Revolt of the Trumpian Id

The Trump victory can be understood, in Freudian terms, as the revolt of the Id...on many levels. An expression of rage and frustration, with the barest coherent ideology, it is (among other things) a furious repudiation of the oppressive PC liberal superego with its relentless insistence on abortion, climate control, multiculturalism, uncritical embrace of Islam and the undocumented, liberated and sterile sex in the form of compulsory funding of contraception and homosexual marriage. Ironies abound in this paradoxical, contradictory development! Democrat liberalism is, of course, the Party of the Liberated Libido, the unrestrained Id! In the early 1970s, the party of the Catholic working man morphed into the regime of sexual liberation, with abortion as back-up birth control. Along with this came the deconstruction of gender, homosexual militancy, and now trans-genderism. A hidden totalitarianism has now shown itself since this regime demands compliance: evangelical and Catholic agencies MUST place little girls with gay men, photographers MUST service homosexual "marriages" and the Little Sisters MUST pay for contraceptives and abortificients. The contempt our liberal elites have for Catholics and evangelicals (vivid in the Wikileak emails) explains the relief so many of us felt at Trump's unabashed anti-political-correctness. In another way, however, the Trump movement is a clear rejection of traditional Republicanism. His blatant, shameless vulgarity and rudeness was a striking contrast to the gentile, aristocratic dignity of a Romney or a Bush. The personal insults he flung at his primary opponents represented a regression to juvenile if not infantile immaturity. His stereotyping of immigrants and Muslims was a shock to the refined Republican establishment; as was his his embrace of protectionism and entitlements. His unembarrassed lifestyle was at once an embrace of the  sexual revolution and a rejection of the classic Christian super-ego. Paradoxically, however, he embraced the anti-abortion movement and religious liberty even as his own family offered a vivid image of old-fashioned loyalty and unity. Perhaps the strongest influences on him personally are his daughter and her husband who practice traditional Judaism.  Talk about mixed messages! In a most confused, befuddling fashioned, he offered to shield us from the excesses of the sexual revolution he himself has personally embraced. While many of us moral conservatives could not vote for him, enough evangelicals and Catholics "came home" to give him victory in the rust belt.  In the classic Freudian melodrama, the conflict between Id and Superego is finally mediated by the Ego and so we can question if the multi-layered conflict here can be moderated and guided by reason and moderation. Here we consider the Ego of Donald Trump! On the one hand his is a powerful, confident and overwhelming Ego; on the other he is clearly a narcissist with symptoms of borderline personality disorder, especially in his capacity for "splitting" (seeing the other as entirely good or entirely evil.) At this point, we can only pray that his better angels prevail over his many demons. He will surely work with Ryan on the moral/cultural issues (especially the Supreme Court nominee); he will probably comply with the liberals against Ryan on behalf of entitlements; he will likely be frustrated if he really attempts the wall and the expulsion of Muslims. We have no idea what his foreign policy will be. His project of replacing Obamacare will be endless complex and difficult, especially if he retains the valid gains of that law in providing coverage to previously uncovered. However, at the end of the day the Freudian triad of Ego-Id-Superego is a materialist reduction and an inadequate anthropology. Freud himself said that the capacity to love (and to work) is the sign of psychological health. But his philosophy had no place for such a spiritual reality. The human spirit is an infinite desire to love and be loved...a longing for the True and the Good and the Beautiful...a craving for union with others and with God's very Self. And so, it is not the Ego but the Spirit of Love, the Holy Spirit of Jesus and His Father, that can mediate the pressures of the Superego and the impulses of the Id.  And so we pray that this Spirit inspire our new President and all our leaders and ourselves in our own little arenas of responsibility!