Deepak Chopra, a man who’s made himself famous pushing Transcendental Meditation and pseudo-scientific alternative medicine, offered some deep thoughts on “fear”-driven, “angry” Donald Trump. Trump’s real problem, explained the spiritual guru, is that he’s “mentally” and “emotionally retarded.” But don’t be confused: Trump is really the offensive one.
Chopra’s “retarded” rant came during an interview with Alan Colmes for Fox News Radio on Tuesday.
“I would never say this unless I believed it was 100 percent true, but [Donald Trump] represents the racist, the bigot, the one who’s prejudiced, the one who is full of fear and hatred, the one who represents emotional retardation of a 3-year old,” said Chopra.
“He pouts, he’s belligerent, he’s emotionally retarded.”
Deepak Chopra
“And yet he’s so popular because he’s given permission to our collective psyche to express their darkest demons,” he continued, doubling down on his deprecating line: “He’s full of fear. He is angry. He has a lot of hatred. He pouts, he’s belligerent, he’s emotionally retarded.”
Realizing just how bad he sounded, Chopra attempted to blame his offensive comment on Trump, who he said was “bringing out the worst” in everybody.
“What I said just now, I would never say these things about anybody. It’s not like me. But he’s bringing out the worst in me, because I, too, am fearful of what would happen to the United States of America and the rest of the world if, God forbid, he became president,” he said.
“Maybe I was too kind when I said he was emotionally retarded. Maybe he’s mentally retarded too.”
Deepak Chopra
But his state of repentance apparently wore off — and rather quickly. Despite his self-flagellation over the Trump-induced comment, Chopra expanded on his insult.
“Maybe I was too kind when I said he was emotionally retarded,” said Chopra. “Maybe he’s mentally retarded too.”
In an op-ed for The Huffington Post published Monday, Chopra said that, rather than being an anomaly, Trump “stands for something universal, something right before our eyes.” This “collective secret” of the human psyche, he explained, is known as “the shadow”:
The shadow compounds all the dark impulses—hatred, aggression, sadism, selfishness, jealousy, resentment, sexual transgression—that are hidden out of sight. The name originated with Carl Jung, but its basic origin came from Freud’s insight that our psyches are dualistic, sharply divided between the conscious and unconscious. The rise of civilization is a tribute to how well we obey our conscious mind and suppress our unconscious side. But what hides in the shadows will out.
When it does, societies that look well-ordered and rational, fair and just, cultured and refined, suddenly erupt in horrible displays of everything they are not about: violence, prejudice, chaos, and ungovernable irrationality.
Chopra goes on to say that Trump is actually just the Republican Party’s racist, bigoted, hateful “shadow” finally out in the open:
The Republican party has kept the shadow on a slow simmer for decades, ever since Nixon discovered how to make hay form Southern racism, law-and-order aggression against minorities, and us-versus-them attitudes to the Vietnam anti-war movement. In order to make themselves feel unashamed, the good people on the right found figureheads after Nixon who exuded respectability. The irony is that as with civilized societies that seem the least likely to allow the shadow to run free, the more benign a Reagan or Bush acted, the stronger the shadow became behind the facade.
For some reason, Chopra fails to mention the “shadow” in the Democratic Party in open display in all the recent violent rioting and its role in promoting segregation and racial animosity over the decades. No, apparently conservatives have a monopoly on the “shadow.”
Here’s the guru’s profound advice on confronting this “collective secret,” including one he failed to do himself, “Don’t fight the shadow with the shadow.”
What to do in the meantime? A few things come to mind.
- See Trumpism for what it is, a confrontation with the shadow.
- Instead of demonizing him, acknowledge that the shadow is in everyone and always has been.
- At the same time, realize that the shadow never wins in the end.
- Find every opening to reinforce the value of returning to right and reason in your own life.
- Don’t fight the shadow with the shadow, which means not stooping to play by Trump’s nihilistic rules—he will always be willing to go lower than you are willing to go.
Speaking of Transcendental Meditation and the “shadow,” here’s a good read on the “dark side” of the movement.
Partial transcript of Fox News interview via The Daily Beast.