Accurate reporting preserves democracy

I was very grateful recently to hear an advertisement for the Columbus Dispatch on our local public radio station. The executive branch of our national government has shown its intent to systematically dismantle any mechanisms of freedom of the press, including, but certainly not limited to, such educational programming as Sesame Street on public media.

The Dispatch’s commitment to reasoned and thorough fact-finding and reporting is encouraging and so vital to the survival of our precious democracy.

Carl Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst, posited that human behavior is organized around universal archetypes of energy. There are a large number of such patterns or archetypes that we live out at any given point in our psychological development.

One of these archetypes is called The Trickster. Some features of this cluster of energy in the human psyche is one that seeks to confuse, to use smoke and mirrors, to keep its perceived enemy off-balance and unsure of what is real, to fulminate chaos and fear, thus rendering healthy decision-making and positive movement very challenging. The ultimate “win” for the trickster is to exhaust its opponent by breaking down a sense of well-being and confidence in the truth as it appears on its face.

President Donald Trump, employs this Trickster energy. He, in collusion with Steve Bannon, lead “strategist in chief,” has engaged this archetypal chaosmanufacturing way of “governing.” The most effective way to counter this strategy is by naming what is really happening and continuing to affirm in one another a sense of justice and goodness that works for everyone in our country.

This makes it urgent that our voices of reason and dedication to seeking the actual facts and information about “real time” stories be steady, brave and consistent. Thank you, Dispatch, for demonstrating your support for this ideal.

Barbara Davis Upper Arlington