By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
We live in a time of serious crisis, and it’s a damned good thing we’ve finally noticed. We’ve drifted so far away from our integrity and essential humanity that standing with our toes over the edge of the abyss, staring down into the fearful void of civil chaos, offers the only chance to break our lethargy. The decline started out slowly, unwitting slip by calculated compromise by deliberate allowance, as noted by Paul Krugman who asked this week if the GOP has lost its mind. After years of courting this meltdown, we’re finally on the downhill slide. Dennis Kucinich is another voice decrying the deliberate transfer of the nation’s wealth, not to the underprivileged or government workers or union members as the Pubs suggest, but to a jaded corporate culture fronted by Wall Street.
If we needed a crisis to slap the hubris out of us, we’ve surely got one, so let’s get on with it. Scaring ourselves witless seems to be the way to proceed into this new era, and now people are waking up to painful and unwelcome truths, trying to clear their heads of collective fear, social confusion and political conditioning. Oh, I know it doesn’t always feel like it, but I believe the majority of us are well-meaning, decent people willing to rethink our way forward into this new century. A smaller number are reaffirming their narcissism and nihilism, intent on fighting the headwind of evolution. They seem to wield an inappropriate amount of power, don’t they?
Our differences are stark, but here’s happy news: the outcome is a done deal. We cannot enter the Aquarian Age without the collective ‘We’ taking precedence over the self-interested ‘Me’ of the egocentric Piscean Age, but timing is important, and this moment really is critical. If American citizens insist on sleepwalking right over the cliff, it’s going to happen with a growing Greek chorus of us standing with arms linked, lifting our voices for a return to sanity and common sense.
This week saw increased hysteria over the debt ceiling deadline, and with good reason. In a game of congressional chicken, party leaders opened with entitlement cuts, raised with tax increases, bluffed with high rhetoric, and eventually threw in their cards, miffed. Meanwhile, the clock ticks and the world anxiously awaits the outcome of the game. Baggers argue that dire predictions such as those issued by the Treasury Department are just fear tactics, which leaves me astounded at what jackasses these people truly are.
We went to war on conservatives’ fear tactics, slipped and slid into a near-fascist state on their suspicions of aluminum tubes and yellow cake uranium, occupied more of the Middle East than anyone in their right mind would have attempted, all in terror of phantom WMD. Then we stayed for years to assuage conservatives’ fears of a growing Iranian presence. And now, as we face a real internal emergency, one with far-ranging ramifications, conservatives call it a ploy to frighten the children? That they do not see their reflection in this mirror should be the only argument necessary against their continued leadership.
Perhaps the zeitgeist will begin to change now that Mr. Murdoch’s shell has cracked like a bloated Humpty Dumpty, so completely fissured that no king’s horses or men will be able to put him together again. Perhaps now FOX News, a swamp of an enterprise, will begin to drain off its muck. It’s pretty obvious that there is no integrity at the center of Murdoch’s empire, so it cannot hold. We could say that about some areas of our own government, as well. Again and again we’re offered a glimpse inside the strongholds of power to find corruption and abuse, and far less intelligence than we gave credit for. I think that’s a sign of the times, the thing we need to watch for now: that which is not designed for the public good can no longer sustain itself.
Even though it doesn’t seem so, we’ve already begun a renewal process. We are seeing clearly for the first time in decades, and we must be careful rebuilding when the time comes. We cannot gloss over corruption or special interests that seek to separate us from each other or victimize our citizens. But while we must discern what is no longer allowable, we must guard against blanket rejection of those who come to the table late. We’ve all shared in building our flawed past, and there are those who would join us in rebuilding an uncorrupted future if we extend an open hand rather than a clenched fist. The culture wars that divide us from our many commonalities are cynical and deliberate. Our activism must be as loving as the future we’re ushering in; it cannot be built on polarization, judgment and rejection.
But confrontation is not the same as rejection. For instance, how is it that the Baggers stand knee-deep in hypocrisy without anyone calling them out? The majority of their “no spend, no tax” philosophy is false equivalency. Spending isn’t their issue. Republicans have ALWAYS been big spenders and are STILL disciples of big spending in corporate and military welfare, along with tax benefits to the wealthy. Yet now it’s all a battle of the deep pockets, with senators who should know better haranguing the poor for being unwilling to sacrifice in order to help the overburdened wealthy. Now that’s what I call a what-the-fuck moment, when even some Republicans are beginning to notice that two plus two really DOES only equal four.
Another example of disconnect: resting on the Palinism that “proved” Obama wanted death panels for Grandma, the conservative plan to do away with Medicaid should rightly be called what it is: throwing Grandma into the street. Very few of us have $7,000 or more a month for a nursing home, and most of us know the stories of those forced to spend down to their last penny before Medicaid would place them in long-term care. Is the Pub base so dumbed down that the average middle-aged couple doesn’t realize that their kids, unable to collect unemployment, will join their parents, unable to afford living assistance, in needing a hand?
What will they do? Put the old folks in the attic, the kids in the basement? Those who say that’s the way it should be are either too rich to care or not sandwiched between two politically fragile generations. How do they sell such a notion over at FOX, I wonder? How do they throw seniors under the bus and still blame Obama? Gratefully, national polls confirm that Grandma has noticed the disconnect between her needs and those of the Grand Old Party.
Clearly, what we invest in as a nation is a moral issue and today, an ethical fight. When Bush signed off on torture, the left went ballistic about losing the moral high ground but, hell, we’d already lost it. Ask Pat Tillman’s parents. Ask the Iraqis that we butchered in the name of liberation. When the Supremes gave personhood to corporations with fat checkbooks, the left screamed corruption and loss of ethics, but it was too little, too late. Lobbyists had been writing legislation for years. Tax loopholes had already spared two-thirds of corporate entities from paying ANY taxes to their government, creating a permanent imbalance in revenue. The growing power of insurance companies and the privatization of public institutions had already skimmed an immoral amount of the public good into private pockets.
Now, here’s the part that’s down the rabbit hole: we all know we’re being had. We know we’ve been plundered, assaulted and manipulated. We know not to expect a fair shake from business or the laws that protect it. We know and do nothing about it. And now we’ve come down to the bare essentials of a nation whose directive was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” only we can’t agree on what that means. The argument is over public vs. private good. The wrangle is over We the People vs. Me the Individual. This is a fight over our vision of the future: the commonweal directed by a benevolent and ethical government, or the rights of property owners and the full ascendancy of predatory capitalism.
Make no mistake, proposed austerity programs are the GOP’s ‘final solution,’ as dear to their hearts as getting the black man out of the Oval Office. There is no sharing of the wealth in this philosophy. Driving a stake through the heart of entitlements has been a conservative goal ever since FDR betrayed “class lines” to promote the common good. Conservatives will never see the common good as an asset, nor do they trust anything but an unfettered market to regulate financial security. In the Republican playbook, the future is a place where the public is increasingly marginalized, social problems are criminalized, the poor punished, and safety nets weakened until they vanish. This is not yer daddy’s Republican party we’re discussing now. This is the radical right of a party gone irresponsible and vengeful. Ayn Rand would applaud.
My disdain for Rand is no secret, and in her case, I have no problem speaking ill of the dead. On the contrary, anyone who mixes ego, greed and selfishness into a toxic cocktail to salute those ruthless enough to take advantage of others earns no respect from me, nor do those who follow her, including generations of conservatives and most of the Republican leadership today. If Rand defined their Super Wo/Man for them, it’s no surprise that they have followed to the letter, even duplicating the covert hypocrisy she displayed at the end of her life.
Chronically ill, Rand secretly secured health benefits from the government she despised by applying under her married name. I suspect it didn’t prick her conscience a nickel’s worth, and after her death, her secretary defended the action by commenting that writing books didn’t make Rand wealthy enough to afford protracted illness. Indeed. Very few people ever reach the level of wealth Rand enshrined as the due of superior wo/man, including Rand herself. She is the dead queen of a self-serving, anti-government movement that, hopefully, will itself be dead soon.
All government redistributes wealth; that’s its purpose, and who gets the benefit defines its ideology. In a democracy, the people are served. Clearly, we can no longer claim a democratic Republic. As the nation renews itself, repressive politics can no longer be a part of that vision if we are to survive the challenges ahead. Too little government is as debilitating to a secure nation as too much. Ultimately, we do know how to do this, don’t we? It’s called the Golden Rule. We were not born at this time and into this nation to make sure the bankers remain wealthy and the land we love becomes an ecological wasteland. We know the outcome of this great experiment because it is the only one our hearts can accept. We must create a firm ethical platform upon which to rest our bones. We must retake the higher ground.
This nation was created for all who show up, not just for the few who hold power, then or now. At the moment, the core issue of our schism in consciousness — Me vs. We — is being argued by fully 300 million souls, and ultimately, We wins. The only question is how ugly and vicious and disheartening will be the shenanigans that lie between now and that moment when the full humanity of this nation bursts forth. We carry within us the seeds of a loving, sustaining form of governance. Now is the time to plant them.
Point taken, Yeti — the nation has the karmic load of native genocide and slavery to overcome, but where once we had a concept of honorable action — something to shoot for even if not actualized — this last decade of corruption and calamity has made it impossible to pretend we any longer aspire to the higher-minded fundamentals we hoped to establish. I think of Ken Carey’s Return of the Bird Tribes when I imagine the essence that America brought into being, offered to those who yearned for peace and freedom. We have not realized that promise but at least in the past we treasured its possibility. I can FEEL that essence, the solid beat of its heart. I know it’s real and it awaits us.
Thanks for sharing the McKibben info, GG — prophetic voices we need to heed. For awhile yet, it looks as though that will be each of us, individually, continuing to do a bit here and there — but if there’s a silver lining in the poverty loop, returning to simpler skills and expectations might be it. Starhawk is getting some traction on her project to make The Fifth Sacred Thing into a movie. Go here for info: http://starhawksblog.org/ or here for Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Fifth-Sacred-Thing-Film/178087115570253
And thanks for the Sibly info, be. It gets harder and harder to miss pattern and synchronicity, which gives comfort that there is a Grand Scheme that we all a part of. And your comment about C-SPAN reminds me that the Pubs are trying to do away with that, as well. The war on intellect proceeds, unprotested by the intellectually-handicapped … which makes our attention and activism ever more necessary and critical!
How can you write so seriously and yet make me laugh hysterically? Oh, well maybe it’s just me being hysterical. Like GG said Jude, this piece is breath-taking. Eric’s question as to how to connect the information to the people who need to get it, and how to pay for it, could possibly be achieved through “town hall” forums or even “presentations”, theater-style. Today there was a re-run of a program on C-Span that featured Ted Turner, Ralph Nader and a billionaire whose name I didn’t catch. Nor did I get the beginning of the program where the subject was given, but these guys were funny and very informing as they talked about the climate changes, the lop-sided division between the rich and the poor and how to solve the many crisis we are facing. Turner apparently does a lot of work for which he doesn’t get paid because he feels so strongly about the subjects supported. People would pay to see and listen to guys like this. I think a good topic to start with would be the poisoning of our food supplies.
The time is close because of the astrological signs, obviously the Pluto-Uranus squares, but for this country especially,. . the USA, the progressed Sibly Sun is at about 7 Pisces, while the progressed Uranus is 7 Gemini and progressed Nessus is at 8 Pisces. This Sun will also be setting off the natal Uranus square to the natal Ceres. This coming November there is a conjunction between Mercury and Venus at 8+ Sagittarius, and later in the month there is a New Moon at 2+ Sagittarius with Mars at 7+ Virgo. That new moon is a partial eclipse. Timing is sooo important.
Eric specifically recognizes the need for “nourishment” to support a creative environment. We know that transiting Ceres has arrived at the Aries Point and will stay there for several weeks and then return to late Pisces. The U.S. Sibly progressed Ceres is at 28-29 Pisces as is progressed Isis. In a remarkable display of synchronicity, the progressed (Sibly) Osiris is at 13 Capricorn which opposes the natal Sun for the U.S. at 13 Cancer. It is time to become totally conscious of what’s missing, and what better starting point for a Cancer-Sun-country than it’s food?
The interesting and powerful phenomenon of the yod between Pluto, Chiron and Mercury in the U.S. (Sibly) Solar Return chart is made even more interesting in that Uranus(the higher form of Mercury) is trine Mercury, the focal point of the yod, and in the fire element. As Mercury is only one degree from the US Sibly north node it seems very supportive of communicating Pluto and Chiron’s message of a revolutionary and transformative healing process. An extra bonus will arrive on July 30 when the New Moon at 7+ Leo, also only 1 degree from the U.S. north node, along with Venus at 2+ Leo, will also claim that focal point of a yod with the sextile of Pluto and Chiron (and Neptune).
Of note in the Solar Return chart, Jupiter is trine Pluto and also the Moon in Virgo. This is the promise of firmer ground we are looking for. A grand trine in earth signs with the Moon opposite Chiron in Pisces seems to say “now is the time”, as it emphasises the USA progressed Sun/Nessus conjunction that squares the progressed (and natal) Uranus. It is time to climb out of that rabbit hole and get real.
be
Oh boy oh boy, what a thrilling piece. I held my breath a couple of times while reading it, you got at so much truth, Judith.
Wanna share something: I got to hear Bill McKibben in person a few weeks ago when he spoke at a local campus. McKibben wrote “The End of Nature” and has been grappling with the climate change issue longer than any other journalist.
At this confab, he said something wonderful, which I ‘m repeating to everybody who cares. I’m parapharasing, but here it is:
Right now, we’re ignoring it when nature says to us, ‘What you’re doing is not working. If you keep on like this you’re going to kill me.’
We ignore and we keep doing what we’re doing.
But nature is going to keep giving us opportunities to listen. In fact, she going to give us a nearly endless series of opportunities to hear her, and one day — we don’t when, but one for sure — we are going to respond.
It might not happen till the island of Manhattan is under water, but it’s going to happen.
And when that day comes, this is what is going to matter: how much infrastruture for the new, sustainable world, will we have already built, and already have in place? How many of the conceptual and technical issues will we have already grappled with, and how many will still need to be worked out?
Because the more of that infrastructure we can create now, the better the chances that much of nature will be able to survive. The more prepared we are for the day the tide will turn, but more likely we will be to succeed, and to avoid conflict and confrontation.
When you wrote in this piece that we’ve already begun to create our new society, it reminded me of McKibben’s comment. I think you are both 100% correct, and hopefully this will help to keep us alll working for the future good.
peace, GG
Yay for envisioning and acting to create a future that works for more than a few humans, but America never had moral high ground. Empire has been fucking people over to acquire more land to abuse for as long as Empire has existed. Ask an Indan about America’s moral high ground.
A couple of thoughts. In self assessment, one of the hardest questions to answer seems to be, “What do I want.” ACIM calls that THE question to ask yourself. That’s where people get stuck most often. I suppose this is where we bump our nose against our internal conflicts, perhaps noticing them for the first time and hitting that wall of confusion that seems too difficult to break through.
We seem to lack motivation, these days. Like anything worth having, changing our life-script requires some muscle to get there and a desire to experience things differently. There’s comfort in dancing with the devil we know, even if it kills us. I’ve always thought of a Uranus transit — announced by the Tower Card — as a necessary cathartic come to call, whether we like it or not. The more internal work we’ve done before these energies arrive, the better off we are when they do. Some of what we see today is the response of those who were taken by surprise, not trained in any way to deal with these spiritual challenges; and of course that’s exactly what they are.
In my perfect world, we would all wake up one morning suddenly aware that our social construct was harmful to living things and do the “allergy test” — remove all that might offend, then slowly add things back one at a time, testing our response to them. I suspect the first things we’d add back are the things we love, are passionate about. That’s what crisis is good for: reprioritizing what’s important. In that kind of energy, “What do I want” becomes an easier question to answer, and what ignites our passions becomes nurture for ourselves and one another.
Watching television commercials can be an entire education in mind control, if you take the time to decode what you’re being told. The notion that corporations have us in a stranglehold is beginning to catch on; you can see their PR concerns in how they try to spin themselves. I had to laugh the other day when the big Huffy lede was that Monsanto’s Round-Up was responsible for birth defects. Well, duh! Big news there, huh? But for a lot of folks, this WAS news. It’s critical that we get a big dose of indignation over how we’ve been played.
We can also get a sense of social movement by watching what’s being schlepped. Last decade it was ads for credit cards, cars, over the counter meds and beer that filled the airwaves; now it’s big pharma scrips, insurance and phones. A hint of austerity there and kind of mind-boggling to think of Dubby’s reign as “the frivilous years.” Yikes!
On a political note, Van Jones and his Contract for the American Dream seems tuned in to what you described, e, as an educational process that both examines ideas and explores funding options. He’s created it as a kind of cyber think-tank. MoveOn got behind it and the response is pretty astounding. We’re hungry for this kind of interaction and THATs a Very Good Sign. Check it out here:
http://contract.rebuildthedream.com/rate/?id=28628-1297879-Ei6luXx&category=patriotism
I think the first thing we need to go about rebuilding are our ideas and methods related to creating viewpoints and information. If we can glimpse the problems created by deception for profit, we can start to envision a more nourishing way of creating ideas around which we can have a real conversation. And around that conversation we can coalesce some notions of what to do next; what we really need. One problem with the mainstream media is that it doesn’t tell us that much that’s very useful, and it occupies time, space and resources that could be used to help us co-create and grow.
The Internet is an excellent platform for that — it’s completely versatile, nearly anyone can access it if they want, and we can all participate. But there’s a creative stretch involved, which involves some visioning and some direct participation — neither of which are required by television, so those muscles are usually atrophied if they were ever strong.
Then there’s how we fund the thing. We’re used to passively watching TV and being bombarded quite literally bombed by advertising, and we think the whole thing is “free.” We don’t count mental bandwidth as a form of payment, nor being brainwashed into buying into what we don’t want and what does not serve us. I think we need to both see the cost of this and let go of any reluctance to bring our energy into the places that nourish rather than deplete us, and this seems to require an educational process.
I think most of that is really about teaching ourselves what we really want, and honoring that. I know there’s a risk involved, or there seems to be.