Homeland Rhythms

​This Political Season: Intolerance at the Gates 

As a psychoanalyst both love and hate are in my purview, but I admit I’m not neutral on the question of which is better sustenance for living.  There is a long tradition of applying psychoanalysis outside of the consulting room.  Freud set a mind expanding precedent. He drew his inspiration from science, religion, history, mythology, society and the arts as well as from his practice, and he gave back to all these sources of knowledge and energy. Violence, hatred, sadism, bigotry: they fascinated Freud and still fascinate us. When growing unchecked in our midst, however, they may call us beyond our consulting rooms in defense of tolerance and peaceful co-existence.  Elvin Semrad, a beloved teacher of psychoanalysis at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in the 1960’s and 70’s famously said the goal of psychotherapy is to help people “acknowledge, bear and put in perspective” their struggles and their pain. In this respect the music of good poetry is often psychoanalytic and the feeling experience of a good analysis is often poetic. 

Allmerica's Song 

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose votes.”
— Donald Trump, rally. Sioux City Iowa, 1/23/16

Donald Trump retweets neo-Nazi sympathizer who
has said he lives in “Jewmerica.”
— New York Daily News, 1/22/16

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C’mon proud citizens
Of Christ Muslim Jewmerica
Gay Straight Transmerica
Asian Latinomerica
Black and Whitemerica

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Who don’t even pack heat in the middle of the street
In schools or museums except in bad dreams
Cuz I got a short story, not pistol pumped or gory
An Allmerican anthem that refuses to grant them
The tolerance despisers, the bigotry deniers
Any role in our soul, any place for love’s misers
​
On the beat watch your feet, white supremacists meet
Don’t give lip, want to be stranded on a ship
Like the St. Louis of misery, turned away by U.S. history
In advance of Trump’s profanity, refugees from fascist anarchy
Whose bodies dropped with guns’ staccato sound
Like on TV shows and movies
Where murders and assaults fill studio vaults

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Donald shines, brightly washed, doing deals, living posh
First a bore and a scamp, but the rich have a stamp
That declares when we oughta have a cleansing new order
Each civility we built slides away in the silt 
Not made for a grade this steep it’s
Our republic, can we keep it?
That’s ours, the third house of the Pig
Ain’t it strong, ain’t it big!
When the wolf man shoots his breath
Like a Trekkie Borg on meth
Ain’t it handsome, ain’t it tall? Are you sure it won’t fall?

​The paranoid see farther than complacent pundits bother
We say their brains’ got bad biology
They’ve mixed up their chronology
Don’t be uncouth, don’t be unfair, it can’t happen here 

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Pardon me, can you disturb your tranquility
Entertain the possibility that denial is futility
Embrace a position in stiff spined opposition
Fight the urge to appease, to genuflect and please
The masterminds of hate
Before it’s too late, you lost your state
Wake up you can’t find it, you left it behind it’s
What your forefathers fought for
What will you let yourself be bought for?

C’mon Blacks, c’mon Jews
C’mon gay, cis and trans
Muslims, Latinos
Philadelphia to Reno
Gandhi never ate the candy
MLK drew his arc up from the dark
With permanent marker

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Learn from followers of Abe
Who didn’t see their graves 
In the sunsets of Vienna
Don’t be dumb and senseless when a
Virus of contempt and titillation
Sweeps across the nation
Stand up 
For loving kindness
Tolerance cooperation
Not deaf, dumb and blindness
The poster on your wall makes the call
Says it all
Feel your heart, hear its rhyme
The winner is a loser
Who spoke up one more time

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Notes
-St. Louis: An ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany turned away by the U.S.  Many on board died in concentration camps after returning to Europe.
-Third house of the Pig: In the Three Little Pigs, the house of bricks too strong for the big bad wolf to blow down.
-Borg: From the Star Trek TV series, an alien race of cyborgs functioning as drones in a hive mind.  They force other species into the hive, warning them, “resistance is futile.”
-Lost your state: Ben Franklin, when asked on leaving Independence Hall at the close of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, “Well Doctor, what have we got---a republic or a monarchy?” replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
-MLK’s arc:  Martin Luther King, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”