Note to Readers: It’s unfortunate that we cannot bring astrology into a more open dialog with these ideas, but as I am being reminded by our political writers, it’s unlikely that political websites or news outlets will take seriously any conversation that mentions, say, Pluto in Capricorn.
I am sure you will recognize some themes of that transit, and of the Saturn-Pluto square, in this article. It seems true enough that what gets started under Republican administrations is institutionalized under Democratic ones, though that’s partly a result of setting the whole machinery of government into motion over a period of many years. Anyway — I saw this article tonight on Truthout.org and thought you might be interested. Note, none of these issues are new. I’ve been watching many of these conversations develop since the late 1980s. — efc
By Justine Sharrock | AlterNet
In her bestselling End of America, Naomi Wolf outlines the 10 warning signs that America is headed toward a fascist takeover. Using historical precedents, she explains how our government is mimicking those of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin through practices like surveillance of ordinary citizens, restricting the press, developing paramilitary forces and arbitrarily detaining people.
The book was lauded by liberals under Bush: the Independent Publishers gave it the Freedom Fighter Award; the Nation named it the best political book of 2007. Now, under President Obama, Wolf’s book is providing ammunition for the Tea Partiers, Patriots, Ron Paul supporters and Oath Keepers, who also warn of impending tyrannical government. Even when the book first came out pre-Obama, Alex Jones, Michael Savage and Fox News invited her on their shows, and agreed with her.
It’s not just her message. She speaks their language, referring to the Founding Fathers and American Revolution as models, admitting to a profound sense of fear, warning of tyranny, fascism, Nazism and martial law. When Glenn Beck warns of these things we laugh. When Wolf draws those same connections, we listen. How can both sides be speaking the same language, yet see things so differently? Or are we just not listening to each other? I telephoned Wolf to ask her what it means when your book ends up bolstering policies you oppose.
Justine Sharrock: First off, is your book still relevant under Obama?
I had to come back in and rebut. Eric you asked our feeling on September 12th, 2001 about rounding up each and every Muslim. Same identical enactment that was performed on our Japanese citizens on December 8th, 1944.
We had filthy water to drink, we had slums in some neighborhoods, we had toxic waste dumps causing cancerous tumors to their surrounding neighborhoods. All funded by big corporations. Even our war was filled with chemicals, big chemical companies invented “Napon”, agent orange, all making a profit to kill, to mame, or to pollute with toxic chemicals to destroy the land for years after. We even had a song to go along with Don’t Pollute – It was called “Dirty Water, down by the banks of the River Charles”. Every waterway was unfit for human consumption due to large factories putting there wastes systems in our drinking water. I can’t remember which president it was, but either Carter, Reagan or Clinton created jobs by cleaning up our towns and our waterways.
We had something similiar to the “Patriots Act” enacted on us. Our Civil Liberties were revoked right out from underneath us. If you wanted to hold a rally to protest, our Freedom of Speech, was trampled on by rioting police, either on horseback, or using weapons on their own people. Or water hoses were opened on us. All to destroy our education system. Campuses were shut down. Whether we were protesting or not, we were denied to finish out our year in the schooling of our choice.
And you say, we didn’t have half the people on pharma drugs, ours weren’t manufactured you’re right. Ours were the hard core ones, home grown, or mixed using two chemicals to get the ultimate high. But pharma’s didn’t supply our drugs, our friends did, and all needed another fix. There was no such thing as a regulated drug, if you wanted to overdose you did it. Nobody was checking you.
If you were gay, lesbian or another racial color. We didn’t have Big Corporations of Religions supporting money to suspend it. You were just brutally beaten on the street or made out to be a public escape goat.
When our rights were taken away, our freedom of speech, or our right to protest or rally, all were taken away. Our music then became our rally cry. All of our lyrics were anti this or anti that. If we couldn’t speak it we sang it.
You said this morning that when the “70’s” came about it was Watergate that changed the subject. It is just the exact same thing as today. Today bankers, large corporations, insurance companies our judicial system all corrupt. Watergate was finding out the corruption within the Nixon Era was the CIA was the IRS was the FBI, again all governmental agencies just like now.
One last comment, back then we had our own disgruntal woman against everything the government did or said. Her name was “Hanoi Jane”. Same as today, only we have two instead of one, Sarah and Niaomi. Exactly the same. And again just like Watergate took our minds off of our protesting. Your astrology chart of today, it was stated that something is coming up to change the subject to take the edge off. Watergate took three years of digging and testimonies of people on trial. Today we have Internet, everything is found out within a very short time and the world is in deep discussion over it, not just a court house.
You make a good point, Sari, about how much we know; about how much information is available. If you think of the Internet as an extended nervous system, it picks up a lot more information, and the collective experience of the past 50 years is beginning to take hold. Awareness is pushing itself into consciousness. For now it seems like TMI and a big pile of chaos. But really we have a lot of adapting to do; we have to figure out how to act on knowledge that is relatively new; the action points are somewhat out of reach, or out of awareness. Honesty and collectivity are definitely the main keys to navigate the terrain.
Or so agree’eth my 8th house Aquarius Moon. And Vesta says hello!
even karl rove said the tea partiers were unsophisticated.
the difference between the sixties and now is that your average individual is so much more aware of the chaos, corruption and ineptitude of those in power. the pope’s in serious trouble, government as a system is looking unworkable, and the bankers…. the point is the powers that be are naming their own issues, MI5 is taking it out on the CIA, Mossad are openly assasinating people in Dubai.
I don’t think your average muggle in the ’60s dared question the Queen, now Hugo Chavez is directly pointing the finger at her for Britain’s dodgy oil drilling in Argentina. The gloves are off. And all we’ve got to do is not panic and live our lives as honestly and collectively as we can.
i’ve said it before, but the shoots of growth are masked by decay until the final moment.
I was in Cleveland at artschool in 1970 – which is very close to Kent State-
we were all at a peaceful anti war protest – when we heard the news about the shootings at Kent State – and then the police or guard came on horses to disband us – successfully
one of my friends tripped and hurt his arm and was looked up to as a hero after that.
The whole campus and schools were closed down for a bit … it was an intense moment…
which I will never forget.
All I can say at this point is for people who have the time to take a peek at Jurgen Habermas’ Legitimation Crisis. It looks at how we need to consider social reality less in terms of macro and micro theories but as a set of inter-related subsystems with relatively complexes interfaces. This gives nuance to the discussion.
I would also emphasise that we should not forget that politicians are human. This is missed once we become ‘obsessed’ with ‘rational’ analysis that is disempowered because it can’t access a meaningful milieu in which one can make a difference. We end up emoting about situations because we analyse to death what we can’t directly influence. Ergo we forget that politicians are humans not caricatures.
I think PW is great because it focuses upon developing consciousness. We can’t become political activists en masse but we can (to use the language of Paolo Freire ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’) ‘conscientise’ those who we meet – or at least begin the process of awareness raising and example setting.
Marilyn, with respect to your analysis, I think that peace / antiwar protesters are different than proponents of hatred, homophobia and dismantling the government. They may have a point about issues like spying on the population, but where were they on Sept. 12, 2001? Well, most people were willing to do anything to protect us from alleged Muslim terrorists. Most of us supported the giveback of individual rights to have that supposed safety. People who did not risked being branded heretics.
Kent State was not a battlefield; protesters where shot at unnecessarily by the Ohio National Guard, which I have never trusted was an honest mistake. If 1970 was an ending, it was because students were being shot at by soldiers and that terrified everyone. In the spring of ’70 I know of three campuses where students were shot, and fully 1/3 of campuses around the country closed early or considered doing so. But antiwar protests were far from over, and soon after the nation was distracted by Watergate for the next three years.
Watergate was not a “break-in” as we think of it but the revelation that the entire national security apparatus — FBI, CIA, IRS and others — had been taken over as Nixon’s personal goon squads. Anyone who opposed his policies could be attacked.
In an article two weeks ago, The Cosmic Equinox or the Anti-Sixties? I assess our current moment where the protesters are in favor of war and against individual rights for anyone except themselves. We have lots of drugs widely used and they are all like sublime Thorazine rather than anything potentially inspiring or enlightening. There is not a sexual revolution but a battle waged by constitutional amendment, funded by the Mormons, over whether gay and lesbian people have the right to have relationships viewed as legitimate by society.
We have two wars but the media in general is in favor of them rather than critiquing them. Most families cannot watch the news together because most families don’t eat together.
I am sure that most people have no clue what role to play, or the sense that they have time to play one. That might change with a sense of calling. We have many factors that differ from the Sixties: for example, a lurking sense that market capitalism will consume the environment; a severe economic crisis; the feeling that the ice caps are melting and that the weather is really, really strange; and a long, seemingly endless spate of geo/eco-disasters. These things were not factors in the Sixties, which was a fairly economically rich time where (unless you were reading Jacques Cousteau) the environment was fairly stable and most students did not also work two or three jobs and so had time to protest. It was a simpler time when we were asked to give a hoot, don’t pollute.
We are working with a different level of psychic consciousness now; with different preparation; we have a global communications network available from everyone’s desk or pocket that we’re not sure what to do with. The situation is overall much worse and the potential is much greater, but as Jere suggests, an individual awakening is in order.
This movement is exactly the same as in “1969”. The Vietnam War had all of it’s protesters, the hippie movement. Kent State was a battlefield. Propaganda was running rampid; during which each and every night during our normal sit down with family time, each and every television channel was filled with people getting shot or blown up in Southeast Asia. Astrology says we are in this time slot again. This all is just a repeat performance of everybody taking “their” part in the uprising as only they know how. This will all settle down again, just as it did when it became 1970.
I’m not sure the right analytical tools to use to take this apart. She gives a strictly political analysis, omitting any psychological or spiritual context. The issues would look entirely different through another lens.
I’ve heard way too much regarding “oligarchy”. So.. are We ready to start taking responsibility for ourselves???
Dude, Person, You (whoever the fuck you are), are we ready to realize that WE ARE THE POWER?
You. In all your splendor and glory. Are the realization of this intelligent Life-Force.
Got it? ..Good!
EVERY DECISION YOU MAKE, OR DON’T, IS ON YOUR HEAD, IT’S YOUR BAG, DEAL. WILL YOU RUN THROUGH THE GAMUT OF IGNORANCE? (WE ALL DO). OR WILL YOU SHARE YOUR !!FREAKIN!! SOUL, WITH THE CATS WHO ACTUALLY WANT TO HEAR YOU? SHARE WITH YOU?
(funny thing is, we’re all waitin’ for each other..)
Love you guys…
Jere