At the Democratic National Convention in August of 2020, former president Barack Obama said this in his speech.
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” ~ Barack Obama
Barack Obama did not explain that statement. He just paused for a second and then went on to the next thing in his speech. Here’s a perspective on why he did that.
In my town, people have been posting a lot of videos of local bears. Someone always adds a strong and stern comment, a command to “Take down your bird feeders!” There is a long-loved culture of bird-watching in my town as there must be everywhere. It probably started out like this. You enjoy seeing birds but as you age, it gets harder to venture into the woods. So you put up a bird feeder to attract birds to you. It could have started with a selfish vibe. You like seeing birds. But after some time of enjoying watching the birds that come to visit, you begin to recognize them and get to know their habits. You give them names. You appreciate their beauty more and more. Beauty is a really high vibe and it changes you. When challenged, you justify the feeding as helping the birds and soon you raise the vibe to resonate with enthusiasm and good cheer. You might even raise the vibe further and say you love birds. You create memes and a culture to support the habit and you pass it on to the next generation. Your children put up bird feeders in their first house.
For many generations, this culture of bird feeding with its feel-good helper vibes, its caring warm-heartedness, and its appreciation of beauty has grown and grown. For you personally, each encounter with each bird creates a new thread of connection between you and the birds. As they are created, those threads are spun into a growing blanket of good feelings about birds. Now people are telling you not to do that. What? That which you love? When you say, “Take down your bird feeders!”, what do you mean? I have 20! Why should we give it up? We’ve always fed the birds!
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” ~ Barack Obama
Here’s a loaded phrase, “White Supremacist”. Let’s unload it a bit so we can talk about it without that tightening in our gut that clouds our thinking. Let’s broaden the scope to “All Supremacists”. That includes you and me and everyone else. Who’s a supremacist? Take a look at the narcissistic ego that each of us developed around age two. For survival, it needs to be seen. It might be hidden so deeply inside of you that nobody can see it. Or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, your ego might actively share the memes of your narcissistic culture. Like hatchlings with big open mouths, both gaping and crying, the attraction to survival screams for attention. The human ego, like the survival instinct of all animals, uses what it has to get what it needs to survive.
When we care about others, we are attracted to the higher ideals of community with noble virtues, helpers, volunteers, and healers. That doesn’t happen to everybody. Actually, the “Me” vibe has the majority in America. It was formally recognized as the “Me Generation” in the 1970s with “I did it my way”, “I gotta be me”, and many more memes to support it. Why? What do we get out of being selfish? Juice.
Competition, winning or losing, gives you juice. There was even a football player named “The Juice”. Remember him? Control and oppression, power over others, yelling “Ha!” at others, being better than others, or just looking down your nose at others gives your animal a feel-good juice. We all have an ego that evolved to help us survive. And we did survive, so we can acknowledge it, appreciate it, accept it, forgive it, and thank it for successfully getting us to today.
So what about the culture of extreme “I’m better than you” called White Supremacy? In many ways, it’s like the bird feeder culture. It has a feel-good element. It has memes that have been fueling and supporting this culture from generation to generation. Both the bird watchers and the white supremacists want their feel-goods and they will not let go of them very quickly. So, they are the same and equally at right to their feel-goods. Right?
To agree is to embrace relativism which believes there is no absolute truth and that each person is entitled to their own truth. So you deny the truth. Speaking the truth is not important to you. Do you vibe with that? Over half the people in the U.S. do and over three quarters of all people in the world do. So, maybe it’s true! Maybe my truth is just as valid as yours. Maybe the truth of win-lose is just as valid as win-win. Maybe the haters are just as good as the helpers. Are you willing to look at something that would change your mind about that? No! Of course not. What’s to be gained by doing that? Your narcissistic ego has no intention of changing and it will deny any challenge with fierce competition. That’s where your feel-goods come from! You’re not interested in change.
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” ~ Barack Obama
What does it take to change? What does it take to grow out of your narcissistic ego? Most people never do. Let’s look at the differences in the feel-good vibes of the winners, or of all competitors really, and the feel-good vibes of the birdwatchers and all caregivers. For the competition and control vibe, the outcome is always win-lose. For both the winner and the loser, it’s the same vibe field as for oppressor/oppressed, and perpetrator/victim. It’s all a battle, a competition, and a win-lose outcome. For the caring helpers, the desired outcome is always win-win. The helper and the helped both feel good.
What else is different? Helpers really do want to help and they feel good doing it. They are optimistic and hopeful that the helped will feel better. They are usually cheerful and enthusiastic. This vibe may easily rise to a higher vibe like mercy, acceptance, and forgiveness with harmony as the goal. As in music, there is more beauty in harmonizing. But the competitive ego doesn’t care about your feelings and actually wants you to feel worse. It’s all about competition, not cooperation. This vibe may easily fall to lower vibes like anger, hatred, frustration, desire, and fear.
Another difference is that the caring feelings resonate with energy around the heart. The need for control resonates with the energy in the belly. Measurements of the vibrational frequencies show that the animal survival vibes are lower than the other vibes. This is important because the potential power to influence goes up with frequency. The higher the vibe, the more potential power there is in it. This is physics. The higher the frequency, the greater the power. The high vibes of compassion have the most power, happiness, and truth.
Here’s another difference between the survival vibe and the community vibe. When the ego is in control, it believes that it has the most power. It denies that there is greater power. The vibe field itself will discourage you from giving in or quitting. The helper community vibe has the courage to admit mistakes, to say “I’m sorry”, and to look up to a higher power.
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” ~ Barack Obama
What does it take to change? It takes courage. You first have to admit that you do not have all the power. It takes a leap of faith the very first time you say, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. It was wrong for me to do that.” Why can’t Donald Trump do that? Why did Barack Obama say that he can’t? You might think, “Anything is possible”. Here’s why. Donald Trump has been a competitor all his life. He takes control but he doesn’t give it. He seldom has trust for anyone. There is no evidence that he has ever expressed humility in any form. He has never said, “I’m sorry”, “I made a mistake”, or “What I did was wrong” and actually meant it and felt the vibe of humility and the courage to be vulnerable. His ego never lets him put his guard down. There is no happiness there and I feel sorry for him. This is what Barack Obama knows.
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