America, what time is it? Where are you now?
I’m sure many of our international readers might be wondering why am I asking my own country these questions. But I know many of you are looking at the news coming out of America wondering not how or why we have lost our way, but how and why we have lost our minds.
Lately it seems our country has forgotten what time it is. Not just the minutes and the hours, but the years and decades. There are some here it seems who are obsessively focused on an America that existed roughly around 1960. A time when civil rights was a whisper at cocktail parties, and women’s choice and reproductive freedom were not openly discussed.
On Feb. 26 Trayvon Martin, a young black kid not more than 17 years old, was hounded and gunned down by a “gated neighborhood watcher” vigilante named George Zimmerman. Mr. Zimmerman thought the bag of Skittles and can of ice tea Martin was carrying was a deadly weapon, and felt threatened enough by Martin’s presence to follow him as he tried to walk to his friend’s house for a visit. He chased him down, and ultimately shot him. It took three days for Trayvon Martin’s parents to be notified of his death, and another three weeks before his killing became national news.
The police of Sanford, Florida where the shooting took place, have not arrested Zimmerman, citing that Zimmerman was acting legally under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which sanctions shooting someone you suspect could harm you. Even though the Department of Justice has initiated an investigation into the incident and a grand jury will convene April 10 on the matter, to this day, Zimmerman has not been taken into custody or charged with the shooting.
There are a lot of politicians around here who are obsessed with what’s happening with our vaginas, wondering how they can be controlled. Each day American women wake up with some new version of control from Republican-led legislatures across the country that, as one blogger puts it, finds us “with a Republican between our legs”: trans vaginal ultrasound wands inserted unnecessarily, aspirins between our knees, and Rush Limbaugh threatening women seeking to protect reproductive freedom with scarlet letters across the bandwidth of national hate radio.
As a woman and a person of color, it’s hard not to feel both deflated by and scared of this trend in our current events. That politicians, getting the cue from the 2008 Republican Presidential campaign and the rise of Sarah Palin, feel now in the 2012 campaign that they have the permission to conjure mob hatred, fear, prejudice and misogyny because it makes them electable. What the hell, it works. The mob in turn, feels they have permission to give their darkest instincts room to grow. Enter George Zimmerman. Enter Rick Santorum.
I was about to write — ‘this is not the America I know’, but I stopped because that isn’t true. This IS the America we know. These people are OUR neighbors, our friends, our family, our spouses. These feelings have been here as long as our history as a country. Underneath our self-anointed sense of global exceptionalism and thus entitlement — paid for by wars and profiteering — the roots of intolerance and oppression thrive.
In a comment by zerosity under “A Tipping Point into Emergence” a few threads down, there was a link to a blog called “The Bard’s Grove.” The blog notes that the ocean “represents the power of our collective emotions.” It is “a force we have to contend with now — the power of the Waters (Neptune, the oceans) to overwhelm both our shores and our fragile psyches – or to heal us.”
I agree. In the darkest heart of our country, we have unfinished business and emotional debris that needs more than clearing. It needs to be removed from our public discourse and cultural consciousness forever. The legacy of slavery and oppression has been mollified by law but not bulldozed out of our collective destiny. In order to begin to heal, we need to see the darkness for what it is. We need to open the bandages and see the wound in all its festering glory: state legislatures writing laws making it allowable for a woman to be arrested for using contraceptives; the criminal justice system unequally meting out justice in cases of white against black homicide — this is a snapshot of the concerns of a country which just four years ago elected an African-American President of the United States.
The cycle of change created by the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the 1960s meets its greatest challenge in the current square between these same two planets, which we’ll be watching as it evolves and reverberates over the next three years. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming. It’s been coming for years, and now we meet its face, unmasked in all its racist, women-fearing splendor. There is only so much outrage I can tolerate, and I think, I hope, a growing number of American people feel the same way.
What time is it? Where are we now? The reason I’m asking my country for the time is not to get us to admit we’re in the 21st century. We already know that.
I’m asking for the time because the alarm is ringing. It’s time to wake up.
Fe, again – thanks for saying it like it is. I was talking with a friend yesterday about the load of bullshit that was taught to us in the 1950s and 1960s as “history.” Even though I was privileged enough to attend a liberal arts college (English and history majors) and to a degree, lucky to be where the first classes were being offered in “black” history and “black” literature, much of what was taught as history was still encased in that attitude that America was better than anything else on the planet.
No matter how much inner work and healing I may think I need to do regarding my relationship with my father, I do have to thank him for his open, non-racist attitude and beliefs that shaped me. He let me put a Focus Hope bumper sticker (a black hand and white hand reaching to each other and touching) on his car in 1967. Although a small gesture, it was daring in whitebread suburban Detroit after the Detroit riots, daring for a man who drove that car into downtown Detroit on a daily basis.
I don’t know what it will take for this country to wake up from its self-induced, ego-centric, self-centered attitude. Is it the Occupy movement going beyond economic? I don’t know, but I pray every day for light on the road we are traveling to show us a better way.
BTW, ABC News reported last evening that Mr. Zimmerman is nowhere to be found. Duh.
JannKinz
I found this piece – which has a link to a petition for Trayvon Martin – who as you will see from the photo, was a sweet, young, lovely boy. it’s just so horrific.
http://www.bet.com/news/national/2012/03/22/sign-the-petition-justice-for-trayvon-martin.html
Yes – fabulous post, Fe. The Zimmerman story is absolutely heartbreaking, devastating – I didn’t know about it.There must be some kind of petition from a pressure group like Avvaz (who seem to have disappeared, used to get emails from them regularly) – will look into it. As a brit, living in a country with a very wobbly democracy indeed, Italy- America appears as a country of extremes – with the pendulum swinging now this way, now that way. And as i read your post – it suddenly occured to me that now there is an ‘enlightened’ Afro American in power, the shadow side of America – the ghastly Palins, Santorums et al, have grown even stronger to compensate. And of course, the danger is that that shadow side – which represents all those frightened and ignorant people out there, will come to power once again. Ugh – doesn’t bear thinking about it. I feel for all of you!
Everyone, thanks for the comments.
Rob:
What are we capable of? Great things and very mean things. Yet, like the angel in Tony Kushner’s great work, “Angels in America” said, “We want you to stop moving.” But we can’t stay still for long. That is not in the national psyche. There are those who painfully refuse to see the road, yet the road is going to be used, ridden on, and moving forward. There may be a cultural balkinization, but with the trend towards approval of marriage equality, we’re seeing movement hidden underneath the detritus of fear and misgiving. Do we see the road or do we see the debris?
My fabulous Be:
Yes something has happened these last fifty plus years, and we have partially evolved. What I see from your comments is that we are the people who have evolved, yet we are in proximity to those who are too afraid to. Do we leave them behind? And since so many of them have a “voice”, what do we do? Will standing still while the Westboro Baptist Church continues to protest the funerals of the fallen GIs from Afghanistan be enough? Why do we still need a Rick Santorum or a Rush Limbaugh? Will our need to keep digging at that dark place cease to be useful? What environment do we need to create to do so, if we have to do anything at all.
And you can be my mama anytime.
Brendan:
All I can say to you is I so admire you, brother, for continuing to stay hopeful with a vision in Arizona. An act of pure will born from stubborn hope. I am heartened by your courage.
kristal:
Better to see ourselves in an honest light. The lies we’ve told ourselves no longer have meaning. I don’t believe my view is a “dark night of the soul”, but a hard look at the mirror. How do you know what you need to heal if you’re not looking at the illness? If you don’t even know you’re sick?
———-
I know every season has a purpose. This season of 2012 has more weight than most. It’s simultaneously harvest and planting. I want the seeds to be good, and planted in the right soil. Every detail now matters.
I’d like to believe that the stars ordain a national spiritual and socio-political evolution past the basest of human tendencies. But frankly, I think this nation is headed toward inevitable balkanization. These ills aren’t new–they were buried and hidden from view to a point. Now the mask is stripped off, and the old shadows emerge boldly into daylight. I don’t think they’re going anywhere anytime soon.
Right on, sister Fe! The nail has been truly hammered once again.
Reflecting on Be’s thoughts a little, I don’t want to back to the 70’s again, let alone the 60’s! As an oft linearly-oriented history nut, I see it all as something to acknowledge for better or for worse, and then keep moving forward. No matter what we may have liked about the times, or most certainly, hated, we have what happened (and didn’t happen) to note and correct now. I think it unfinished business from before, unfinished souls perhaps, so that no matter what is happening daily around me, I know and feel it is not going to last, that better lives for all will result from the chaos.
as someone who was raised by her mama to get to the depths of those roots of consciousness with the FAITH of love necessary to BE the human of this global age, i have only waves of gratitude to share as we shine on in this guinea pig healing/processing! ♥☮♫
Well, looka here Fe, I think I found something that might make you feel better. When you said that some of us are obsessed with an America that existed around 1960, I just had to check out where Neptune was back then. My baby was just over 6 months old (before Pampers and “The Pill”) in July 1960 and I’d just had my 21st birthday, and transiting Neptune was stationing at 6 Scorpio 22. That put it half-way between the U.S. (Sibly) birth chart’s nodes of the Moon; north at 6 Leo 36 and south at 6 Aquarius 36. Yep, I’m gonna read you a little of the Sabian Symbols for those degrees. . . .
For the 1960 Neptune. . Deep-Sea Divers (The will to explore the hidden depths of all experiences and to search for primordial causes.) Dane Rudhyar says “It refers symbolically to a quest for “under-standing”, i.e. for what lies under the surface waves of daily living” and then he says “It should lead to a DEPTH REALIZATION of the very roots of consciousness.”
Here’s the U.S. south node. . A Child Is Seen Being Born Out Of An Egg (The emergence of new mutations according to the great rhythms of the cosmos.) Rudhyar says of this symbol “Here we see the appearance of a new type of human being who is not born from ‘Ancestors’ and who therefore is free from the inertia of mankind’s past. He is a new product of evolution, a mutant.” Rudhyar thinks it could be said to “announce the EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL MAN for the New Age.”
Now here’s the north node symbol. The Constellations Of Stars Shine Brilliantly In The Night Sky. (The power of basic spiritual values which refer to man’s common humanity and to all enduring archetypes.) Here Rudhyar says “If man projects his basic human nature upon the star-filled night sky, is it not just as logical to say that the universe projects its own forever-evolving patterns of order upon human nature? In either case we deal with archetypal factors which endure through a long series of generations.”
So I’m thinking that for the last 52 years, the Universe has been conducting this big experiment and we here in the USA have been the guinea pigs. So are we going to stay mutants or is this tidal wave of emotions we are experiencing going to wash away the debris and lead us to a deep realization “of the very roots of consciousness”? Are we or are we not the Global Men and Women for the New Age? Didn’t Len just get through saying that all our discoveries (about ourselves, maybe?) are going to connect us all together? Nobody I know wants to go back to the 60’s anymore. Now tell me, whose your mama? 🙂
be
Beautiful post, Fe!
If what we need is to see the shadowy, festering, ugly side of our “human nature”, then I think we are well on our way. I feel that along with the politicians and talking heads, we must thank the American media (movies, television, the news, books and of course video games) for a big part of why we are here. Without all the “permission” given in these multi-sensory brain-baths that have nursed the young of several generations now, we’ve lost our ability to feel compassion and empathy…or much of anything else for that matter. Our (collective) senses and sensibilities are fried.
How to change this? I honestly don’t know. In an environment which has become toxic to any sort of civil discourse how does one get “into” the walled-off heart to wake it up again? Surely the simple act of holding up a light and a mirror is a good place to start.
Today someone sent me this video made by MoveOn_dot_org. It was posted right at the end of the sun’s journey thru Pisces…. it’s got the power of Truth, the elegance of simplicity and razor-sharp directness that just might help people wake up a little, before it is too late.
I’m sure can I hear the clock ticking when I watch it. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfNRIytENk&feature=player_embedded
“Thank you……its refreshing to see an american see their country as most of the rest of the civilised world sees it………there is hope!”
Kristal, as an American myself, I agree and I also see my country this way. The rose colored glasses are definitely coming off for the my fellow Americans.
Are we there yet?
Thank you……its refreshing to see an american see their country as most of the rest of the civilised world sees it………there is hope!
xoxoxoxox
Wow, Fe. You really said it. You said it all, you said it perfectly, you said it best. Looking back on six decades as a native born white guy American, it is a matter of waking up, a continuous waking up. i can remember realizing in my early teens that Vietnam was a great big lie, talking to other people and for most of them it did not matter if they were being lied to, all that mattered was “my country, right or wrong”. i can remember similar cases of waking up to my racism, my sexism, my abysmal ignorance, all in layers and stages and facing those who did not want to talk about it, or for whom the truth did not matter and feeling sicker and sicker about what i was a part of. Yeah, you said it, but from what i have lived and what i have seen it will not be easy.
In order to heal we need to see the darkness for what it is- poignant!. We need to admit it lives within each of us and ask for the inner strength to be willing to engage with it- thank you for this powerful piece. Readers may want to stand up and be heard by clicking on link and make their voices heard- mayors against illegal guns: http://maig.us/oppccr.