You Gotta Know When To Fold ‘Em

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Weather is the lodestone of country life. I managed to split my attention this week, keeping one eye on politics while taking advantage of the uncommon (and red-flagged) warm spell that has kept fall freeze at bay. Every week it’s threatened, every weekend a new run of moderate temps has been projected. I harvested the last of my (fussed over) lettuce babies the day after Thanksgiving when day-time temps plummeted, noting with amazement that they had given the growing season in southern Missouri a genuine nose tweak. This coming week, once again, freeze threatens, so I plan to continue yard work into the weekend and hope to get the back porch buttoned up before the ice and snow arrives.

With my attention elsewhere then, I culled the high points of the political week, regularly running into the house to check headlines at Huffy and talking points on CNN. Things remained static most of the week. The Egyptians continued to show Americans how to protest, the President continued to insist his mandate for taxing the wealthy prevail, and the Pubs remained as intractable as the Confederate states they mostly represent. So I kept on task, and late each evening, as do Americans everywhere, I got my ‘faux news’ in-depth reporting with John Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

The Baggers continued to throw monkey wrenches, making the possibility of John Boehner bringing their surly behinds to the table for some pre-cliff bargaining ever more distant; not that he’s anxious to do any such thing, if he can find a way around it. So far, stonewall’s all he’s got. Progressives should take some satisfaction in the fact that the offer of $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increase proposed earlier in the year has vanished, replaced by a 3-1 offer. They might, like me, feel a little stab of vindication when Boehner complains about what he considers a “my way or the highway” attitude, given that Dems never received even that courtesy from Dubby’s old buddy, Tom DeLay, and his lock-stepped House of Representatives, who simply pretended that Republicans were the favored only-children in Washington D.C., while all Dems were the equivalent of Cinderella.

Each party, of course, blames the other for failing to compromise, but polls show the nation is impatient with the Republican foot-dragging, while Obama’s numbers are higher than they’ve been since he was last elected. New York Senator Chuck Schumer suggested that the recent, and welcome, movement to compromise on the part of some Pubs is being ignored by the house leader, who continues to hold seemingly desperate press conferences hoping to sway public opinion to think of Pubs as beleaguered underdogs, fighting for liberty. “The House Republican leadership are like generals hunkered away in a bunker,” said Schumer, “unaware that their troops have already laid down arms.”

You gotta know when to fold ’em, according to Kenny Rogers, but so far, the Pubs are holding their cards close to their chests, flirting with a long leap off the fiscal cliff. Meanwhile, you wouldn’t want to buy the tattered Republican brand at a yard sale, stuck in the pile of stuff — like badly stained clothing and puzzles with missing pieces — headed for the Salvation Army bargain bin. When Jon Stewart titles a segment “Please Tell Me This Is Rock Bottom,” you just know it’s about Republicans and you can be sure it’s a groaner.

This Stewart bit referred to the Baggers’ obstruction of the UN’s ‘Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.’ The treaty has already been ratified by 125 countries, holding foreign nations to the standard for dealing with the disabled that exists in the U.S., and it seems like a no-brainer for congressional adoption, but it fell prey to the radical extremism existing in Tea Party La-la-land.

On the shores of La-la, where Obama is still a Kenyan socialist implant worthy of Glenn Beck’s submerging his presidential action-figure into a jar of (Beck’s Own) urine in parody of the left’s support of artistic freedom, the United Nations is an ever-present bad-actor, seeking to gut the supremacy of (what remains of) white colonial America and, no doubt, collect all our Second Amendment-protected firearms. In the minds of the deluded, the UN is in league with demons, or, at minimum, commies, socialists and Islam. And even as respected former Senate Majority Leader and Pub presidential candidate, Bob Dole, rolled onto the Senate floor in his wheelchair to support the treaty, Baggers balked, citing it as a threat to U.S. sovereignty and the rights of America’s (less than 4%) homeschooled.

Harry Reid suggested that the radical-right’s failure to ratify the treaty raised questions of their rationality, and casts doubt on fiscal cliff negotiations. “These are the same Republicans with whom Democrats are supposed to reach an agreement to protect middle-class families from a tax increase,” said the Senate Majority Leader. “It’s difficult to engage in rational negotiation when one side holds well-known facts and proven truths in such low esteem.”

Yes, rock bottom — or at least we can hope they’ve hit it, given the kind of optics preferred by those trying to turn back progress. Sadly, it isn’t just facts and truth held in low regard, it’s the flesh-and-blood people they represent. Take the case of House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, who led the obstruction against the Violence Against Women Act, denied for renewal after 18 years on the books. The legislation, originally sponsored by Joe Biden in 1994, expired this past September because the Baggers objected to the addition of protections for undocumented immigrants, the LGBT community and Native Americans. It remains in limbo.

Biden, with his vested interest, and Cantor have reportedly been thrashing out the particulars behind closed doors. Those in the know suggest that the Pubs got a wake-up call with women and immigrants this election, so the only sticking point remaining now is the so-called ‘tribal provision,’ giving American Indian “courts limited jurisdiction to oversee domestic violence offenses committed against Native American women by non-Native American men on tribal lands.”

According to Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, who authored the current bill, “That means non-Native American men who abuse Native American women on tribal lands are essentially immune from the law, and they know it.” Just a few bad apples, you suppose? According to Amnesty International, 86% of rapes reported by Native American women involved non-Native men. A recent Huffy article went on to say:

The standoff over including VAWA protections for Native American women comes at a time of appallingly high levels of violence on tribal lands. One in three Native American women have been raped or experienced attempted rape, The New York Times reported in March, and the rate of sexual assault on Native American women is more than twice the national average. President Barack Obama has called violence on tribal lands “an affront to our shared humanity.”

Hard to believe those are real conversations, real battles of will in Washington, isn’t it? Hard to believe we could find one single objection to protecting women from rape and violence, or cook up some half-assed rationale to deny disabled people their dignity. I would say that never before have so few held up the good for so many, but, of course, that’s not true. It’s happened all through history, even our own. The good of an improbable handful of powerful people has often trumped the good of the whole, and each time that power has had to be wrestled out of their hands and delivered back into those of reasonable humans.

And so it will be again. These two examples of withheld protection illustrate the kind of bottom-feeder behavior — self-important and jaded, racist and anachronistic — that the public at large has failed to examine carefully or we simply wouldn’t stand for it. You can’t convince me that either of these situations reflect the will of Americans.

For the time being, though, the radical-right won’t raise the stakes or fold their empty hand, even with the end of their influence coming on like a sweeping wind. Polls reflect a downturn in approval for their antics even in the Southern bastions, like South Carolina.

Synchronistically, South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, stern mix of Libertarian and Christocrat, renowned as the de facto leader of the Bagger movement, has resigned his Senate seat — effective immediately and in a bit of a snit, if you ask me — to take on leadership of the conservative stronghold and think-tank, The Heritage Foundation. As this is the institution in which conservative policy is shaped, this signals double-down on extremism for the Republican party, which can ill afford it. DeMint’s departure also signals an empty seat in the Senate.

With South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley responsible to pick a replacement, we’ll be hearing more about this situation, and perhaps laughing as we do. Proud son of the Carolinas, Stephen Colbert has already announced his interest, and the tweets and phone calls have hit Haley’s office like an unwelcome tropical storm. Colbert, a genius at manipulating the human reflection to mirror our absurdity, will no doubt play this one for laughs while educating the nation.

Still, like Kenny says, ya gotta know when to fold ’em. And it feels like it’s past time, with all this talk of ‘cliffs’ and ‘mandates’ swarming like flying monkeys, pushing inevitability at us. Seems ridiculous to continue to form a human chain of ideological purity and self-absorbed protectionism across the path to progress, to empathy, to shared resource and common space; but then, I’m not defending an archaic philosophy that reeks of racism and patriarchal-collapse. I’m not afraid of what the future might bring, fearful that there isn’t enough, angry that what once was no longer is.

Suffering a Mexican stand-off (wonder what they call it in Mexico?) is just a distancing maneuver from reality, coming up fast in the rear-view mirror. The Pubs can’t continue to live there, the Dems can’t continue to out-wait them, and the rest of us won’t remain patient forever. Meanwhile, sacred space is opening up everywhere around us, inviting us in, asking us to become more of who we actually are, asking us to bless the world with inclusiveness and non-judgment. These next days are a window into change, if we want it, and most of us do, unwilling to be those pain-filled, frightened people we were any longer. It’s time to fold the cards, call the old game.

If the politicos were listening, I’d tell them to stop legitimizing these two different points of view as a test of equal philosophy in some kind of grand cosmic battle, but instead look carefully at where compassion is to be found, where kindness and public service are celebrated. Find the heart-content in each of these philosophies, because what is WITHOUT heart can no longer stand. We can play at this stupid game, in-fighting, or we can stand in our own power and begin to heal: we can’t do both.

And if I could counsel the Pubs, I’d tell them there’s no going back, no matter how frightened they are of the future. It’s time to fold their cards, because, as Cesar Chavez told us back in 1984, “Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.” We can’t go back. It can’t be done.

I’d tell them to find some of that actual faith they talk about all the time, the one that famously comforts the weak and disenfranchised over the strong and powerful. I’d say it’s time to fold ’em, step back from the game, because, as Thomas Merton told us, “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.” As with the Tarot’s Fool Card, support will come up to meet our extended foot as we begin the journey, trusting only that we must leave the old behind and find our way forward.

If any of those folks on The Hill were listening, I’d tell them that as they do unto the least of their brothers or sisters, they do unto themselves. That ‘more’ means nothing unless it can be shared. That they must love their way through the challenges to this nation, which means that, up to now, they’ve been doing it all wrong, playing a loser’s game.

I’d suggest that we are in the process of inventing a much better game where we all collaborate together to get everyone’s needs met, not because 99% of us are victims or needy but because we are all deserving of that much good. I’d assure them that when Light dawns, shadows fly and all mistakes dissolve in the brilliance. I’d invite them to join us, and help them resolve their night-terrors, because until they can lay down their fears, they’ll never be open to the truth that, as Ram Dass reminds us, “We’re all just walking each other home.”