Rethinking The Possible

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Time flies when you’re having fun, and evidently, even if you’re not. (I’ve wrestled a bit of flu this holiday season. Bah humbug!) Lately time is behaving like a shooting star, any given moment gone in an eye blink. I put my trash cans out yesterday but they’re still there this morning, which means I’ve already forgotten we’re on “holiday schedule.” Good grief, was it only the beginning of this week that 2013 started, with its countdown ball in Times Square, fireworks and bell-ringing in the Pea Patch? Feels a lot longer than a few days, but you know what? 2013 feels pretty good, for some reason. Feels like a big log-jam has been eased, like something pressing has been uncorked. Feels a little more breathable, slightly more workable. Feels ‘new.’

Oh, the hijinks in DC are still evident. Just watch the news, listen to the tantrums, enjoy the squirming. Note the grim faces of those who think they’ve “lost” ground over the fiscal negotiations, or witness a teary-eyed John Boehner who squeaked through Thursday’s re-election as House Speaker by the skin of his big white veneers. Smirk a bit upon learning that John, after suffering Harry Reid’s assessment that he was running the House like a dictatorship, met Harry in the hall outside the Oval Office and told him to go fuck himself. As a clever pundit mentioned in Huffy this week, Congress is America’s most dysfunctional reality show EVER!

Indeed, the tantrums have been worth watching. Enjoy this breakthrough moment of sanity as New York’s infamously-Islamophobic Representative, Peter King, rails against Boehner’s dismissal of the 60-billion-dollar aid bill for victims of Hurricane Sandy. Sigh as, a day later, he backtracked on his pledge to act independently of party line. To his credit, Jersey’s Governor Chris Christy, who also has a stake in the needed funds, did not soften his disapproval. Good news is that a scaled-down version of the relief bill passed today, giving Sandy victims and little towns strewn up and down the East Coast a reason to be hopeful they’ll survive the winter. More will be considered later in the month.

(Oh, and take a moment’s pleasure in the end of Joe Lieberman’s congressional influence, waving an Independent’s flag with no one left to cheer him. If anyone shot himself in his own foot, it was Joe. And while I will not miss him in any way, I will definitely miss Jon Stewart’s Droopy Dog impressions!)

There are other reasons to be hopeful, as well. For a long time now — much of a decade, I think — this nation has found itself in an ideological straight-jacket of its own making, and although we still can’t quite wiggle our arms free, the threads are coming loose quickly now. Me, I’d say the logic with which the conservatives are facing a new sense of reality seems suspect, laced with defensiveness and miles-deep with self-pity, but — amazingly — it’s everywhere I look these days, no doubt the logical consequence of election results the right is still attempting to justify.

While the faithful continue to beat their chests and talk about unswerving conservative “reality,” their numbers are thinner now, their voices not nearly so strong. Ask any FOX viewer how they felt watching Grover Nordquist try to explain how the biggest raise in taxes in 20 years wasn’t actually an increase. The larger political body is having to adjust to the new lay of the land. In an article entitled “The Culture War Is Over, And Conservatives Lost,” by The Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis, the party is advised to suck it up and take stock of the true state of the American family, the sad decline of American consciousness, perpetrated by the influence of liberal minions upon the otherwise godly (hint: evil, evil, evil!). What they are yet unable to understand, they must attack.

Oddly, reality has found an unlikely champion in Newt Gingrich, who tracks not as an ideologue, but a genuine opportunist ever determined to influence the game. Newt is warning the party that they have to stop marginalizing themselves with obstructionist strategy. He came out strongly against the Pub plan to pounce with their newly-imagined ‘leverage’ (having given in on taxes) determined to hold the nation hostage in debt-ceiling negotiations by threatening to shut down government unless they’re given the spending cuts and entitlement reforms they demand. Ultimately, said Gingrich, they will have to cave, and will then be forced to take the blame for making the market wobble and the capitalists choke. Newt says that the party needs to reinvent itself before it disappears off the map, and in my estimation, that’s clearly a 1 a.m. “last round” call at the old Pub watering hole.

Oh sure, Teh Crazy are still out there, having found their niche in old paradigm fear tactics, their points of power in institutionalized racism, religion and social class. For instance, Newt was recently castigated for his willingness to shape-shift his party platform by an ex-Navy chaplain (asked to leave the service, obviously for good reason). Newt had suggested that same-sex marriage might be something the Pubs would have to learn to live with. The chaplain declared such a stance worthy of a (Biblically-inspired) death sentence as, clearly, the Speaker has been corrupted by “demonic voices.” Teh Crazy, here to stay.

No, the religious won’t be going away anytime soon, nor their version of the culture war; nor will the (even more dangerous) secular version, i.e., the plutocracy that has put our republic on the road to feudalism. Unfortunately, these people have been salted into our city halls, our county seats and our state capitals. And while it’s easier to take note of a Michele Bachmann attacking the president’s credentials (yet again) than to buck a religious zealot making calls at the local board of education, it’s time for us to begin to work smarter — not harder — to route them out. It’s time to come together and change the trajectory of a culture that’s outgrown a tired old sociopolitical system that no longer works.

The drunken glut of power the radical right enjoyed at the behest of their Little Bush is all but finished off now, their social experiment on the ropes, their desperate maneuvers to turn back science and education a “last hurrah.” But only if we know that’s possible. Only if we decide it is so. If we insist that we must fight, tooth and nail, for every win in the coming weeks and months, we will have committed ourselves to a continuance of political jousting that could go on forever. If instead we know we have already won — the polls, the demographics, the generational shifts all say so — we can let those white knuckles relax and shift the signature of everything that’s to come.

Let’s try to make this easier on ourselves, shall we? Let’s just change our mind about how hard this is, and in so doing, change the game itself. Those who insist that we are locked into a broken political system are correct; those who believe there’s nothing to be done about it aren’t. Those who declare the corporations too big to tumble, the institutions too large to shatter, have not been paying attention to the flagging infrastructure and the wobbling ideologies.

The wags who tell us that it’s all too complicated for us little folks to understand, all too incestuous with money and ambition and insider-connections for us to think we can change it, now have carved their tablet in stone; we don’t have to let it be ours. Our tablet can fit in our hip pocket, explode with music and color and possibility, limited only by our imagination and political will. We are no longer talking the same language as those who tell us human destiny is defined by our limitations.

Since I began to write for Planet Waves, almost ten years ago, I’ve often spoken about making choices. We make hundreds if not thousands every day, semi-conscious for the most part. As A Course In Miracles tells us, we can always — no matter the consequences of any decision — choose again. That is the basis of our power, allowing the old to drop behind as we choose anew.

We have choices ahead of us now, with one foot on the old platform that defined the era just behind us — fully in dissolution, disarray, hopelessness — and the other on newly solid ground of growing awareness. Even as we find our balance, we must prepare ourselves to move forward, assuring that a future defined by collaboration and creativity takes on heft and stability with every new decision.

It is always so, after all, that a great idea superimposed over an outworn one will quickly replace the old. That is our hope and our intent, is it not? The imperative now is to understand that it IS our decision to make, we DO have growing power and influence in the collective and we must embrace a sense of responsibility in co-creating the future.

I’m passing a couple of links along in this post because they’re heart-felt, and to this conversation, I think they’re vital. You’ll be glad you read them. The first is Marianne Williamson’s blog post about Sister Giant, her fledgling movement to encourage and explore woman-power in assistance to government. With a record number of women newly sworn in to Congress this Thursday — 20 to the Senate and 79 to the House — the topic is timely. It’s also inspiring, if we take it straight to heart and wrap it in love for an ethical explosion of justice and compassion on the planet. (You’ll find it on Political Waves, first article down — and I trust you’ll forgive my overt blog-whoredom.)

The next link is to an article written by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who suffered a stroke and discovered the potential of human evolution in her ensuing journey of recovery. Her article, “Does Our Planet Need a Stroke of Insight?,” has the impact of a Phoenix rising from the ashes, a voice echoing the Chironic energy of our current evolutionary phase. It’s a joy to read.

These two articles seem perfect accompaniments to our contemplation of the arrival of a Mars/Saturn square in fixed signs, sure to show us our inflexibility, allow us a glimpse of our ‘shadow self,’ and perhaps inspire us to reconsider our choices. The reads will encourage us to hear our higher angels, rising above the conceit of ego to the true humility of our connection with All That Is. And when Venus conjuncts with the Galactic Core tomorrow, I’m keeping my antenna up to receive whatever wisdom this most mysterious and powerful placement wishes to grant me. How loving is our universe, always giving us direction!

Entering these first few days of a new month, a new congress, a new era, remember that the choices are, as always, ours to make. To see clearly, we must simply allow these next few days to be a reflective surface, sparking back the Light we shine, the compassion and concern that we share with one another.

Our first choice? To begin again requires our confidence that all things are possible when we choose love.