John McCain has been pushing me to write about what he sees as the dark energy that has immobilized the Republicans in Congress.
"The force of darkness is almost unstoppable
once it has grabbed a toehold on the psyche and soul."
Ann: Hi John, I have hearing you want to say about why the truth is making a difference to your Republican colleagues. Sorry to take so long to get here.
John McCain: Yes, I have been hounding you, I admit, but I don’t know why you procrastinate so. It’s not as if I’m out to get you or harm you in any way.
A: No, I don’t understand it either.
JMcC: Well, here we are. What I want say, Annie, is that there is a dark cloud hanging over the Senate and House Republicans. I too have struggled to find a way to understand how there could be such intransigent support for a president so clearly committed to advancing our enemies’ agendas at significant cost to our own. I thought that, surely, when all was known, facts would sway minds and hearts, but it was not to be. And now I see why.
From my current perspective I see a great struggle between dark and light on the planet. The dark forces have been unleashed by this president, and they are not just dark but seductive in their appeal and promises.
Many think that if dark is clearly evil, then no one would choose it, and that is a very understandable viewpoint but naïve. Even while alive I saw that the force of darkness is almost unstoppable once it has grabbed a toehold on the psyche and soul. When that happens, all perspective is lost. The only leader is the dark, the only power is the dark, and nourishment comes only from the dark. Soon enough, our survival depends entirely upon allegiance to the dark.
This becomes an addiction exponentially more powerful than any opioid, more seductive and more beautiful in the minds of its victims than any angel of light. It festers in the soul. It multiplies until there is no room for light of any sort. Power, wealth, and domination are the gods it serves. Come along with me, it says, and I will make you whole, I will make you powerful, wealthy and feared by all, no one will be able to touch you.
Jesus resisted these temptations in the desert, but when a seductive leader whose darkness is unrelieved by any glimmer of light makes everything we ever wanted seem to be the right thing not only for ourselves but also for everyone else, we follow because we are granted prosperity, power, and the right to rule our "lesser" brethren. We see ourselves as superior, so any means necessary to guarantee our ongoing power and control are acceptable. No meanness, cruelty, or deliberate treachery is too bad to keep what we have come to see as the good guys in power is beyond the pale.
My erstwhile colleagues cannot shake this power off. They are held in the iron grip of its dark aphrodisiac. They are deaf, dumb and blind to any other message. What hurts me the most is to see people whose integrity I would have staked my life on succumb with whatever rationalization suits them best.
My constituents voted for him so I must not challenge him. (My judgment must take a back seat to that of my voters.)
The voters can take him out in the next election. (I have no responsibility other than to blindly follow the elected leader.)
I can do more good than others to moderate the power of the extremists. (I can’t see that I have become one of them.)
My opponents would be worse. (I will do wrong better than they will.)
I can do more good than others to moderate the power of the extremists. (I can’t see that I have become one of them.)
I will lose my job, and my family will suffer. (My needs are more important than anyone else’s.)
My friends, I implore you to look at the traps before you. No one is immune, and the worst thing in the world that we can do is to think that we are different and could never fall victim. What seductive pressures in your life threaten your own wholeness? Evil can grab hold of a soul before it has turned around twice, and then it is too late. This is a time when vigilance, extraordinary courage and discernment are required.
I ask each of you to look at his or her own life for some of these telltale voices:
It doesn’t matter what I do.
It’s not my fault.
Someone else will clean it up.
My family, friends, tribe will ridicule me.
They’re all the same.
It will be better this way, most people don’t know enough to decide matters of importance.
I/we know better.
Is it (whatever new abomination is revealed) really than important?
We’re doing ok financially, don’t rock the boat.
There’s no such thing as truth.
Everybody is doing it.
We need to get it into our heads that everybody is not doing it, and what we give up may not be recovered in this lifetime. Each little surrender can lead us to what we are seeing in our Congress right now, and each and every one of us could become just as complicit if we are not vigilant in recognizing those voices when we hear them.
This is a critical time, my friends. Keep up with your own soul, and we will find our way out. What I fear most is that once the truth comes out, entropy and apathy will have sucked the life blood out of the resistance so that nothing matters any more. And that is the short road to a master and slave society.
A: Do you think, for example, that some sort of dark force may have been behind my reluctance to get started on this conversation? So easy to think, I’m tired, we've said it before, I want to have lunch with my friends, and I am making a certifiable target of myself for family, friends, and others every time I post something here or give a private reading .
JMcC: Yes, that’s why I keep after you. It doesn’t matter whether you can see where this work is going or not. This blog is what you can do. The readings are what you can do. I have confidence that, when we all do what we can, we will not fail in the long run.
January 28, 2020