The Right And Moral Thing

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“Something’s coming, I can feel it.”

I’ve been hearing versions of this statement around me for weeks now. I take it as a sign that people are finally paying attention to the energy shifts. If you’ve been following the news, then you know that the thing that was coming is finally here, a big bang that looks a lot like a major Uranian shift should look. That context might help make sense of a week in which a lot actually did come to pass.

For starters, Libya is in flames, its megalomaniacal dictator hiring mercenaries to counter a rebel insurrection. Defiantly declaring that all his people LOVE him, Gadhafi displays a level of psychosis equal to Sheen’s delusion that all the world approves his hired porn-posse as acceptable babysitters for his twin toddlers.

Elsewhere in the world, the Pacific Ring of Fire turned up the heat to rattle Japan with an 8.9 earthquake — the largest in 140 years — and produce a devastating tsunami. After destruction spread across Japan’s north-eastern territory at lightning speed, warnings of the oncoming flood sped quickly across half the globe. The tsunami eventually reached our vulnerable West Coast, but with enough warning to clear beaches and move heavy Navy ships out of harm’s way. Despite the heads up, several Californians were swept away. It’s worth mentioning that if the Republicans get their budget cuts, we’ll lose our tsunami early warning and tracking system along with many other environmental protections.

In the heartland, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker manipulated his legislature into passing a stand-alone union-busting bill despite the Democratic leadership’s boycott. The pretext for the labor-killing portion had been fiscal until the Governor split the bill in order to pass it without Democratic votes, trampling workers’ bargaining rights. Other proposed corporate-friendly budget cuts are calculated to make privatization easier. Walker already plans to sell off the state-run power plants, likely to the Kochs, and put the northern forests on the auction block. As if signaled by telepathic hive-mentality, newly-elected Republican governors across America — in Michigan, Florida and elsewhere –are attempting similar moves to kill off organized labor, turn back decades of consumer protections and civil liberties, and reward their corporate sponsors and Tea Party supporters. This is an ideological assault, an attempt to overthrow what the right sees as “mainstream liberalism.”

That no longer exists. The remnant of what was once a bustling, powerful progressive movement is now a tepid mythology known as mainstream liberalism, over-hyped by conservatives to keep their faithful vigilant. Although the Lefties do have the numbers, they don’t have teeth. The Blue party just doesn’t bite much anymore — oh, it occasionally nibbles but seldom draws blood. Let’s note that this business in Wisconsin is the flashpoint upon which a continuing liberal movement will either be reborn or die quietly. Now we’ll either grow some big incisors or end up completely toothless against the GOP’s coordinated effort to disarm the left completely and leave it without defenses: a coup or, as Eric informed us recently, a ‘putsch.’

Because the average American is so tired out, so befuddled and overwrought, we might miss how ruthless and calculated this right wing assault is. We might misjudge how critical the moment is and how much our intention and energy are needed, as Fe so movingly reminded us this week. It doesn’t help us that those who plot against us seem like cartoon characters with names like Blackboard Glenn and Oxycontin Rush and Sarah Mama Grizzly. It’s difficult to take seriously their theories and talking points, which seem so absurd and fly in the face of reason to the point of being offensive, but that’s what makes this moment so very dangerous.

It would take some time and a lot of painstaking research to track the history of how liberals became the anemic, weakened party we seem to be today. It happened over decades, wound by wound, event by event, but that’s not what I want to write about today. I want to write a bit about the spiritual basis for this problem, and so, first, a warning: for those of you who think there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, both bought by the same filthy lucre in a thoroughly broken system — and you may be right — this next may not be your cup of tea. I think the differences between the two types of humans inhabiting this planet, both of which seem happiest in one or the other of the political ideologies, is a “big fuckin’ deal,” to quote our Vice President. Dealing with those differences in an ethical, adult fashion is critical to our political challenges.

I’ll bypass comparisons between the two types, conservative and liberal, except in this one instance: liberals are WE people, in it together and with one another, while conservatives are ME people, each taking care of their own. The liberals are infamous for their spark of altruism, their desire to fix the world and relieve the pain of others. CNN had a talk show anchored by Eliot Spitzer and co-host (and Righty pundit) Kathleen Parker that I watched for awhile, uncomfortable with Parker’s combative attitude. Then I read an article she wrote in which she spoke cynically of having been a “bleeding heart liberal suffering for the starving children” in college, but has now grown up and into a “proper capitalist.” So there it is: our division, illustrated. You can’t be both compassionate and a capitalist, not in the eyes of the right wing. And as we have heard so often, if we are “not with them, we’re against them.” I’m pleased to report that Parker has since left the show, and I’d guess that she doesn’t toss and turn at night, worrying about the children.

It’s the Lefty character that I want to speak about, because, with some exceptions, we often suffer what I call “old soul’s disease.” We blame ourselves for everything. If it goes wrong, we could have done better. If it’s harder than we thought, we didn’t prepare well enough. If the outcome of any given project goes awry, we search within ourselves to find cause. We lean over until our ears are between our heels to make sure everything is fair, everyone gets a turn. But here’s the thing — sometimes the hitch in our giddy-up isn’t us. Too often we let others tell us it is. Sometimes the system is just so twisted and out of balance that we can’t get a hold on it, can’t make a dent. Lately that’s how it’s felt, but this is not a time to feel sorry for ourselves or believe a bunch of pundit-driven bullshit.

Sometimes we have to stand firm or nobody gets saved, fixed or fed. Sometimes we march together on the higher road because without us nobody would be lifted up. Sometimes we risk everything because without our act of courage, no starving kids would get fed or old folks taken care of. Sometimes we find that we can only feel good about ourselves if we’re speaking our truth and doing what’s right.

In years gone by, I wrote about getting in touch with our inner desires, laying down our baggage, getting in touch with our passions; in short, doing the inner psychic surgery that allows us take on our authentic purpose. What if this IS our purpose — to help create this turning, to rebuild the world out of our creativity and generosity? What if it’s going to take all of us, fearlessly telling our truth and following our hearts? What if this is less about bashing the opposition senseless than it is about gathering together to make something wonderful happen?

How about simply saying NO to the kind of heart-occulting, mind-numbing repressions that the House majority are suggesting? NO to hurting the least of these to benefit the richest. NO to granting government control over our reproductive rights, our religious freedoms or the workplace. NO to predatory capitalism that serves only itself. NO to a class war that seeks to divide us while sacking our resources. The NO I’m thinking about is the one that resonates deeply within us, a NO that simply will not entertain such solutions nor accept them. A NO that we are willing to back up with activism and passion because it’s the right and moral thing to do.

The polls all indicate that there are staggering numbers of us thinking just those things, so many of us that if we spoke with our pocketbook or took to the streets, we’d rattle the bones of a nation and turn the blood of a plutocracy cold. They’re trying to kill the unions because solidarity is powerful. Now it’s our turn to come together. So don’t just sit there — organize.