By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Back in the early ’90s, when the wave of spiritual awareness born of the Harmonic Convergence had begun to take shape and bloom, 2012 seemed far away and full of mysterious potential. We spoke of it reverently, sure that there would be events between then and its arrival that would portend a graceful assent into change and awakening. That was when Pluto was newly in Sagittarius and we had few signs of what radicalism would bring us. In fact, it took so long for us to notice what was creeping up on us, we didn’t really recognize it when it arrived. We knew this period was going to be extraordinary, and we got that right. We supposed it would be difficult, but we didn’t have a clue how much.
When I think about the turn of this century and our false sense of security, pre-Bush, it feels almost like another lifetime. The Y2K phenomenon had some of us spun up, filling our pantries and stuffing our money into our pillows, sure that time would suspend should the computers freeze and clocks no longer function: banks would turn up their toes and ATMs fail to spit money at us. We shivered with the horrific possibilities. As master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock told us, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” We got plenty of thrills out of that fearscape, unaware that it was a prelude to the coming decade of actual terrors.
When the dreads of New Year’s 2000 failed to materialize, many of us were left with a vague unease about the way the politics of the previous months had worked out, but I don’t think many of us anticipated what was coming. For most folks George Bush was a joke, both as a politician and a national leader, and his first early political moves weren’t dramatic enough to give the majority a sense of him. I, on the other hand, started to vibrate like a tuning fork about two weeks into his presidency, noting the appointments he was making, the changes in policy, the Enron buddies and the holes being ripped in social safety nets. I was screaming to anyone who would listen, wondering who would have the tenacity to carefully document all the changes we would have to repair after what could only be a single term. Then came 9/11 and terror became a cause upon which the entire nation would impale itself. Even now, it feels to me as though we entered an alternate universe, a sick sociopolitical horror movie that we had to face with our eyes wide open and our chins up. Hitch had taken Cliff Notes™ on the dark side when he told an interviewer that the only way he could get rid of his fears was to make films about them.