MountainMornings

Remember when “fusion” restaurants were a thing? The chef didn’t want to be nailed down to just one category of cuisine, so you might see an Italian/Southeast Asian menu. It all started with Tex-Mex if you ask me, and who can argue with a plate of loaded nachos?

Lately, I’ve been avoiding Mr T’s minions on the Hill, and their current power-hungry shenanigans; a morbid mix of math denial and transition obstruction for the Biden/Harris team. What’s keeping me up at night is the fact that 72 Million people in this country voted against their better interests.

We had nearly 1,600 deaths in this country from Covid-19 yesterday, but Mr T’s followers think we are “rounding the corner.”

Psychologists call this ability to remain loyal to an alternative narrative, to a fiction, “Fusion Identity.” It’s one step beyond passion and extremism, it’s a borderless wasteland where integrity and intellect go to die. Fusion identity is the reason cult followers must be de-programmed when they are rescued. Researchers will ask people to draw a circle for themselves, and then to draw another circle representing their obsession – a person or an organization, or a religion.

When the person’s individual circle is completely engulfed in the other circle, their identities have fused. Any tether to reality flies out the window.

Great Grandma Ada was really into the psychology of identity. If a marriage was in trouble, she would gently suggest returning to school as a remedy for the unhappy spouse. Her constant refrain was that everyone is in transition, and with a strong identity, one can surf the waves of pain and loss that are the inevitable side-effects of life.

Identity includes the many relationships people cultivate, such as their identity as a child, friend, partner, and parent. It involves external characteristics over which a person has little or no control, such as height, race, or socioeconomic class. Identity also encompasses political opinions, moral attitudes, and religious beliefs, all of which guide the choices one makes on a daily basis.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/identity

If someone is conflicted by their gender identity, or overwhelmed with the impression they are making on others, consumed with self doubt, they are a ripe target for a con artist. And a medical quack, someone who promises a cure for their malady with bleach or snake oil, is the most loathsome type of con. Once you hitch a ride on the Trump Train, you’ve fused your identity with a false narrative. You might as well call up the psychic hotline. You certainly don’t need to wear a mask.

President Obama just wrote in his memoir, in bookstores next Tuesday, that Trump “…promised an elixir for their (Trump’s followers) racial anxiety.”

There will never be an elixir, a pill or an easy explanation for the rise of Trumpism, for the reason the majority of GOP leaders feel the need to coddle this son of a millionaire real estate mogul who squandered his family’s fortune and future at the altar of his own bombastic ego.

But in our family, we have found a remedy to salvage what we have left of 2020, even though he does keep the Bride and Groom up at night.

It’s a pandemic French Bulldog puppy named Watson!