery to being the top CEO overcoming all kinds of challenges. This is the American dream.

This collectively held paradigm turned into the image of the superhero, or superhuman. In this cultural setup, there is no room for failure, weakness. The linear storyline of the superhero is in 80% of Hollywood's movies.

There is no room for weakness since weakness means death. It is the price to pay for being the bully of the world.

In this culture of power play, bluff and intimidation, truth is weakness since it is connected to vulnerability.

The representation of the American superhuman has been pushed so far that it is just around the corner of fascism.

Like Orwell, Arendt, Levi, Frankl, and an endless list of great minds taught, when truths don’t exist, nobody can be held accountable for what never happened in the first place, much less oppose or resist it. umair haque

Democracy is fading in the US and reality is collapsing with it.

The big problem is the denial of the lie that Trump tells the world. This becomes the denial of the lie that people tell other people, and finally the lie they tell themselves. America started to believe the lies collectively.

It is like mass hypnosis. Nasty things can happen in this state. And they are happening.

Denial is America’s blind spot, as a result of fear for social shaming.

It is the elephant in the room. It silences also the rest of the world in disbelief.

There are Americans brave enough to reach in their hearts, people, that feel the injustice, that speak out. They are furious because of the injustice.

What happens? They are met with more aggression. The very thing the leader displays every day.

Aggression on social media, blaming and shaming campaigns. People are numbed out by social media shock and awe. And when that doesn’t work, Facebook dark ads might help in times of elections as Hillary Clinton experienced.

Why wouldn’t it also work to social media-shame & blame intellectuals that have the atrocity to speak up? It could be the next big data hack.

At the end of the day the intellectuals, the people with ability to think for themselves, the ones with a big notion of moral responsibility to speak up, are often the first to be silenced in dictatorships.

People shut up because it is simply not safe enough to practice free speech. To express themselves in a populist culture with a leader that has gone mad max. The latest; 4 federal judges withdraw from a case after a Tweet of the President that their penalty was too high for his old friend Mr. Stone.

This is exactly what I mean with social media shame and intimidation.

Trump uses twitter for a shock & awe campaign against his own people. A president mocks the justice system and respectful prosecutors withdraw from the case.

Hello?

Sabotage

This is what happens next: people start to express themselves indirectly, they will do something that is called sabotage. Indirect protest.

Shakira and J.Lo made a strong statement during the Super Bowl half time show against US policy. It was indirect. This happens in a culture where nobody dares to speak up. Nancy Pelosi ripped the State of the Union speech apart. All acts of sabotage, but indirect.

Do you see how childish this all is?

Democracy degenerated into kinder garden bullying and silent retaliation.

Imagining Shakira being a girl and sticking a paper with the words “Liar” on the back of Trump when he isn’t looking. That’s how far the world got.

This are all recent acts that try to sabotage the status quo of denial. They are shouts in a desert of lies. And nobody really responds. The truth is gone fishing.

A culture that mass-denies the truth will eventually deny reality. This is the dangerous part. In this mass hypnotized mindset things that normal functioning minds would object without any doubt suddenly become acceptable. In this shady toxic atmosphere, complete groups in society, races even, can become dehumanized, because the leader said so.

Did I mention Hitler already?

Here comes our real superhero. Ricky Gervais told the truth about America. He got the perfect stage for it. He is an exception. People listened in disgust and anger. But they listened. They knew it was the truth, in their hearts.

I believe it is a turning point, with some other events that I will describe later.

Denial became part of US culture

The President of the united states, the most powerful entity in the world tweets these kind of claims;

These tweets have become kind of normal. Politics has become an amusement. Are you kidding? Lives are at stake, our planet is burning.

Can you still see the collective denial here? Or should I mention Hitler again?

The tweet and other material from the Trump One Man Show was the reason for Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert to suggest that Trump should be detained involuntarily to assess his mental health.

In facing traumatic events, you either fight or flight. The President of the United States always fights, he has no choice. His people chose to flight, into denial. The people are holding still, join the massive silence, freeze into submission to the lie.

The truth became the enemy of the state. Whistleblowers are chased into their deaths like Julian Assange is.

The truth in America is denied for so long now, and on such a massive scale, that the denial itself has become part of the culture.

When you look at this from a psychological point of view, when you push this behaviour to the max, the chances are you become a sociopath. And with Trump, America hit the jackpot. O yes, he is probably also a narcissist and psychopath as Gilbert claims.

This piece is not about Trump, it is about America. I agree, it is kind of black and white, but that is to get the point across. I don’t want to lose myself in all kinds of softening perspectives. The truth needs to be spoken. Rather sooner than later.

The coming into existence of the chapter Trump in our world history says as much about the majority of the American people as about himself. He is just a mirror, I have compassion for the man and for all Americans. There is no room for a shame and blame game here.

Remember Al Gore? He nailed it. He called the Truth inconvenient. He hit the nerve of America.

The Inconvenient Truth of Climate change. 20 years later politicians are still discussing the realness of climate change while our eco-systems are collapsing all around us.

Al Gore was a window of opportunity, a crossroad in US Politics. His truth was already too much to bare. Maybe from that moment the lies started to accelerate.

If we don’t face the truth when it comes up, it becomes harder and harder to face it since we have to come to terms with the fact that we have become pathetic liars for such a long time.

That is a big problem. Lets move to the solution.

2. The acceptance as the first step

To get there, to start healing anything inside of yourself, we need to face the ugly situation we are in. We need to start to surrender to this, beyond our resistance.

This is always the hardest part. For America, this means; facing its collective denial. Facing the culture of lies and the abuse of power. This means getting ready for the pus to come out. A collective purging.

It is a humbling process, exactly what America needs. It needs a crisis to be able to look inwards. It needs to be released from the heavy burden to rule the world. The world should sent the US out of the classroom. America needs time to heal and lick the wounds.

It is a transformation time for the US as it is for the rest of the world.

On the other side is empowerment. People that dare to speak their truths, whatever the consequences. Like Ricky Gervais did. Truth finding will have a chance again to become mainstream. As it should in a democracy.

The most important step for this is the acceptance of collective denial. It made all of this happen. Everybody stood at the side in silence and watched. Also, the impeachment didn’t work.

Nothing will work when the majority of the American people won’t change by looking inside and discovering their own truths. And owning them. And stand for them amidst storms of twitter rage, hate and shame and bullying from the red haired bad boy in the classroom.

How to deal with self-blame?

After the first phase of acceptance, massive self-blame will arise.

For this to transform, America needs to be treated as a wounded boy. And it needs to treat itself like this.

When the father of the house got mad, fights with everybody and beats the shit out of democracy, is a pathetic liar, narcissist and sociopath, it is time to take care of yourself.

It will be a severe period of mourning. Because the innocence of the nation died.

Americans need to start to talk about their shame, their denial, without blaming, without being a victim. Feel the shame without self-punishment. Purge the pus to clear your consciousness.

Forgive yourself. That is a big part of the cure. The quest for truth has started

3. The Cure

How can America wake up out of its collective state of denial? It’s mass hypnosis that makes the people stand silence at the sideline of society watching how democracy is slapped in the face by a culture of lies.

How can America heal, and become great again?

For the first time in my life, I saw a Netflix series recently that broke with the US superhero storyline. Again, these are signs of a turnaround, the pain of America placed outside of the patient to wake up to it and slowly coming to terms with it.

It is the series Messiah. What is the Messiah all about?

The truth.

In Messiah, finally, The Truth wins over FBI doubts, mistrust and attempts to kill the truth. In fact, they really try to kill the Messiah but fail. Normally they win.

Trump can try to kill all of his enemies until he comes to the realization that he can’t kill truth.

When you try, the truth might come and get you and “kill” you. Meaning, death of the ego of America as the start of facing its greatest fear: of being weak, of being vulnerable, sensitive, compassionate, caring.

Of being human really.

This is exactly what happens in Messiah. The president of the US in Messiah finally reaches his heart and decides to withdraw all American troops in the Middle East. Weakness becomes his strength. He would have been eternally loved for his, by the world, by everybody. But it is portrayed as the collapse of the nation by the FBI and thus must be avoided at all costs. The FBI becomes the voice of old conditioning, of fear. Does nobody sees that they are only there to spread fear, division and mistrust? The Truth brings people together. This is symbolized by the Messiah, so he must die.

The truth, however, will survive everything. Sooner of later it will come out. it must.

It is time for America to surrender to “perceived” weakness. To connect to the compassionate heart.

For America to become vulnerable, connect to its heart, it needs to face its own shame. Embrace its pain. And the hardest part, when this is faced and collectively purged, it needs to forgive itself. And it needs to be forgiven by the world.

I have always felt compassion for America. I have never forgotten that its soldiers died to liberate Holland and Europe. My father has experienced the war and that made an imprint. From Marshall plans all the way until the cold war, America has been my hero. I love Superman, E.T, NEO and even the Wolf of Wallstreet. After Obama, I turned my back towards the US and feel a lot of mistrust and disgust.

It is time for the wolf to turn into a peace dove, for drones to change into butterflies of transformation. This healing will happen since truth overcomes anything. It will be the next huge step for humanity.

Because there is no separation really. We suffer when America suffers.

I pray that soon the the majority of people in America will feel safe and strong enough to feel the cultural denial, break through the tsunami of lies and start embracing their own truth. To be able to face the shame and pain with compassion and that becoming vulnerable becomes mainstream. Truly, we don’t need a new Messiah for that.

It will set this planet free.

The World will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything — A. Einstein

Lucien Lecarme

Join My Tribe to receive words that reach deeper

Lucien is writer, blogger and author of “The Wisdom Keeper”. He lives in front of a wonderful magnetic rock in Ibiza where he organizes retreats. He loves Hiking and dancing tango and has 14 wild cats. Lucien’s passion is to write, learn and grow as a human and writer every single day.