Photo by Jon Tyson
One of the most important things that I learned when studying and training to be a counselor at Duke and Duke Medical Center was how important it was to look for the grain of sand of truth for those who are operating between reality and their own illusions or delusions. Don’t buy into the “crazy talk” that doesn’t make sense to you, but look for that issue that is difficult to see among all the scary behavior and statements that they are making. It is always there and sometimes obvious, but still difficult to see. This grain of sand of truth usually follows Occam’s Razor, a theory that says the simple explanation is usually the right one. Truth can be hiding in plain sight.
For example, on one occasion I had an uninvited visitor to the chapel who was lying on a back pew during a middle school chapel service that one of my assistants was conducting. The Assistant Head of that division came back to my office in the chapel to inform me that there was someone with strange behavior who was lying down on a back pew and was refusing to leave. I asked him to clear the chapel and call the police while I went out and talked with him.
I listened carefully to everything that he was saying and shouting. He was a threatening presence. His anger was focused on the school as an institution for learning but because he had been left alone in life, he was loudly proclaiming a diffused state of anger. When I asked him to stand, he towered over me and I am not a small person. I thought that it was just he and me in the chapel. One of the members of my Religion Department came up beyond me, and said, “Rev, I got your back!” This religion teacher was a former all-Ivy back for Penn Football. I felt safe. I continued to try to reach this delusional person and finally was able to see how people had betrayed him. I learned later that he was a former member at our school when he was very young. He equated our leaving to build a new campus with people who had left him. That was the grain of sand of his truth.
In all the “crazy” talk of others, you have to discover that grain of sand that is informing all of their thinking and emotions. For those of us who have been following the work of the January 6 Committee, it is now very clear that Trump knew the truth of what happened on that day and knew that he was lying. I, like many others, have been pondering why he would do such a thing and create an insurrection and almost ruin our democracy which was more fragile than most of America realized. He is dangerous.
He is no different, however, from the unwelcomed visitor in chapel who uttered threats and babbles instead of conversations that are clear and to the point. I came to the conclusion that the grain of sand for the truth of Trump was that he was a sore loser. I was wrong for that wasn’t enough to warrant the cultivation of the Big Lie. I have come to a different realization that someone else casually commented before I could understand more deeply why Trump is doing what he is doing which is a path of destruction and division for him and our country.
There is usually a “substitution” involved in discovering the grain of truth like the intruder in a chapel service that he was angry about the school leaving its location. His “crazy” talk was about others who weren’t there when he needed them most.
What someone else casually observed helped me to see my own search for the grain of sand of truth for the big lie when I read that Trump casually mentioned to some others that “he would rather lose with people thinking it was stolen from him than that he had simply lost.”
Although we know that his life has been checkered with losses and loser anecdotes, we know that his father couldn’t tolerate a “loser.” That is why Trump indicated when running for office that “you are going to be winning so much you won’t be able to stand it.” He spins everything in his life to win to hold off that message that “losers shouldn’t be tolerated.” He required loyalty substituted for real love to continue in a world that doesn’t make sense to us and certainly defies understanding from others except those who only want to use him to get more power.
People who are being interviewed by the January 6 Committee use language such as “crazy” and “operates in an unreal world.” If you understand his actions, we may be able to tolerate (not sanction or agree with) his behavior that doesn’t make sense to so many. It still leaves the ending to his accountability or not for his actions. We shall see! Perhaps William of Occam is correct that we don’t see a person’s truth even when it is simple and should be obvious. Keep in mind that a good many of Trump’s crimes have been done in plain sight as well.
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