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Saturday Morning Dreams
Do you dream about politics? I often do.
I recently had a complex dream full of remarkably creative eructations from my unconscious mind. Donald Trump, believe it or not, made a cameo, and threatened to fire me. (No, I am not kidding.) I was supposed to be selling a kind of vending machine that dispensed candy bars with labels claiming they were uniquely nutritious. I looked at the ingredients and saw that they were made of nothing more than sugar, so I didn’t think I could honestly sell these machines. Trump thundered that I knew nothing about selling anything; I was a failure and should do as I was told.
Shortly after that, I heard a fight break out down the hall in Trump Tower, which in the strange way of dreams had become my old college dormitory. I was, I realized, the dormitory warden. I was told by the students rushing down the hall not to try to break up the fight: Just look away, they said, you don’t want to be mixed up in this one. Then, to my horror, an anguished young black man rushed down the hall and before I could stop him, jumped out the window.
I don’t think the interpretation of that dream requires much by way of laser-light psychoanalytic insight.
This morning I dreamt I was back in Istanbul. I had a meeting with Prime Minister Davutoğlu. To my surprise, he seemed warm, professorial, avuncular. He was organizing an international conference at a large and luxurious hotel. He took a keen interest in every detail of the hotel’s hospitality, he assured me.
A group of journalists were gathering outside the hotel to get on a bus to Syria. Michael Totten was among them. (Odd that he showed up to play a role in my unconscious mind; I’ve never met him in person, although we’ve spoken on Skype. What does he symbolize, I wonder?) I was supposed to go with the journalists, but decided at the last minute that the security precautions weren’t good enough. I was conflicted: It was a chance to do reporting that I wouldn’t get again, so I wasn’t sure I should miss that bus, and as it pulled away, I regretted that I hadn’t taken it.
I decided that instead I would find out what the sermon was like at the grand mosque on the top floor of my hotel — or rather, in the strange way of dreams, that’s what the hotel had become, a magnificent and infinitely mysterious ancient mosque. Was ISIS preaching in Istanbul yet, I wondered? Davutoğlu sounded very reassuring; he was busy with his conference preparations. But I had an uneasy feeling that I’d hear something that wouldn’t set my mind at ease if I spoke to the men who were filing up the stairs to hear the imam. The phone then rang and woke me up, so I don’t know how the dream ended. Had it not, I might not even have remembered it.
That one isn’t difficult to understand, either.
What about you? Do you dream of politics? If so, what do you dream? Do you find yourself as surprised as I do by the richness of your dreams’ metaphors?
Published in General, Religion & Philosophy
I dunno, Claire… that’s a little too meta for me at this time.
Here we are watching Donald Trump, of all casino owners, rocketing up the polls, endearing himself to legions of angry & misleadable Americans…. and he’s basically hijacking the GOP race, bulldozing the field & building a magnificent golf course on top of them, then employing them as caddies.
And in the backdrop, we have a crazy new Cold War heating up with the Middle East already crackling at unhealthy Roentgen levels.
Are Americans about to nominate a reality tv celebrity, longtime Washington player, friend & donor to the Clintons… and an all around buffoonish wiseguy?
I can’t think of anything more dangerous than nominating an unserious sideshow act with a career of greasing palms of the folks he’s having fun bashing daily… as if they’re loser contestants on his reality show.
And he’s pulling off a brilliant performance.
The media marvel at the Donald 24/7, but they aren’t too interested in learning more about his background, affiliations & yuge vulnerabilities.
Plus it would send a signal around the globe that America is colossally unserious about getting its act together… and what’s left of civilization is on its own.
America badly needs to re-become a serious country who is reforming itself and rebuilding the western order that we basically squandered over the last half century after inheriting it.
These are tremendously historic times… not times for wistfully pondering one’s political dreamdust.
It already has. It’s painful to me to see the entire world laughing at our electoral process, instead of feeling curious about what democracy means to us. It’s a truism that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector, and no amount of re-funding the Voice of America could hope to rival Trump. The message he’s sending the entire world is that American democracy’s a hollowed-out, pathetic joke. This is not “if” he’s president; this is the effect he’s having now.
American democracy, along with our judicial system, has been a joke for a very, very long time.
That sounds like the RNC than Trump. Except the RNC cand(idate) bars the last couple of election cycles haven’t been made out of sugar.
I used to have the exact same dream. With the added bonus of no pants.
Yes, I sometimes have dreams about political figures, as well as Ricochet contributors and members. I wrote a post about it a couple years ago, which you can see here. In the conversion from Ricochet 1.0 to 2.0 the order of the comments got mixed up, but you can still make sense of it.
I had a dream about Joe Biden yesterday. (Seeing this thread reminded me.) Joe and I and another guy were out and about doing things together. Very strange.