The phrase "bursting your bubble" is about illusions that come from suddenly revealing to someone that their world view is based on something too small, too boundaried, too limited, and therefore wrong. Even though at the time it was part of one's pride, one's ego, one's identity.
The first time I heard the phrase I was a new member of a UU church that claimed to include everyone until it was time to print the annual report. Only copies enough for three-fourths of the congregation were provided. I was surprised since it looked to me like a form of censorship. The church secretary sighed and said, "Mary, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I'll be surprised if even half the congregation want or will read the report." She was not surprised. My bubble burst. I blew new ones. They also burst. Bubbles come from rigid boundaries that one hardly realizes are there. Outside every bubble is a bigger bubble. I keep trying to find the biggest one.
So I've watched Lev Parnas be interviewed by both Maddow and Cooper, which was interesting because his story held up but the emphasis was different. In the Maddow version he talked about being afraid of Epstein's fate and believing that ratting out everyone would help to save him. In Cooper's version he was a little more vulnerable and touchingly talked about how much he had loved Trump, felt so much pride in what he thought was a close relationship that proved what a good person he was. His bubble was what he called "the Loop." I suspect that when he found out the loop burst and he was thrown to the wolves, he wept.
We're told Parnas was mafia, that he had known Trump for decades, that he lived in that world -- at one point hardly leaving the Trump Tower for years because it was enough. But he is not the clueless mob goon that he seemed. He is capable of vengeance. I wonder what has happened to that big portrait of Trump that was a sort of cult shrine. Is it slashed? Burned like a flag? The new bubble includes that vengeance is sweet. Parnas has no grasp of US law, but he understands age-old underworld rules. Trump doesn't believe in rules.
The amount of collateral damage is unfathomable. Famous names, each with their own bubble. Trump is past pretty metaphors about bubbles. He's operating with a bag over his head. His legal team consists of fantasists, which is probably appropriate since he has no defense except mental illness. I wouldn't be surprised if on Tuesday the Senate heard almost no evidence and declared him guilty anyway -- so long as the vote were secret. For them, full disclosure does not represent safety. Neither would I be surprised if Trump went into a mental hospital next week.
When Brandy X Lee brought up group psychosis which is contagious, I googled (of course) and only got folie a deux. But "cults" seems to be a good example and it's the one Parnas went for, which I suspect is the work of the lawyer. There were moments when that quiet lawyer seemed to have his hand up Parnas' back, ventriloquist-style. So far I have not been able to find any research about how to burst someone's bubble or how to disperse a cult, though we can all bring up many examples of them, most memorably the ones that ended in group suicide or death by authorities who find them dangerous. Sports cults, scholar cults, music cults and so on are everywhere and usually unobjectionable.
I do not think Mafia, which seems to be Parnas' and Trump's basic pattern for life is a cult so much as an alternative government, which is probably the way they themselves see it as well. Trump breaks the pattern because the network operates on honor and faithfulness, of which he has neither. Parnas thought Trump was a true mob boss, but he was only -- as many point out -- only on Manhattan and only in the cement racket. ("Endeavor", the PBS prequel to "Morse" has a vivid plot about consequences of that: structure failure.) Parnas also says (rather naively) that he is working with two different national ethics and practices: Ukraine, which operates on bribes and favoritism, and the US which theoretically resists both. He appears to have been a portal for corruption, which is called the norm in that former USSR country.
So far Bannon has not been targeted. He is the man described as watching with cold interest as the idealistic inhabitants of the Eco Bubble died for lack of oxygen. It was the cement that was eating the oxygen chemically. It's all so poetic and ironic. Did you hear the distant sirens during the Maddow interview, just like the movies? Surely there's an opera in the works somewhere. Going mad is great plot fodder.
I'm inclined to think that Trump's defense team may not stick. They have until Tuesday to think it over and could even resign during the trial, right? They are mostly old and have destroyed their careers. None of them seem to really grasp what impeachment means. It is NOT about breaking criminal law, but rather about the capability of leading a nation. Trump thinks it is economics and that economics means oil. "We have the oil!" he shouts. And "if you impeach me, I will crash the stock market."
Erik Erikson wrote books about how whole countries become mirrors (not quite cults) of their leaders whether Gandhi or Luther. (He never addressed MLK Jr. as far as I know.) It has been suggested in other contexts that the reason Trump could so easily be swindled into office -- which surprised him as much as us -- is that we have adopted the same system-view, probably from watching too many TV crime shows with uncritical eyes. Like Parnas, we fell for the faux glamour and the feeling that we are part of the gang, the anointed, the ones who really know.
The scariest aspect of this whole thing is that the world is participating in the hardships, the uncertainty, the dread. The most cynical say "this bizarre, surreal affair called civilizational collapse is the story behind every headline, the truth inside every half-spun narrative, the great theme of all the endless dystopian news." (@Umairh) But maybe our bubble just popped.
