The Way We Were

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

It’s always tempting to write a year-end wrap-up as we near the last days on the calendar. We used to see them everywhere, the-ten-best this and that, the-ten-worst. I used to put them out each year on Political Waves as “the lists,” short articles that have the appeal of a bumper sticker, offering a brief but concise explanation of cultural and political complexity. I appreciate these, collector of sociopolitical puzzle pieces that I am, but this year I’ve seen fewer of them. Perhaps everyone’s too worried about the impending plummet off the fiscal cliff to concentrate on such a review, or perhaps they — like me — find this year too perplexing and complex to break down into a tidy smattering of sound bites.

Oh, there are several ‘firsts’ to be noted, not that they’re anything to which we might point with pride. The 112th Congress, for instance, has surpassed the previous record held by the (1947-48) 80th Congress — one then-President Harry Truman dubbed the Do-Nothing Congress — in giving the nation a two-year hiatus from substantive, and necessary, lawmaking. That prior congress, by the way, passed almost THREE TIMES the number of bills produced by this legislative body, if that’s what we wish to call them, given their record of obstruction. We’ve endured more than 100 Republican filibusters this year alone.

I plan to write a letter to the editor at our tiny county paper “thanking” our Bagger House representative for ignoring the needs of the people and refusing to engage them in conversation locally, while laughing all the way to the bank with her whopping $174,000 salary for doing next to nothing. (I doubt it will be published, since that would be considered the local equivalent of spitting into the wind.) Her recent re-election is the product of the rural religious vote and a newly-gerrymandered district, although I’m seriously confused as to why she and her Bagger comrades are considered such a prize to the natives.

As the elected drag their heels in renewing the national farm bill, we’re fast approaching a ‘dairy cliff’ in which milk prices will likely double — reverting back to 1949 farm-policy law — and increase the cost of commodities across the board. We will reach our federal debt limit (ability to pay our outstanding bills) in two days, risking another downgrade in credit worthiness as a nation. The mid-Atlantic is closing in on environmental bio-emergency even as super-storm Sandy’s victims languish, while a 60-billion-dollar aid bill sits in the loop, ignored. And astoundingly, the lame duck congress seems in no hurry to hand rural farmers, their own constituents, or anyone else in the nation the governance they so desperately need.

Yes, that seems to me to be a first in ‘mean’ or ‘misguided,’ perhaps both. And another first this year is simply breathtaking, given the worrisome amount of need and suffering we see all around us. More money was spent in this political campaign season — some two billion-plus dollars — than ever before in history. Thanks to Citizens United, we still don’t know where much of (what is being dubbed) ‘dark money’ came from, but we can mark its result; NOT, gratefully, in national politics, so much as a thorough purchase of small rural districts, one after another.

Once again, gerrymander pokes its head up as culprit for concentrating these districts, the Pubs making solid gains when Democratic voters went soundly comatose in 2010, allowing for a decade of conservative control, perhaps more. If you don’t remember the details of shape-shifting voting districts for political purity, my March article, “The System Is Gamed,” explains the process and consequence of redistricting. Proving the virtue of the motto “All politics is local,” Karl Rove and the Kochs aggressively went after these little pools of influence across the face of America this season, flooding local campaigns with cash and knocking the beholden into the Republican ditty bag by the hundreds, making it highly unlikely that Dems will regain the House in the near future.

Think about that! Even the old hands in the conservative movement consider the current mix of unyielding, ideological representatives a vehicle of party suicide and a tyranny to American well being. People are beginning to realize that Boehner lost his up/down vote because the Baggers were not sent to Washington to make legislative sausage but to gut government. He won’t push them now for fear of losing his speakership; a movement is already growing within the House to strip him of his leader’s position. Over in the Senate, McConnell is too wary of being ‘primaried’ by a more conservative candidate in 2014 to stand up to them either. And while the majority of citizens in the nation vigorously disapprove of this continued inaction, Bagger reps are listening only to the big fish splash in their little home ponds, encouraging them to take some heavy-handed “reality” to the Democrats in power (and Pubs too friendly with them.) The political system is feeding on itself, leaving the nation to stand by, helplessly.

Even as I speak, the president and the congressional leadership are meeting in the Oval Office to hammer out a last minute plan. They have mere hours to do it. Can it happen, as we all look on in wonder? I’d be surprised if it does, even though this is a nation that by 80-some percent believes that Wall Street is — riffing on Matt Taibbi’s description of Goldman Sachs — a many-tentacled vampire squid that should be held accountable for the billions, nay trillions, it gambled away. Why, then, would we want to give the big money boys a tax break again? Why would ANYONE in their right mind want to do that? Perhaps the politicos will agree to kick the can down the road again, putting off the inevitable for yet another “cliff-hanger” in the future. For the sake of many who count on their little bit to get by, we can only hope.

And so, at the end of a year marked by inertia — haggling over choice of president, a dicey future and perception of ourselves — we face its ending with a clear picture of all that’s wrong, if nothing else, and a long list of things that need immediate attention. In these first days of a new era and the last of a remarkable year, it’s simply staggering that asking the wealthy to pay their fair share still has the nation in a deadlock, with some of the citizenry in a fugue-state reminiscent of Y2K.

But that isn’t all that happened this year. What was going on behind the scenes was more important, in my estimation, than almost anything going on in the public eye. What was changing in consciousness trumped even the most stringent attempt to marginalize it.

We stopped being afraid. I didn’t say worried; I said afraid, hunched up over our awful prospects, living in a constant state of agony over what I’ve come to think of as “Dread Pirate, Roberts” issues. Maybe it was adrenal exhaustion that pushed us past this kind of frenzy, maybe we just wised up with a look back at all we’d been encouraged to fear NOT coming to pass, over the years. I think we’ll remember this moment as the one in which fear collapsed as a manipulative factor, a tactic no longer able to be so easily wielded to push the American public to some immediate semi-hysterical, knee-jerk response. Sometimes, older really does mean wiser, and a lot of us got older during this new century.

This was the year that Goddess prevailed. Conservative men across the nation made the mistake of allowing the things they discuss among themselves to go public. Blindsided by the sound of their own rhetoric, they gave the nation a good look at their sexual repression and inner patriarch. They told us we had to carry babies — even, tragically, those that were already dead or dying — to term or face criminal consequence. They passed state law after egregious state law, prohibiting us from the full control of our bodies, denying us birth control and affordable health services. They embraced the War on Women as a conservative family value, managing to piss off so many women in the process that the election gave us a record number of new female politicos and re-elected a president who appointed two women as Supreme Court justices in his initial term. More Mormon women voted for Barack than for Mitt Romney, and we are seeing similar demands across the world, Indonesia and the Middle East. Word to the wise: do NOT mess with Goddess.

This was the year of the outliers. By that, I mean the sub-set of citizens who so often have to fight for their inclusion in civil rights — so yes — let’s include women here, as well. Immigrants, veterans, LGTB folks and those on the wrong side of the War on Drugs all got a lift in viability as political constituents. The public showed more regard for this demographic than the politicos did, pushing their issues forward to be reviewed and refined. The more tolerant, younger generations impacted the dialogue, if not the current outcome, of these issues, so we can count on further movement in the near future. The culture war has already become more about financial separation than about social specifics.

Just so, and something of a surprise, big money may have rigged the process but it didn’t win the day. We thought it would. We thought the vast millions flooding conservative pocketbooks from the vaults of crusty old benefactors would throw the game, but in the end, conscience ruled the national vote. That is astounding news, and we must not forget how edifying that is for our future prospects.

This was the year that Venus crossed the Sun, when our hearts came home to inhabit our essence. This year, we began to refine what was valuable from what was frivolous, unnecessary, disposable. We began to feel our way through a world we had long considered too painful to embrace. Our hearts broke for one another, as we recognized our common wounds, our broken dreams. We sent money and prayers to those in need, spent record amounts in support of causes that inspired and challenged us to sacrifice in service to the whole of us, and sent out strong messages of spiritual intent.

Westboro Baptist Church may make consistent headlines, but thousands of small organizations — feeding and clothing the needy, helping with job training and child care, offering assistance to those dealing with substance and sexual abuse — go unreported but not unappreciated. The internet began to earn its chops as a medium of reform and relief, creativity and collaboration. Projects seized our imagination: we sent messages of support to a young whistleblower imprisoned for telling the truth about his government, we bought winter supplies for Wall Street occupiers and sponsored wolves and polar bears to protect them from eradication.

In 2012, then, we came together in favor of a democratic process, a fair playing field and a sense of compassion and care for one another. We pushed past the delusions to recognize our reality. We opened our hearts to feel not only all that had wounded us, but the very commonality that has the emotional capacity to heal us. 2012 was a year in which the majority of us were not caught unaware. We were finally awake.

The past has created us, the present compels us, the future awaits us. And — hearts open, arms linked — we must put our faith in what we know is right and just, work to create nothing less than ethics and honesty in our thoughts, words, and deeds, extending into our workplace and homes. Greed failed us, and fear crippled us as an old paradigm of social understanding and authoritarian control kept us prisoners of a dark vision for an era.

We’re back to square zero, now, older, wiser, ready to recreate ourselves and no longer dozing. 2012 was the way we were. What comes next is our opportunity to change — beginning within ourselves, making every day count toward a renewal of Light — and allowing love to lead the way.