An unimpeachable source has suggested to me that my post yesterday lacked clarity. (Actually, the source, my 24 year old son, used somewhat blunter language to suggest the confusion might have been less in my writing than my thinking.) I thought I would make an attempt to clarify some of what I was trying to describe which supports the idea that the current manifestation of the left and the Islamic fascists share a fundamental psychodynamic constellation, which makes their de facto alliance clearer.
Utopia is a concept that refers back to the primitive Mother (as described in my posts on PC). The fantasy of an all nurturing entity which supplies all of one's material needs derives from the imagined experience of an infant at the breast (and even further, to the intrauterine environment.) Substitute the state for the Mother's body and you have a distillation of the collectivist Utopia. It is easy to see how this can relate to the Left, which would like the nanny state to offer cradle to grave care. How it relates to the Islamic fascists is a little more difficult.
Political Correctness, as I have described elsewhere, arises from the same roots. The need of the Father to mediate reality is denied. All aggression and danger is attributed to the "oppressive white males" without whom the world would revert to the state of Utopian peace of the Primitive Mother.
The Islamic fascists also look back to a time long ago when the world was offered a prescription for Utopia based on the divine revelations of Mohammed. In this case, the Maternal origins of Utopia are denied through a violent reaction formation. Not only is the Mother not a source of all good, but the woman becomes the dangerous source of all that is frightening in the world. Much of Shariah law is devoted to controlling and limiting the dangerous woman. (If you have not yet read Unfree Under Islam Shariah endangers women's rights, from Iraq to Canada, by Hirsi Ali, you should immediately do so.)
In Psychoanalysis, all developmental phases involve the negotiation of conflicts. In other words, there are generally two opposing desires, wishes or fears which must be resolved in order to successfully integrate the developmental milestone and approach new psychological challenges. In the case of the earliest separation-individuation phase, the conflict is between the fear of separation and abandonment from eh mother and the fear of engulfment and ego loss felt in the regressive pull back to fusion with the mother. People who have significant difficulties in negotiating this crucial stage of development often have serious psychological problems in later life.
The Utopian Socialist comes down on the side of fusion with the early Mother. To them the danger of confronting reality is greater than the danger of engulfment; they are willing to give up autonomy in order to be safe. Political Correctness carries this another step by denying the dangers in reality in order to idealize the fusion with mother. The father becomes the devalued repository of all that is bad and is denied and attacked as a danger. (This facilitates a displacement form real external dangers, a pertinent point for the present dangers we face.) The Islamists come down on the side of fear of engulfment. The man who is endangered by the all powerful, engulfing mother, denies his fear, idealizes his strength and devalues the woman who represents the feminine ideal. They control their fear of women by controlling them.
My suggestion yesterday was that under the influence of the need for Utopia, the left and the Islamists join in looking to the past rather than the future for their sustenance. Both groups are willing to use their young for their own purposes rather than foster independence and freedom of thought in the next generation.
Cindy Sheehan is a grieving Mother who has suffered the most painful loss a parent can experience. There is nothing to equal losing a child and grief of such intensity has profound effects on the survivor. I have no issue with Cindy Sheehan. I do suggest that those who have been so eager to use her loss for their own ends are despicable. The anti-war movement is part of the Left and as such their view is distinctly toward the past. Their longing for the halcyon days of the 60's when they spoke truth to power and stopped a corrupt war committed by an evil government using the tactics of Genghis Khan (in John Kerry's immortal phraseology) is a reflection of their core fantasy of returning to Utopia. Since they are pre-disposed to the Utopian vision which requires the use of the young to support the old, they can see no contradiction between their aggrandizement of Cindy Sheehan for her loss (thereby using her son's death for their ends) and their depiction of American servicemen and women as torturers (all abu Graib, all the time.)
Islam and Collectivism are both religions that seek their goals and inspiration in the past. Their vision is of a static world where nothing changes; the Islamists are most open about this: They love death. The left disguises their love of death by loving revolutionary violence.
Judaism and Christianity are religions that seek their goals and inspiration in the future. They love life and every death is a tragedy.
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