Dear Friend and Reader:
I’M WITH LARRY DAVID. Enough of this. I am so ready to get this election over and done with that I don’t know what to do with myself.
Around the water cooler in my office, the feeling is definitely one of a nationwide pregnancy in its last week. This is the political equivalent of the period before the baby drops low, your water bursts and the contractions and dilation and the pushing and the doctor yelling “Breathe!!!!” begins.
There are articles I’ve started in the Planet Waves hopper that are looking at me like abandoned children, eyes wide open and innocent pleading, “…where are you?” My sleep is plagued with waking at 3 am wondering if I have something to do. Anything. I wander around my little cottage, switching the TV on and off. Nothing.
Last night, I dreamt I was in bed trying to make myself scream. And not in the way one might think, oh prurient ones, but literally trying to scream my head off in total rage, using that scream to beat away the scary beast that was looking at me, bemusedly, wondering if I was ever going to get up off my butt and scare it back.
Then this morning, I read this diary at Daily Kos, and everything became crystal clear.
In my mind’s eye I can see my mail-in ballot on the kitchen table. It is covered with a stack of bills, neatly piled, but still on top.
AS IF THIS WAS JUST ANOTHER ELECTION.
If all my pent up, stacked-up continuous, layers-upon-layers of rage over the last eight years had a face, it would look exactly like those bills piled up on top of my mail-in ballot on the week before the biggest election in our country’s history takes place. So simple, yet so telling.
How easily we’ve been fed the lies, the cover-ups, the thefts of this country’s soul these last eight years. Eight years of criminals so dark and crimes so deep you only need a few words to remind you, like Watergate of their nature and historic precedence: Bush. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Rove. Gonzales. Alito. Roberts. Brownie. 9-11. Iraq. Guantanamo. Abu Ghraib. Falujah. Katrina. Military Commission Act. Patriot Act. No Child Left Behind. To all, these last eight long years looking like so much junk mail and bills piled up on a kitchen table, with so much processing, shredding and check-writing I have to do, I added yet another chore: voting.
I guess this is why I needed to scream, even while I was sleeping. And maybe that’s the whole metaphor right there. Maybe I have been holding back because I wanted to carry out my public wailing a little longer, perpetuate the victimhood perpetrated on us by the cabal of Victim-Perpetrator-Saviors who bum rushed us into a war that’s killed close to 4,200 Americans. Whose incompetence drowned a city. Whose machinations disenfranchised people from their voting rights. Whose bullies scared and separated immigrant adults from their children, and elevated bigots to the top of their ticket.
And whose thieves did a regulation-free run on our national treasury for the last eight years if not longer. For those of you wondering where your taxes paid for public education went, maybe you should Google “Cayman Islands.”
Like Obama says: enough.
Now this is what I’m going to do with my ballot, this 2008 AD, American, presidential election. First, I’m going to take it out from the bottom of the pile and rub it with rock salt. Next, I’m going to expose it to sunlight for 2,920 seconds, each second counting for each day for a total of 2,920 days, the equivalent of eight years. This breaks down to approximately 48 hours.
I am going to boil up some clear spring water with special cleansing herbs and spices: peppermint, ginger, black and red pepper and add some garlic to the mix. I am going to pray while doing so. For peace. For compassion. For justice. For forgiveness. I will then allow the steam of the brew to touch both sides of the ballot, to cleanse it.
When its dry, using my special calligraphy pen, I am going to mark down my choices for President, Vice President and ballot measures. With each stroke, I’m going cast aside all doubt, all worry, all concern and focus the intention of confidence that my will as a voter will be done.
After meditation for five minutes, I will sign off my ballot with my most perfect calligraphic signature, insert the ballot into the envelope, seal the envelope and beautifully, artfully write in my return address at the upper left hand corner of the ballot envelope. I will then WALK with joy to the post office, five blocks from my house, purchase the most spectacular postage stamp they have, put it on the ballot, and tenderly, sweetly embrace this ballot one last time, clutching it closely to my heart with all the love I can muster before I drop it, with purpose, into the mail slot.
I’m performing this ritual not as a joke, but as my personal sacred rite. A rite for my right to participate in the most critical function for any citizen, anywhere, any place on this planet. We’ve been so close so often to losing this very right, so vital to the sustenance of any republic, to vote rigging, vote-caging, election-fraud — here in America.
We’ve had our nation’s own Justice Department penetrated by racists and partisan hacks who would litigate our exclusion from the democracy that was promised each of us. We’ve all been set one against the other, divided from each other to satisfy the interests of those who have no interest in us at all.
I don’t want to ever ever lose the feeling that I have of being an active citizen of my nation using my single power of the vote to make my nation what I want it to be. Enough. I’m going to scream it. ENOUGH. That’s my mantra every day from now to November 5th until all demons are rooted out like a good thorough surgery on metastacized cancer. It’s over. It’s done. It’s finished.
Let the ritual commence.
Yours & truly,
Fe Bongolan in San Francisco
“I saw you in my meditation this morning. You put your forehead to mine briefly in greeting. I actually wept with a certain kind of relief.”
mystes:
When you see my next blog post, you’ll know why.
Fe writes…
“My apologies if I appeared flippant in my response to co-selfing, and I probably have experienced it, but that experience was never given a name. ”
Kissetakisskisskiss… No offense taken. I probably exhaled a little as I was looking at it – you picked up on that.
Good that you’ve got another name for it. I’m sure people are reading and thinking: Hey, that’s just [empathy, mirroring, admiration, emulation, etc.] Having new names for psychic processes makes them more gymnastic (yes, in the greek sense of the word). And there is a difference… it’s in the conscious addition of Emptiness. Cf. ‘gymnastic.’
Fe, personal note: I saw you in my meditation this morning. You put your forehead to mine briefly in greeting. I actually wept with a certain kind of relief.
Back to the boogermines.
M
I had a lady dentist a few years ago who would look at you with the most compassionate love, and mold her expression to yours for a minute, which was followed by a moment of real connection where you could speak and be your true self. It was more effective than the novocaine, I can tell you that much. Now, because of insurance, I’m seeing another young dentist who sort of practices the same way – and he actually drilled one of my teeth without using any novocaine.
mystes:
My apologies if I appeared flippant in my response to co-selfing, and I probably have experienced it, but that experience was never given a name.
I certainly didn’t experience it from my mother–who had a whole other way of connecting us to her, but then again, maybe it was. And I know, from your description, that I’ve done it with babies. I think I’m learning how to do it with the man I’m getting close to, its a ripe fruit to pluck and quite potent.
Fe, honey…
Re: the deep empathy move… I’ve done this with schizophrenics, other people’s babies, pregnant women, tired graduate students, architects, and a few artists. You love your kids, so that kind of mirroring goes on automatically, but teenagers are another species.
Co-selfing is really pulling the person’s appearance over you like a sweater, then once you snuggle in, just BEING (with) them. There’s a moment when you *get* their signature, the existential pattern. Being ultra-still is key, and then even stiller, so that all you are is Being. No quality. Then, you kind of shift ontological gears and even stop Being. That leaves a kind of open, warm, sparkling space in which s/he can expand while feeling supported.
“If any so by love refined,
that she soul’s language understood
and by good love were grown all mind
Within convenient distance stood
[…] this Ecstasy doth unPerplex
and show us what we love.”
J. Donne
Co-selfing is the ‘convenient distance.’
Back to Saturn…
M
Mystes, the co-selfing worked wonders on my brother in the nursing home. Thanks for sharing how to do that.
mystes:
“I вЂ?remember’ him with my whole being. Not with a particular behaviour in mind… merely emulating his existential pattern reduces isolation and fear – which is at the root of about 95% of human mischief.”
It sounds as though you’re giving a tug on that maternal cord (my best friend Rhodessa calls it her “pussy string”). Sounds like a powerful psychic ballet between mother and child. I’ve watched it in action with my sister’s kids and though sometimes her words can confuse or anger them (what mother DOESN’T piss off her kids?) there’s that whole other unspoken connect that speaks more than anything.
I’m reading Susan Griffin’s new book, called “Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy”, and its discussing the familial relationships that are the root of our relationship to our leadership–what we want of them consciously, what we resent from them consciously and unconsciously. Alot of the relationship is a reflection of what we have at home, and like home, its conflicted.
I’ve just started reading it and this is one of the points so far. The book is so filled with insight that I’m flagging pages that I need to re-read just to keep as a touchstone for my writing here. It seems very wise so far.
” first pay your federal taxes to the nonprofit(s) of your choice. My little businesses bring in just enough to make this relatively painless, so I know it’s more challenging for people who have a paycheck extraction each month. But it can be done. ”
Oh yeah! I forgot about that!
” I’ll be back when I finish вЂ?doing my Saturn.’ Could take a while. ”
Eh, criminy, screw your Saturn. Don’t you know he’s going to do all the work even if you don’t clock in?
Do your Uranus instead. He’s got drugs and philosophy, you’re going to dig it.
~j
Hmm… (Fe… the last thing I remember was walking into this massive electronic hug, a roaring Green shock and then… silence, sunlight, waves {{{{)
***
Just ducking my head in the door.
Fe asks: “Its good to see the problem, but again, I repeat, what are we going to do, aside from voting–about it?”
Coupla things: first pay your federal taxes to the nonprofit(s) of your choice. My little businesses bring in just enough to make this relatively painless, so I know it’s more challenging for people who have a paycheck extraction each month. But it can be done.
Second: Learn ‘tong len,’ what I call co-selfing, or expersonation, or self-for-other. Not for moral ‘improvement’ (spits over her shoulder here) but as a cognitive exercise.
When the teen starts to get testy, I ‘remember’ him with my whole being. Not with a particular behaviour in mind… merely emulating his existential pattern reduces isolation and fear – which is at the root of about 95% of human mischief.
***
I’ll be back when I finish ‘doing my Saturn.’ Could take a while.
M
“Right now I think too many people are balanced too precariously, if tipped, I can see a massive revert to animal savagery.”
jlo, if you’re still out there, I stared at this for about ten minutes realizing I did not give you a good answer, so here is what I really want to say:
Anarchy is going to be the most visible political structure in the lives on common men from now until the foreseeable future. I believe that the animal savagery you’ve seen is a symptom of a social system that is not working anymore. The only reason there is something like an MS-13 is because people who would stop or deter something like this have been disempowered. Domestic savagery is a *symptom* of the acceptance of broad state power.
In other words, we have an imbalance. Communities are not participating in themselves. This is not their fault: they’ve been coerced into giving up their personal boundaries while the very sick among their number are just waiting for The Man to come along and shut them down.
You don’t need to worry about that until it happens. Bad behavior has a way of extinguishing itself. Violence on the ground is equal to the violence *possible* in a place and a time. If there is no fake promise of a nonexistent Katrina rescue, even the assholes calm down.
Reconsider anarchy. Read about it. Older people in the Complex will dismiss it because they are afraid. They will demand to know:
Q: Who will defend us from a foreign threat?
A: In the anarchic system foreign threats are not large, they are small. Differences can be resolved.
Q: This is ridiculous! What will everybody do for a living?
A: Lots of things. But they’re not going to have to pay the government to rent a cubicle anymore.
Q: But what about Global Warming???!!!!
A: Dude. Walk out of the Miltary Industrial Complex and shut down mass production of Baby Wipes and I guarantee things will get better, like tomorrow.
Q: Who will take care of me in my old age??
A: Well. Looks like it’s gonna be me. You should be glad I’m an anarchist, the State wants to make you into soap.
Q: What about the Advances in healthcare technology? We won’t have those advances if we abandon massive coerced industry!
A: The only advances I’ve ever seen are on TV. I haven’t even seen an actual doctor since I was ten years old. How about you?
And etcetera.
What all people are going to need on the ground are steady minds and leadership. Think about it. Build your capital. Be ready. Being ready never hurt anything.
~j
Q:
“Its good to see the problem, but again, I repeat, what are we going to do, aside from voting–about it?”
Not to be annoying, but it’s already here. The Rich are already anarchic, so are the poor. It’s the middle class, which by the way sprang into being right around the last time Pluto entered Capricorn, who are enthralled, enslaved and paternalized by the state.
We’re also the ones who have been most co-opted by Its promises. More and more families are falling out of the phalanxes of the middle class and now have to live without “jobs”, without “pensions”, but who continue to fund and populate a military that you could rip right out of the pages of a 1940’s scifi comic. It would be one thing if we The People could use our own power in our own interests, but that just never seems to happen, does it? Isn’t that what the fury and frustration is all about?
The War expanded the State. The dotcom bubble enriched the rich. In fact all the bubbles enrich the rich. Pensions, the agreements between workers and local businesses, were disbanded in the eighties in favor of the “401K”, which gave the rich access to our personal savings.
What to do about it? Drop out, tune in, turn on. Invest in human enterprise. Love thy neighbor. Build personal capital. Become a free agent. Be self-sufficient. Be influential at the local level. Develop cooperatives, create in real time, produce more, consume less, be useful to your community and drop the fantasy. Barter, teach, grow, participate and forget Saving the World. Use your freedom: that’s how you can really make sure it’s not taken away. Consider very carefully who is your friend and who is your enemy. Don’t depend on, or believe in, national politics. Your vote for President will be co-opted. Your vote for mayor, maybe not.
I really believe that anarchy will come anyway. Is here anyway. I just think it’s going to be easier on people who are ready to act inside of it.
~j
“This will take a long-ass time. Those who refuse to learn will eventually be forced to crash. Those who choose to learn will have to keep both eyes open, skirt the system, and throw their energy into/at it when they’ve got the oppurtunity.”
Hi Jere.
I see this too. Very clearly. I was a very young parent. Sometimes I think this makes it easier for me to listen to my son, to just get the gist of what the future thinks is real. They’re not worried about society breaking down. In their view it already has. The broad heavy Borg powers that depend on mass consciousness are limited and ineffective. Against them. For anything.
The reality we’re navigating tells us that there is no need to SMASH THE STATE because it can’t exist in its present form: in fact it *doesn’t* exist in that form.
They’re not even afraid of crashing. Anyone can survive a crash, if you know when to let go.
~j
“Mostly they’re fatherless. They’re not worried about who will take care of them or whether a sea-to-sea economy will grow or stagnate. Their understanding of warfare is asymmetric — their natural response to the idea of something like a planetary spacenet of government surveillance is *how to beat it*. They have no problem with Blackwater: what worries them is national, or international conscription. They are more immediately social, more independent and frankly brilliant .”
I don’t disagree with many of your points, Jane. You’re talking about the Military Industrial Complex, which also uses the Prison Industrial Complex as slave labor in this country. And indeed we’re heading towards a Banana republic economy.
Its good to see the problem, but again, I repeat, what are we going to do, aside from voting–about it?
” Our imperial experiment is what, since 1897? Granted we’ve been living through it and adjusted, thrived off of others and live fat off the planet, but do we have to go for the extreme alternative argument as the next step?”
Guess I’d put it this way: Americans gave away a goodly hunk of their individual rights during World War 2. The Nation was working together to kick some Nazi ass and defend the concept of national sovereignty, and etcetera, not to get too far into a Shriners Pancake Breakfast pisspotting session.
Post the war, though, the broad national power that held the nation together just did not seem to want to leave. That massive capacity to impose sovereign will and shape world events was unprecedented and I imagine for those who’d been handed the scepters in the military industrial complex it was near impossible to let go of.
Just coincidentally, since 1945 there has always been some Godzilla mere moments away from wreaking havoc upon us villagers. Korean Commies. Russian Commies. Nuclear Winter. Global Warming. Islamic Terrorism. Recession. Depression. I’m sure there are more but the point is, these enormous external threats are the *only thing that justify broad state power and the only means by which that power can expand.*
Just consider it. I’m just dropping the card on the table. My son sixteen and his power structure of choice is anarchy. He and his friends speak and behave inside a reality that encompasses a civilized federation of anarchic interest as the organizing structure.Their natural environment, the internet, is anarchic, self-governing, peaceful and productive.
Mostly they’re fatherless. They’re not worried about who will take care of them or whether a sea-to-sea economy will grow or stagnate. Their understanding of warfare is asymmetric — their natural response to the idea of something like a planetary spacenet of government surveillance is *how to beat it*. They have no problem with Blackwater: what worries them is national, or international conscription. They are more immediately social, more independent and frankly brilliant .
No matter who you vote for, this is where we’re going. The center just ain’t going to hold. Uranus wants to challenge Saturn, but this is part of what I understand to be the natural order. Federal progams *never* work, unless they are working to support the Borg. Federal aid in something like a natural disaster gave us the spectacle of Hurricane Katrina. Huge gang networks are careening through the industrial complex and filling their own warehouses with Chinese hair scrunchies and razor blades. Druglords have learned how to structure their businesses according to the principles of McDonald’s Corporation. The Rich are now so Rich that they have to struggle not to invest *in their own money*.
Bill Ayers is an anarchist. It’s true, he was an enemy of the State. :). But he was a Friend to the People.
~j
“We feel sorry for those poor bastards over there, don’t we? Can’t have as many babies as they want to and they’re always getting lied to by their government. They’re coddled, condescended to and completely unfree. Healthcare is prehistoric and their news is censored. Ignorant and paternalized is what they are. They need a voice in government or the state will suck up the human wattage of millions of lifespans and aim it at its own ends.”
Aside from the freedom to overpopulate the Earth, sounds amazingly American! I myself toy with the anarchy idea, more on a personal guerilla level. I’ve glimpsed into the whole system crashing, and it would be awesome if we were evolved enough to say “you know, now that we’re ALL fucked, let’s make this a better place”, but I feel in that scenario that folks would still just step on each others heads, out of fear, for nothing more than subsistence.
This will take a long-ass time. Those who refuse to learn will eventually be forced to crash. Those who choose to learn will have to keep both eyes open, skirt the system, and throw their energy into/at it when they’ve got the oppurtunity.
I think personal anarchy is a novel idea, one I fully support, but countrywide anarchy kinda gives me the willy’s. When we bust through our own hang-ups and psych-fucks, in true anarchaic style, we achieve the freedom to do as we please (of course we still have to watch out for the predators [LAW]), and in having that freedom we have the oppurtunity to help others advance themselves, in which case we can grow the numbers to alter the LAW (or abolish it when we collectively evolve beyond it). Right now I think too many people are balanced too precariously, if tipped, I can see a massive revert to animal savagery.
Jere
“I was reading an article about China and Democracy the other day. September…the Economist maybe. A young Nationalist was motioning around the cafe he was being interviewed in, gesturing to the bread and coffee on the table. This is the good life, he said. As long as we have a good life, why do we need Democracy? ”
Janes:
Yeah, but he also comes from a nation where there really isn’t that much of a difference between the current government and the days of the emperors, which number in the centuries.
Our imperial experiment is what, since 1897? Granted we’ve been living through it and adjusted, thrived off of others and live fat off the planet, but do we have to go for the extreme alternative argument as the next step?
By the way, was talking to my dear friend from Greece, a cradle of democracy. He says everywhere on the islands there are a bunch of old guys arguing fine philosophical points to death in a circle. Drives him crazy, but that’s HIS culture.
:). Oh, no, I’m not suggesting a Zombie State. I am suggesting anarchy. Give us a nice, healthy anarchy, increase the “jobless rate” to one hundred percent, and my feeling is we’ll finally have enough time and energy to have a civilization.
I was reading an article about China and Democracy the other day. September…the Economist maybe. A young Nationalist was motioning around the cafe he was being interviewed in, gesturing to the bread and coffee on the table. This is the good life, he said. As long as we have a good life, why do we need Democracy?
Bread and coffee and decent pants were what this kid would settle for instead of a vote. But did he really need a gargantuan martial police state to procure them for him? Can’t a person obtain trousers at the local level?
We feel sorry for those poor bastards over there, don’t we? Can’t have as many babies as they want to and they’re always getting lied to by their government. They’re coddled, condescended to and completely unfree. Healthcare is prehistoric and their news is censored. Ignorant and paternalized is what they are. They need a voice in government or the state will suck up the human wattage of millions of lifespans and aim it at its own ends.
Huh.
~j
To add:
I think the state is quite afraid of US, and that’s why they hide things. The more we demand to see, the more afraid they become. The worst of them need us to be asleep and not care enough to fight.
Well. That’s a nice sentiment but I think it’s too late. The reason what we’re seeing is so obvious is because the state is not afraid of us anymore. That’s only a frightening thing to contemplate until you realize The State can not fly its own stealth bomber missions into Kosovo. It needs all of us, to fight and to invest and to believe.
Janes:
I think we agree but are using different terms. I think you misunderstand me when I say that we DO need to establish transparency between the people and its government. That means everybody.
And personally, I find that easier now than before because we can have direct citizen involvement challenging the press (the government-corporatemouthpiece), and fact-checking politics itself.
In terms of it being too late, I don’t ascribe to that kind of self-defeat. You and I can demand accountability of our politicians at every level. The fact that we’ve been inundated with the worst of the worst, even those political parties that we belong to, that its been hard to fine-tune government to our liking when there’s still murder afoot. You have to go back to basics.
Politics has never been a pretty business, and least of all when its used to make war with weapons, germs, books or prisons–on other countries and on ourselves. I am willing to challenge the conventional wisdom that has governed politics for the last fifty years if that means priorities are placed on education, sustainable living, environmental sanity and economic opportunity for all. I don’t give up on those things, and I never will.
To provide some context, I’ve been an advocate for arts funding in the state. That makes me, in conventionally-thinking circles, a real windmill-tilter. But I’ve been successful. So I also have faith that a large(r) number of us can make a difference for matters that will life and death in basic human ways for ourselves and our communities. But the belief needs to be there. Not the doubt. That continues the powerlessness.
“Yes, I am hanging the Bush effigy up to the flames, but this is a warning shot, and should be for any politician, now and in the future. The nation is still ours. We need to hold on to the reins and not let them slip without our consent. ”
Well. That’s a nice sentiment but I think it’s too late. The reason what we’re seeing is so obvious is because the state is not afraid of us anymore. That’s only a frightening thing to contemplate until you realize The State can not fly its own stealth bomber missions into Kosovo. It needs all of us, to fight and to invest and to believe.
~j
My ritual of the moment was to complete my ballot within 20 minutes of receipt, sealing it, and getting it ready for the drop-off box. The un-needed voter’s guide arrived the next day…
Not at all very spiritual or ritualistic, but then the other occupants of the house might not have really appreciated a decent pagan ritual. I really need a shot of Nag Champa too, it’s been months.
I’ll pray to the gods and the four elements later, privately, out of doors within nature’s embrace.
Janes:
I can appreciate your comments, because we all participated in one degree or another in the making of the presidency and its evolution from titular leader to CEO to symbolic CEO, to what looks like a Sopranos-style management technique. We do that by shopping. We do that by hooking into the grid, and driving cars, and watching junk news instead of reading.
That is the current nature of this country’s essentially mercantile soul, which exploited its indigenous peoples and have carried out a long tradition of slave labor into today (I am eye-witness to the current Prison-Industrial-Complex, which starts roughly at Grade 4 in public schools).
What I’d like to see is some form of total transparency, opening up all the doors and windows of Congress, washing K-street out the membrane, and making all parties in the House and Senate accountable. Government need not be all things to all people. Hell I work for government and know what it can do well and what it can’t.
No one who aspires for the office of POTUS is a saint, though there are some better sinners and worse saints than others. The grand scale of American History in the 20th century is evidence of that, from the industrial age and the making of the conveytor belt to the belt-pack nukes. The last eight years the thievery has just been more in-your-face. And if we don’t at least acknowledge this is what happened, how can we begin to clean up what was done to the house?
If we can at least catch those who have been doing so with total contempt as to our opinion, let alone our earlier trust, then at least we’re proving to them that we’re awake. How we’re going to handle the trust of government and politics in the future should be the same as for any person whose trust has been hi-jacked. Whoever wants people to trust them again needs to earn it.
Yes, I am hanging the Bush effigy up to the flames, but this is a warning shot, and should be for any politician, now and in the future. The nation is still ours. We need to hold on to the reins and not let them slip without our consent.
This was a pretty gorgeous post, dude.
But I have to ask you, I get curious about this: do you really think it was George Bush, some kid who probably had his dad’s CIA rendition all the sophomore work-study students into getting him a diploma, did all that?
I’m one of those crackpots who believes that the American Presidency is essentially irrelevant. Do you believe that George Bush had anything to do with Abu Ghraib? Fallujah? Rumsfeld was pissed off — not because American soldiers acted this way but because the *internet existed* and the mechanisms by which those images could be hidden from American peasants ( making sure each enlisted person involved was killed in action once mission objectives were achieved, for example) are eroding.
Voter fraud and ballot stuffing have been going on since George Washington was allegedly elected. JFK had the whole mafia in charge of getting him behind that desk. You can’t blame the overclass: as quaint as we all are the power at stake is just too important to leave entirely up to us. And even if the electorals put the haircut we like to see best on television this does not mean he has a whole lot of control over what happens after that. Not anymore. Maybe sixty years ago. But not now.
Every election year you hear some Republican maundering against Big Government. Big Government? This is the Land of the Daleks. Fe, the problem is not George Bush or the Republican Party. The problem is an ever-increasing critical mass of Power over the populations of this earth. As Great Power gathers, it loses its sense of decency. It forms objectives that are not in keeping with the interests of its population and works for its own benefit and survival. And it forgets its roots.
That’s all that’s happening here. The common people of this earth ( and unless you’ve got your 2.5 million dollars in a hedge fund shorting the yen today, that’s you) are the energy, the industry, and the source of the aggregate wealth that Great Power uses to achieve its ends. It’s always been like this. Always. The only mystery about it is how we always end up here, surrendering our freedom too soon, too generously, and under duress. You’d think we’d have gotten wise by now, but for some reason we’re suckers for any sort of flag.
In my opinion this is not the time to count on a general election to save us, or to put a 47 year old man on a votive candle and set out our folding chairs at the lakefront to watch him walk on water. Now is the time to fade back into the pockets of anarchy that have always been the friends of human life and creativity. We were born *free*. We don’t have to shop at the supermarket, take out student loans, sit in cubicles or buy iphones. We don’t have to enlist in America’s gestapo, invest in the global ponzi scheme, or share our inventions with Ford Motor Corporation. We do not need credit from Visa if the faith and trust of our own communities is enough.
Think about this: young men, the most prized type of human capital, are enlisting in the military because the military has promised them college educations, which are the only ticket available in this setup into the prized middle class — the very central wealth-generating machine that is funding the wars in the first place. The wars expand the power of the moneylenders, the moneylenders sharecrop the rest of the wealth and industry of society and farm it back into more power grabs.
We *are* the military-industrial complex.
It’s nice to think there’s some hulking halfgod of a GI Joe who can vaporize anybody who scares you from from space. But it’s a fantasy and it’s not worth price we’ve paid for it. The longer we live in it, the less free we become.
~j
jlo:
Prescription noted!!!. And I am out of Nag Champa, so the local neighborhood women’s herb store is the place for me after work today. (Maybe even a small ritual candle to complete the elemental cycle?)
Blessings to all the wiccans on Planet Waves!!
Amen. You may want to consider a little calamus, asafoetida, or a sage smudge to add to the clearing energy?
I’m right freakin’ there. (nag champa’s a blessing [and patchouli, if you can hack it]).