TRANSCRIPT
The reason that I don’t like politicians is that I don’t trust them. The main reason for that is what I have observed personally, knowing some politicians and spending many decades watching politicians on television. Sometimes even going to listen to their speeches, seeing them walk by, watching their characters, reading about them is I think politicians want one main thing, and then there’s a subset of this one thing that they’re after. They want power, and the subset is money. They want power, and money is part of the power. That is their motivation. That is their goal. They kind of also want fame. They want glory, but I think this really fits under power.
The other thing about it is they don’t say this. They’re not honest about that because nobody wants to hear that. Nobody votes for a politician or supports a politician when they say, “My goal for this country is that I have power, I have money, I have fame, I have glory.” They never say that. Instead, they lie. What they say is, “I want to help this country. I want to help this community. I want to help this land. I want to help people. I want to help poor people.” Often very rich politicians wanting to help poor people or help rich people or whoever it is. They want to help corporations. They always want to help. They always want to be of service.
I have devoted my life to being of service, and that’s not to say that some don’t do some things to be of service. But I still think their primary mode of every single politician I’ve seen, and I believe if I really got to know probably almost anyone out there, are there some exceptions? Might there be some exceptions? There might be. I’m not going to say that I’m 100% right across the boards, but I think I probably am, or at least very close to being entirely true. That even the ones who do things that are of service, underneath it, love the power. They love the authority. They love the perks, the emotional perks that they get.
And so what they do is they present themselves as being these good, ethical, altruistic people, whereas in reality, pretty much usually to a very high degree, they are the exact opposite. But how do they bamboozle people? How do they pull the wool over people’s eyes? How do they get people to believe them? Well, one of the big ways, and this is how it relates to this channel specifically, is that politicians present themselves as parents. Parents to the world, parents to their voters, parents to the community, parents to the country, parents to the culture, even parents to the religion. They present themselves as the parents of their voters, or in countries where you don’t vote, parents to the citizens, parents to the masses.
And people in the world are often, so many people, most people, all people to some degree perhaps, are traumatized children. I am becoming much less of a traumatized child through my healing process, which is a big part, I think, of why I’m able to see through what’s going on with politicians. But people want parents. I think so many people in the world, they want a parent to rescue them. Also, they want a parent to hate. Well, politicians present themselves always as the good parent, the loving parent, the parent who is there for their constituency, is fighting for their well-being, is altruistic toward the children who they want to vote for them or support them.
And people get very passionate about it. That politician is good. That politician loves me. That politician is fighting for my well-being, is benevolent and an ethical person, and I will vote for him or her. I will support him or her. He or she is the best thing out there. They are the good, the parent. And that politician, the other politician, the other side, the Democrat, the Republican, the Independent, the Green, whatever it is, in different countries, different names, that is the bad parent. That’s the evil one. That’s the one that holds all of my negative feelings.
What’s also interesting is the politicians who are less good at faking it, who are less good actors, who are more emotionally connected, often do worse. The people who are more split off, more evil in a way, the people who are able to lie better, dissociate better, hide their motives better, the people who actually would make worse parents often do better in politics because they fake people out more. They’re more like cult leaders. They have more charisma, more confidence, the kind of stuff that makes people project onto them or believe them or hope, love them, even love this absolute stranger on television. And in a way, these politicians have a gift. They have a real talent. It’s a misuse of the talent. It’s a misuse of the gift. I would go so far as to say in many cases it’s just straight up evil, but they’re really, really good at it.
Well, are there any exceptions to this? Are there any politicians who I really like? And as I was preparing to make this video in my own mind, I was thinking about that question. There’s some that I kind of like a little bit better than others. Maybe that’s maybe because they are a little bit better as people, or maybe it’s because my unresolved childhood trauma projects more onto them. But I’m thinking, are there any that I really just inherently like? And I think really no, except going back almost 30 years, I really feel I benefited from reading Gandhi’s autobiography, “The Story of My Experiments with Truth” by Mohandas Gandhi. I read that book, and it affected me. There was something I felt that was really sincere about him in trying to know truth and trying to be honest.
I remember reading somewhere in a biography of him some British admiral or lord governor general of India or something like that who said, “Mahatma Gandhi was the shrewdest politician I have ever met.” That guy knew what he wanted, and he knew how to manipulate the world, the population, even us, the British, to get what he wanted. He was one hell of a shrewd politician. And the funny thing is, up to that point, I don’t think I’d even realized that Gandhi was a politician. And that actually, in a way, speaks to how I probably got faked out by Gandhi, that I didn’t even realize he was a politician. I thought he was just a good person doing good in the world. Maybe he did do a lot of good in the world, or then again, maybe he didn’t.
It was interesting. I never went to India at that point. I didn’t go to India until last year when I was in my late 40s. And Gandhi, who died more than 70 years ago, was someone who lived a minimalist lifestyle. He was living in poverty. He spun his own clothes. I don’t think he barely used money. He starved half the time. And what shocked me when I got to India is Gandhi was on the money. He was on all the paper money. Gandhi! And it was like, ah, it was a little clue to help me realize again Gandhi actually was a politician. Gandhi, I think, really was after the power. I think he fits the model of what I’m talking about, that even though he didn’t present himself as wanting this, he presented himself as fighting for the will of the people. I think underneath it, there was something that was probably very egotistical about him, very grandiose. He wanted, maybe, maybe again he was a good person and altruistic in some ways, but I think there was a big part of him that probably was very self-centered and thinking about himself. I speculate that. I don’t know.
But then I say, well, how might I come up with some evidence? Because maybe they put him on the money because he was such a good person, not because he was a politician. One thing I look at, and I do this with a lot of politicians, is I look at their personal lives. This is another way to assess the character of a human being, to look at their personal lives. What kind of people were they in their private life? Well, Jefferson was having sex with one of his own slaves. He was having sex with a woman who he owned, Sally Hemmings. George Washington owned hundreds of slaves, and he didn’t even free them when he died. He gave them to his wife to free. So it was like this man owned other human beings, and you can’t tell me this.
Was a different time, but still, this is not ethical. These are the parents of our country. So many of these guys own slaves. So looking into their personal lives, you can see a lot about people. And I think the main thing is, how do they really treat their children? What kind of people do their children grow up to be?
This is what I think about with Gandhi. I read about it. Even Gandhi himself said it. He was constantly abandoning his family, constantly abandoning his wife and children. He would go to other countries, wasn’t there. He was there for the country, for the population, for the poor people of India, for the untouchables, that caste, but not for his own family, not for his own children.
And then I read later on, one of his sons, Gandhi was having correspondence with his son because it came to Gandhi’s attention that his son was a pedophile. His son was molesting his son’s daughter. So Gandhi’s son was molesting Gandhi’s granddaughter. It’s like, hmm, why would he do that? It’s like there was a lot of trauma in this family. Gandhi sacrificed his family.
I think of Martin Luther King, kind of a politician in a way, and yet he knew he was going to get killed. He abandoned all his children. It’s like, that’s kind of questionable to me. Maybe he liked the power so much that he forgot about his own children, who he brought into the world.
Also, Gandhi took advantage of young girls. He would sleep naked in the bed with naked girls, whose family said they gave their girls to sleep in the same bed with Gandhi when he was an older guy. And the reason was, it was to test Gandhi’s celibacy. He would lie in bed next to these beautiful young naked teenage girls in order to test his celibacy, and he considered this a good and a healthy thing.
And I think from the perspective of a teenage girl, how in the world can you consider that to be healthy? To have to get naked and lie in bed next to a naked old man in the 60s or 70s? It’s like, wait a second, that’s sexual abuse, and Gandhi didn’t see that. I remember when I read that, I thought, I cannot hold this guy up on a pedestal so much anymore. It’s like, no, that’s really disturbing and unhealthy, and he didn’t even know it. He shared about it publicly as a good thing.
So then I think, well, maybe I was idealizing Gandhi, kind of like a lot of people idealized politicians. I think, yeah, and probably in a way I was looking for that ideal parental role model. And in some ways, for a short while in my early 20s, he was it. But nowadays, I think I’m much back to the place where I’m just plain skeptical about politicians. Maybe one will come along who will prove me wrong, but that’s what they’ll have to do at this point. They will have to prove me wrong because I’m not going to believe them at face value.