Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people – H. L. Menken

As freedom grows, the need to coerce and control opinion also grows if you want to prevent the great beast from doing something with its freedom. – Noam Chomsky

Public Education

Tens of millions of us are really dumb – or to be generous, profoundly misinformed –…

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it. – Mark Twain

Our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three branches of government…You know, the House, the Senate, and the executive…my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of socialism. – Tommy…

How Many Elephants can fit into this Living Room?

Democratic Corruption: I don’t follow each section on Repub corruption with one on Dem corruption (or incompetence) to provide balance. I’ve had plenty to say about how the media constantly engage in false equivalencies. I do it to continue my chronicle of…

America will have a Presidential President again in Joe Biden. – The New Yorker

How does that phrase land on your soul? Are you cheering the downfall of the fascist Trumpus (as I certainly am) and a step back from the precipice of irreversible climate change? Are you celebrating a return to …

Soul and Inspiration

Inspiration happens from deep within the visionary world. While reading, sensing spontaneous intuitive flashes, and dreaming with vivid imagery, we experience the world of the spiritual imagination. CG Jung called the soul a vessel filled with grace or spirit, energy dramatized in literary images, intuitive flashes, and nightly visions known as dreams. Dramatic images encountered during reading and spirit-filled dreams while sleeping are…

Part Thirteen – El Dia de los Muertos

Republican Corruption: By claiming that Trumpus is leading in the polls and repeating his claims that he can only lose through foul play, conservative media are setting the stage for potential violence. Trumpus Jr. has called for “every…

Part One: The Appeal of Conspiracy Thinking

I’m intrigued by how many conspiracy theories are gaining traction today, and wondering how so many fellow citizens of my country can believe them. I see news interviews with people who believe such outrageous things, but in every other way they look and act like…

Could you imagine if I lose? I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country…I could raise more money. I would be the world’s greatest fundraiser, but I just don’t want to do it. – Trumpus, 10/15

Existing emotional instability or psychotic tendencies may be aggravated by corticosteroids. – Warning label for Dexamethasone, Trumpus’ anti-Covid medicine.

Thank you so much for your leadership. – Diane Feinstein to Lindsay…

Part Seven: Responding to New Age Conspiracists

Who is he, who even were truth on his tongue, his way of speaking it would make truth almost as offensive as falsehood? –  Herman Melville

A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. – Winston Churchill

In America the legacy of violent crusading is channeled through our unique emphasis on individualism, and, I…

Part Five: Save the Children!

I see it (the New Age movement) fundamentally shaped by an impulse to the irrational…it seems to lack any critical evaluation of itself. – Terence McKenna 

The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight. – Joseph Campbell

In March of 2020, a book with no stated author – QAnon: An…

I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. – Mark Twain.

The period from mid-September through the first week of October were bookended by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and Trumpus’ illness.

Republican Corruption: The release of Trumpus’ taxes revealed years of no payments at all, income from undeclared foreign sources, massive debts to unknown creditors,…

My new peer-reviewed book, The Mythology of America's Seasonal Holidays: The Dance of the Horae has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan. It explains how myths underlie our seasonal holidays, and how understanding the mythology enables us to celebrate holidays more meaningfully and enriches our lives.…

Republican corruption: The ACLU of Georgia revealed that as recently as 2019 the state had purged nearly 200,000 citizens for moving from the addresses on their voter registration applications – none of whom had actually moved. Mitch McConnell quietly rammed through…

Jung, Christianity, and the

Evolution of the Western God-Image…

Pre-orders of my new book "William James and C.G. Jung: Doorways to the Self" are now being taken at Analytical Psychology Press:

https://www.analyticalpsychologypress.com/steven-herrmann

Let’s look at developments in a half dozen themes that I’ve been emphasizing.

The corruption of the Republicans continues unabated. Each day brings new revelations. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe announced that he would be scaling back…

Jungian analyst Murray Stein writes:

“Steven Herrmann is one of those rare individuals who can brilliantly bring intellectual prowess and visionary depth together in a graceful dance of prose and poetry. In this work he presents the many cross-overs and parallels between two similarly gifted thinkers, C.G. Jung and William James. A comparative study of these two giants of modernity is long overdue, and Steven Hermann is perfectly prepared to cover this match in all its…

Part Seven

In previous posts I offered several main points to consider about this election:

1 – The corruption of the Republicans / the Elephant in the Living Room

2 – The corruption of the Democratic National Committee

3 – The naïve innocence of liberals and intellectuals

4 – The surprisingly neutral position of the Military-Industrial Complex

5 – Boy psychology: do either of these…

Our Fall (Sept.-Jan.) Zoom lectures, free of charge (including several cancelled last Spring due to COVID-19). Full information on each lecture, with Zoom and CEUs registration links at…

Part Four

Two Senile, Old White Guys Who Want to be President – Or Do They?

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters. – Trumpus

This essay is not really about politics, except to the extent that politics reflects mythology. Our first responsibility as mythological thinkers is to cultivate discrimination, to take a step back and…