By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Let’s start out today with some good news: after generations of inaction, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is publishing suggested guidelines for the use of antibiotics in meat, a long unaddressed problem that has produced events like that of the Foster Farms outbreak this October, when tainted chicken caused illness in 23 states.
Sadly and not uncommonly these days, that particular strain of Salmonella was resistant to multiple kinds of antibiotics and attributed to the decades-long practice of low-level drugging of factory-farm animals. New guidelines ask veterinary drug companies to remove growth-promotion claims from their advertising, and a second step (and proposed rule) would make large purchases of antibiotics, currently available across the counter in feed lots, require authorization from a veterinarian.
The good news? About damned time! Bad news? Drug companies will have 90 days to notify the agency if they intend to comply, and the FDA will implement its plan over the next three years, then evaluate the results. As antibiotic-resistant infections kill some 23,000 Americans each year, and that number is growing, government regulation seems critical to retard the growth of untreatable superbugs.
As some 30 million pounds of these antibiotics — billions of dollars worth — were sold for use in animals in 2011, and just under 8 million pounds were consumed by humans, those who follow the money can’t help wonder just how effective these new guidelines will prove to be, three years hence. Regulation is only as good as the regulators. Just ask Wall Street.
That sounds cynical, I’ll admit it. Seems I’m always giving you bad news, and that’s not a comfortable chair to sit in. There is always a pony in the horseshit and finding it in times like these is not impossible but it takes a certain amount of dumpster diving to locate the pony and pull its head up out of the trash. This can have a chilling effect, as I’d suppose you understand, setting the tone for the other aspects of a person’s life, so I keep plenty of sage available to neutralize the slime of negativity. Visitors know what kind of day I’m having by the intensity of the smell of sage in the house.
Being grateful for the pony is the second ingredient in the healing balm to beat back daily toxic exposure to news, and of course keeping an eye on the larger perspective helps enormously. In fact, perspective is the key to coping with our circumstances, because it blasts us out of our human tendency toward black/white thinking and helps us define how to invest our energy, where to put our focus. When our vision becomes too narrow, we do not see the options awaiting our attention, just out of sight.
This week, Eric did a fine job providing an overview of our sad state of affairs in the subscription edition, calling attention to the surrealist aspects of our current sociopolitical challenges. ‘Surrealistic’ is a word we’ve been using since the Bush era, and, frankly, there should be a more dramatic description for this fracture in all things dependable, but I can’t think of it. Most of us still can’t wrap our minds around the level of dysfunction and decay we’re seeing all around us. I, for one, refuse to assume that this is the ‘new true,’ the way it will always be, but then I’ve lived through a prior Pluto/Uranus aspect, navigated a couple of Saturn returns, survived a Pluto/Sun conjunction and lived to tell.
Things shake out — they do — but not while you’re in the middle of the curve, and this particular energy is more than just a little goad, it’s asking us to release the old ways of being in order to usher in the new. Coping with the end of an era is nerve-wracking. What always did work, what should work, what we’ve depended upon to work, very often doesn’t these days. This serves as a point of ignition for Mars, newly in Libra and focused around relationships not just with partners, co-workers and other people, but with everything around us, including our relationship with government and the institutions with which they align themselves.
As sentient beings, we are in relationship with all the people, places and things in our lives. We are in relationship to all that is occurring around us, and we are capable of reading the smoke signals, depending on our ability to stay focused on the larger picture. In fact, I’ll bet these next few days will find us tracking fires lit from all the current Sagittarian signatures that are urging us to enlarge our view, perhaps even witnessing a lightning strike or two around the Gemini Full Moon on Tuesday.
The little smoke signals always indicate a fire somewhere. For instance, on the heels of Rush Limbaugh declaring Pope Francis — who practices the dreaded and dangerously un-American liberation theology showcased in the Gospels — a Marxist, Glenn Beck decried the Pope’s selection as Time’s “Person of the Year” rather than that of Ted Cruz (who was third in consideration, well behind Edward Snowden.) I’m reminded how tentative is the cease fire between Catholics and Evangelicals, a pragmatic détente only a few years old.
It should be noted that Glenn’s personal bias may be showing. He’s miffed that his daughter, who earned a scholarship to Fordham University, has been convinced — Glenn calls it brainwashed — by “liberal Catholics” that dad was intolerant on LGBT issues (among others) and that the Bible was nonsense. This is what happens when we send our children to institutions of higher learning far from home, intimates Glenn, proving Rick Santorum’s point that such education is dangerous “indoctrination.”
It seems to me that Beck is poster boy for these times in which we find ourselves, even as a bit of an anomaly, out of the limelight but every bit as bizarre as he’s always been. While his quasi-End Times (and constantly shifting) philosophy lacks a clear point of view, he just makes shit up and people believe it.
House Representative Cruz, our resident radical mover and shaker, was overlooked, says Glenn, because ” … progressives are fascists, they are for fascism.” Evidently, in Beck’s bubbled world, proportional redistribution of wealth through taxation, social safety nets and egalitarian principals equals totalitarian government, reigning tyranny on the Gawd-fearing. If a listener doesn’t know the definition of fascism, Glenn is within grabbing distance of the strings of their fears and bias and … for some of us, that’s all, folks.
You might say, “What the hell, Jude? Who cares about Glenn Beck?” and I’ll give you that, I don’t much — but it’s imperative that we understand how people like Glenn grab the consciousness of those resonating at his level of paranoia, holding them prisoner. They are then a kind of focus-group, demanding energy from the whole of us. You’ll find them everywhere you look, too many to count or pay attention to on Face Book, on infomercials, in reality shows and entertainment venues. In politics.
It’s imperative because there are so many Glenns out there, looking to hook us in, and that’s where we find ourselves today. Thousands of little groups of purists, true-believers of something-or-other climbing on the moving train of opinion, disproportionately representing a movement that may or may not be viable, which may or may not catch fire. There are too many to tend to, thousands of them, all attempting to suck up our attention, distract us from the larger view, constrict our sight from the vast colors of the universe to focus on some measly black and white issue.
Think of them as smoke signals, representing fire before the spark even catches, threatening to snatch us up. We’re waking up to the truth that we gave our power away, bit by bit, over the last several decades, and — harsh truth — we did it willingly, so as not to be bothered by the responsibility of citizenship. We’re waking up and finding the world has changed while we dithered. Now, without true discernment of what is ethical, of what is of benefit to all, and the necessity of making choices within elevated consciousness, we simply become victims of our own confusion.
Back in the 1970s, we had a spate of what were called ‘cults.’ They were, I recall, a big damned deal and those who tried to retrieve lost friends or relatives turned to self-proclaimed ‘deprogrammers,’ hired to kidnap their loved ones and provide reality therapy, holed up away from the cult-family. This often smacked of brainwashing in its own right and was eventually determined to be illegal. Then along came Ruby Ridge and Waco, bringing a rise in Libertarianism with it, and that whole conversation changed.
This week, while Glenn Beck and others like him double down on cultish rhetoric, something interesting just happened in the House of Representatives. Beck has insisted that Time magazine overlooked Cruz in an attempt to deny him additional power; power he has yet to earn and may be prevented from earning, given the fault-line that has finally become visible within the ranks of the GOP. Several steps behind the Chamber of Commerce, who broke with the Baggers over money matters, House Speaker Boehner has finally stepped out to try policing his motley crew of right-wing zealots, sparks shooting from his fingertips.
Having ignored the pressure for so long, it seems something of a surprise that Boehner has reacted to being squeezed, but that comes after months of being targeted by the big conservative money groups like Heritage Action, the Club for Growth and even the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, who have criticized him for being too willing to compromise with Dems (??) and not nearly loyal enough to the death of government as we know it. And it may well have been Mitch McConnell’s encouragement that spurred him on, as McConnell and other mainstream Pubs anticipate tough primary campaigns featuring Bagger candidates eager to replace them.
It’s a sad state of affairs that taking on the extremists within creates electoral dangers for party old timers. I wonder if it ever occurs to the right that it’s their own stilted gerrymander that has put a handful of anachronistic, mostly rural citizens at the helm of House politics for the last few years. I rather doubt if they take responsibility for it. The GOP is not much on looking back, confident to push forward into a future they somehow feel will magically turn whiter and more conservative with time. The narrower the view, the less logic has a place at the table.
Those of us wondering what happened to Congress need to acknowledge that these last years of frustration come at the hands of a handful of citizens who have a very narrow focus which does not include the best interests of the whole of us and surely don’t seem positioned to gain control of the Senate in 2014 or the White House in 2016, but — well — cult mentality doesn’t need logic to function, just true believers. And Jesus, like Santa, is so very very white in the House that FOX built.
But wait! Is that smoke I see rising above the House of Representatives? Don’t think that Boehner has changed his stripes by preferring to avoid another bruising shut-down to government by urging his House to back the new budget deal, touted as an end to the sequester. While it’s true ‘entitlements’ were left alone this round, the legislation is a give-away to the Pubs, with an increase in military spending, new areas open to drilling and no appreciable revenue raised.
This bill, expected to easily pass through the Senate by Dems eager to get this all over with and get home for the holidays*, comes with an assault on unemployment benefits for nearly 1.3 million Americans and corporate welfare still alive and well. And, spreading the pain to those who ‘make the train run on time,’ retirement benefits for federal workers took a resounding hit.
We don’t have far to go to find how little this represents the welfare of the average citizen, do we? And, when it seems so obvious that this is class war, why is it so hard to find people willing to stand up for the rights of the majority? Perhaps the cults have got us all, bound in our little petrie dishes of self-interest, protecting against the instability that marks this period in history.
The system has hijacked the people, but, ultimately, the people are responsible for reinventing the system. And this is a responsibility we can no longer avoid. Some of our brothers and sisters can’t see the smoke signals or even contemplate the need for taking action because of our civic illiteracy, recently fleshed out on Moyers and Co. by Henry A Giroux. This is an instructive read you’ll want to share with thinking friends. As Giroux tells us:
Emptied of any substantial content, democracy appears imperiled as individuals are unable to translate their privately suffered misery into genuine public debate, social concerns and collective action. This is a form of illiteracy that is no longer marginal to American society but is increasingly becoming one of its defining and more frightening features.
We know this condition did not happen by accident. We’d do well to wake up and smell the rising smoke from every quarter. Like the deprogrammers of a decade past, we have a job to do and not much time to do it. There are good things happening, but they are filtered through a rigged and dysfunctional system. If, for instance, we are to limit the antibiotics in meat, we’d better be the ones keeping an eye on the factory-farms, the ones urging oversight, the ones demanding decent public policy. Real citizenship and advocacy are the challenge of our times and the need of this moment in history.
* Just in time for Christmas, the “Cruz to the Future Coloring and Activity Book” is now available for purchase and flying out the door faster than it can be supplied. Sample it here. (And no, this is NOT from the Onion.)
Paul Levy again (ref below) from ‘Homage to the Creative Spirit’. October 2013
The creative process involves a concentration and deepening of experience such that we are open to ourselves in a new way that empowers us to translate our ever-expanding discovery of ourselves into new forms of language. An artist’s regenerative power lies in their willingness to not cling to themselves or their fixed point of view, but to allow themselves to be shaped and formed by new experiences of the world, and then, in turn, to shape and form these experiences which have reshaped them into unique creative expressions. An artist cultivates a readiness to creatively respond to the continually reciprocal interactions between world and psyche, between the outer and inner realities. Art enlarges the universe by uncovering its new dimensions, while simultaneously enriching and expanding the consciousness of humanity, who will be enabled to experience these new dimensions inwardly via the artist’s evocative productions, their art-ifacts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm2yQ4DJwgQ
Confusing responsibility with blame: I just don’t think the empire got us because we didn’t vote enough or because we didn’t do this or do that. It’s a hostile aggressor that’s been honing its craft for the whole span of empires. We could have voted all we wanted- Voters voted Kennedy into office and the hostile aggressor took it away. Voters voted civil rights into law and then the hostile aggressor made for profit prisons and Guantanamo. Marching in the streets just invokes the military. Go ahead, march on Washington with all 300 million Americans minus %1 and the military can still kill each and every one of us with just one bomb. Vote all you want. The hostile aggressor doesn’t care about laws. Is anyone hanging or even in a cozy jail for engineering the wars or killing the economy? Until the soldiers and cops put down their guns when asked to shoot into houses and crowds of unarmed people, until the paid thugs refuse to hit us with tear gas and pepper spray while we get shot and billy clubbed for defending ourselves, then thrown in prison and shamed for defending ourselves against cops so we just have to let them beat us up until they decide not to beat us up and so we fight back and the fucking war just keeps on rolling…sorry just whining, speaking from the bottom of the puppy pile as someone who can still think and write but doesn’t have an avenue of the kingdom’s gold at his command. I hear the rallying cry but I don’t know how to get the thugs to stop. Standing in their way and letting them beat me up doesn’t seem like it would help.
I came across this today and it brought me back to a question provoked by the title of this piece. Thank you Judith, and commenters.
From ‘The Hermetic Vessel’
“The life-giving alchemical container typically is portrayed as having a purifying fire underneath it, symbolizing the heat of introspective, contemplative awareness, which is needed to create sufficient psychological pressure for transformation. If there’s not enough pressure, no transformation takes place. In alchemy, the fire purifies, while simultaneously melting and synthesizing the opposites into a unity.”
Paul Levy
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/glossary-of-terms/#hermetic
To Alexander’s point, that it’s not about blame, it is a normal response to defend the People (USA citizens), but turning a blind eye to the big-picture problems because we as individuals are consumed with our personal situations IS dodging responsibility. Jude quote’s Giroux as saying “. . democracy appears imperiled. . “, implying an end to all of our present lifestyles if we don’t actively join forces to address the burgeoning smoke signals.
Just allowing this truth to sink into our consciousness is a potent beginning. It is especially difficult at this time of the year (when advertisers are luring us away from anything practical but rather to indulge our every desire, and those of whom we love) to think about such dreary things as the survival of our nation. If we must blame, then blame it on Neptune’s powerful ability to allow us an escape from “Reality”. Then picture this. Opposite transiting Neptune and Chiron in Pisces is the transiting asteroid Atlantis at 7+ Virgo. This asteroid and its symbolism isn’t nearly so powerful on our combined psyches as Neptune, but it has a message – maybe a smoke signal just waiting to be addressed. If asteroid Atlantis conveys the story of how a civilization allowed the love of technology to blind it (the nation of Atlantis) from seeing the needs of it’s soul and – because of that – vanished, shouldn’t we give some thought to this aspect?
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Transiting Atlantis will station retrograde in this degree of Virgo during these days preceding Christmas. That will intensify its message, allowing it more time to penetrate our consciences. On Christmas Eve the transiting Sun will sextile Neptune. I incorrectly noted earlier that Sun would trine Neptune at that time, however trans. Sun WILL trine trans. Atlantis on December 28th and 29th when it conjuncts trans. Mercury who will also trine Atlantis.
This will provide ample opportunity for individual consciences to be penetrated with the need for their participation in change. The illusion commercial Christmas creates will be waning; various thuds will be heard as we return to earth. If you feel an emptiness because of this phenomenon you won’t be alone. Allow your heart to guide you to what will fill that emptiness that all the new toys didn’t do. Together we can make a difference.
be
wandering_yeti, your responses seem to be confusing responsibility with blame.
In a complex chicken and egg scenario, it is clear that there is synergy at play. We know the oligarchs are the drivers. Nevertheless, there can be a change in that outworking of top-down energetics should the people en masse recognise that they have abdicated responsibility and effectively become complicit by choosing their own poison, based upon a preference for perceived ease/simplicity..
The rallying cry is not, and never shall be, about blame. Even some of the worst puppets, being culprits of the malaise, should be viewed as possessors of our common humanity, who can be cajoled to awareness through the example of those who show up (rather than cry off or merely lament).
Thanks be for the honor of being a Saturday rascal. Judith interesting you bring up Lush,Beck and Insantorum as wasn’t it just a little over a year ago that the pot was boiling over with bat s*** crazies. We are surely ramping up again for a parade of the old characters as we enter this upcoming grand cross and also as we approach the midterms and the run up to 2016. It will be especially interesting to see the revelation of the new ones as Cruz has recently sprung up. However, Boehner has made it all the more interesting as he called out the extremist. Wow does this just really stir the pot or give us the lethal crack in the armor to make significant headway? Uranus forward shift this week will ignite something and if not Mars will soon light up the hill! As far a Jesus he’s still making a mean carne asada burrito and Santa .. “Hey I think I played with that dude in a band..
To clarify a bit what I mean is that I take issue with the idea that the aggressors, the dominator society takes hold only because we’re lazy. It’s like blaming a woman for being raped. The monster we’re resisting is old and powerful, and resistance in this nation alone has been ongoing since before it was United. We on the bottom of the economic pyramid are suffering from blasted adrenal glands and a host of other ailments that make it hard to get up in the morning for a lot of us, let alone take on the grandchild of Rome. I agree that we have to work together, but it irks me when writers with cozy houses pass the blame onto the victims of centuries of abuse as though the empire took hold because we let them. Our ignorance has been manufactured and the obstacles are great. It’s not from a lack of effort on the part of the resistance that the empire still rolls. A peaceful revolution cannot take up arms to fight it and so it takes patience and time.
Much food for thought here from Salamander as well as you Jude. As for “keeping an eye on the larger perspective”, we owe much to you and your weekly Saturday roundup of rascals. Perhaps some of those rascals are aided by Mercury the Trickster, the ruler of this Tuesday’s Full Moon in Gemini, but for sure he is also the quick-thinking, escape artist and short-term problem solver we all owe a debt of gratitude to too. 🙂 (Sorry trans. Terpsichore is square my Uranus right now)
Perspective though is best served unrushed and Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius, is the primary mover who is influencing the Sun these days. From his high vantage point he may miss details but he sure does get the overall Big Picture. Being caught in tight situations is not his forte’, so as a team, Mercury and Jupiter (Gemini and Sagittarius) are not only father and son but they complete each other. Sometimes you need a quick fix (like this budget for instance) while patiently studying the big picture. How fortunate we are that Jupiter is trine Saturn too! Yes, I said we are fortunate to be here now.
You’ve got me thinking about Mars in Libra too. From the perspective of the U.S., which must include the many aspects our Light-My-Fire guy will be making during his long stay in this sign, not the least will be his trine to the U.S. Sibly Mars at 21+ Gemini. In January he will do this as trans. (get-a-grip) Saturn is sextiling the U.S. (slippery) Neptune (who squares the U.S. Mars) and trans. (quick-escape artist) Mercury will be conjunct the U.S. Moon (The People) in Aquarius and her sidekick Pallas-Athene (The Planner). Not even slightly discounted should be trans. retrograde Jupiter’s conjunction to the U.S. Sibly Sun. These maneuvers will require Mercury’s quick wits and Jupiter’s far-sighted planning to negotiate because it will all happen under the pressure of trans. Jupiter’s opposition (and therefore the U.S. Sun’s opposition) to trans. Pluto in Capricorn.
So as trans. Jupiter and Saturn provide a canopy of tranquility now (comparatively speaking), our Tuesday Gemini Fool, um Full Moon sees Mercury in Sagittarius adapting via his quincunx to Jupiter in Cancer. In this FM chart Jupiter squares Ceres in Libra but ~ ah ha, Mercury sextiles her, so maybe the Farm Bill is preparing to move forward finally. This full moon chart also has Mars (4 Libra) keeping his balance right between his squares to U.S. Venus and U.S. Jupiter in Cancer, while the sextile between the FM’s Mercury and Ceres puts pressure on (both are quincunx to) U.S. Sibly Vesta in Taurus (the apex of their yod). Like her name says, Vesta is about investment, and her sign (in Sibly chart) is about what we value (and $$$ specifically). It’s tricky, but not impossible.
Maybe the Universe is providing some cover as we check out all the smoking fires and put out the most urgent of them. Maybe all the distressed damsels and their children will not perish on the tracks of the oncoming freight train. Maybe the government can save some of them now, but wait. . . . . .
Transiting Mars in Libra will oppose transiting (newly direct) Uranus in Aries on Christmas morning (between Sun’s trine with Neptune and clever Mercury’s sextile to Neptune). Expect the unexpected! As the year ends Mars will square Pluto, at the same time Mercury will conjunct Pluto (and square Mars) so expect a lot of hot, cut-to-the-bone rhetoric. It will be a verbal battle down to the wire, but trans. Mars will conjunct the U.S. Sibly Saturn (get real) on the morning of January 8th, as Mercury conjuncts Venus (opposite the U.S. Mercury). By evening on the 8th, trans. Mars will square trans. Jupiter (too much maybe but nice work boys!) as the Sun approaches his trine to the U.S. Vesta. Keep a positive perspective and never, never give up the ship!
be
We’re TRYING to build a new world. Is it our fault the cops keep tearing it down? Then we fight back, the cops come back with grenades. How is this our fault? Please quit blaming the victims. We’re doing the best we can with the tools we have available.
Another thing I need to mention is that I’m amazed at the bravery of Glenn Beck’s daughter to think in ways that are in strong disagreement with Glenn Beck’s convictions. It must be hard to live in a household like that. My family is not perfect, but when I compare my upbringing to the upbringing of other people, I realize how lucky I am (especially with Jupiter in Cancer going through my 4th and 5th houses).
Glenn Beck doesn’t know what fascism is. Sure, tyranny can come in all shapes and sizes, but he’s more of an advocate of fascism than he cares to admit.
Thank you for this article, Judith. I am glad the FDA is doing something to rein in the overuse of antibiotics in farms, but other guidelines would need to be in place in order for the regulations to be effective, such as treating livestock better in order to reduce the need for antibiotics.
Of course, there is a gap between scientific facts, and dealing with people. So in light of that reality, this is a good first step.
It’s a tragedy that a significant portion of people got conned by Reagan. Glenn Beck is a victim of this delusion as well, and he wants to share it with the rest of the country, even though Pluto in Capricorn is revealing the surreal aspect of his beliefs.
While the Catholic Church has its share of flaws on gender issues and reproductive issues, the catholic tradition values community more than protestantism does. Protestantism values individualism more, which has its upsides (I don’t think one needs to see a priest to interact with God) and downsides (no checks on economic greed). In addition, Pope Francis saw the damage caused by the austerity ideology in Argentina before he became pope (and Argentina got out of their crisis by ditching the austerity ideology). Anyone who has a sense of physical and social reality would praise Pope Francis for his positions, but people who believe in the current economic establishment would not want to hear him.
The American political system has been constantly hampered by plutocracy, and it has always been dysfunctional until a miraculous leader came to stand up for the public interest (Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and FDR come to mind). The nature of the economy needs to change in order to have a more functional democracy.
I am glad that a budget deal emerged, that way, I can still go to my internship, and apply for the jobs I seek so that I can finally attain a full-time job I deserve. I want to do measurements along streams to indicate droughts and floods, and conduct maintenance at gage stations. I’m also willing to learn about groundwater supplies and water quality.
However, I am horrified by many aspects of the budget deal. The unemployed need to have the time and the finances to make sure they get the job they want (jobs are a lot like relationships, compatibility matters!). It’s not fair that liberal politicians have to put up with a lot of things they don’t agree with or that they don’t get much of what they want, but if conservative politicians have to deal with even one disagreement or concession in their world, they flip over.
Conservatism does have its place in the world (personal responsibility is important, and developing inner contentment is important), but conservatives have too much power, and their Saturnian (tightly controlling personal behavior, and a lack of compassion towards people who struggle) and Uranian positions (the concept of absolving corporations from responsibilities other than making profits) are misplaced.
I acknowledge the hard work of congresspeople having to deal with tea party politicians. So they can only achieve so much. Well, hopefully, in 2014, people will vote out the Tea Party politicians. I’m more inclined to vote for democrats in order to keep my job, and in order to have a social framework that lets me and others thrive.
Neptune is squaring my Jupiter now, so my convictions are “on hold” for now. I have personal interests that match the interests of the collective, but it is difficult to find a politician who can transmit those interests. For the congressional election, I will re-elect my congressman because he cares about government employees more than the average politician. For the governor election, I am less certain.
Great article. Judith! I only hope its ideas gain wider circulation and, more importantly, greater implementation from those of us who possess the civic literacy of which you speak.