The Litmus Test

The current battle to the death over the nation’s debt limit between the Tea Party-run Congress and the White House reminds me of Live Free or Die Hard, one of Bruce Willis’ later editions in his “Die Hard” movie franchise.

In that film, the hero confronted a villain — a vengeful national security consultant — whose purpose was to sabotage the entire infrastructure of the Eastern Seaboard with the ultimate goal of downloading and stealing all of the United State’s personal and financial records from top secret servers down in the bowels of a government facility somewhere in Maryland.

This current crisis makes me suspect that the Die Hard producers used Ted Cruz and Eric Cantor as script consultants for that film.

In every “Die Hard” movie, we have come to expect ultra-violent thrills, big crashes and near-death experiences that confront our hero, complete with ruthless villains and their evil accomplices willing to wreck the local infrastructure and the world. And so it seems now in Washington. As in Hollywood, so on your nightly news channel. We are now on a Plutonian roller coaster ride, with hills and valleys made more steep by Uranus. A period of absolutes. High stakes and do or die. Or maybe not.

I have learned in my short, happy career as a political blogger that you have to look through the veil to feel out what government and its constituent parts are really saying. It’s “reading between the lines.” That comes from being in government so long — 30 years long — that I know how its armpits stink.

It’s the Republicans suffering serious flop sweat. Speaker John Boehner, third in line for the Presidency and looking like he needs a drink just to deal with his own party, has lost control in the House because his Tea Party members know there is no leader there.

Then there’s Senator Ted Cruz from Texas who has no idea of what the responsibilities of an elected office are. This is the same Ted Cruz who, with Karl Rove, is responsible for putting “Compassionate Conservative” George W. Bush on the ticket for the 2000 presidential election. And we all know how that turned out.

Since Pluto digs deep, and since we have so many from our recent past to fulfill roles in this action-packed political disaster theater, it’s very interesting how this is all shaping up. Here is moderate conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, mourning:

“The purge has worked, hasn’t it? There is effectively no Republican party anymore. There is a radical movement to destroy the modern American state and eviscerate its institutions in favor of restoring a mythical, elysian, majority-white, nineteenth-century past. This crisis is proving that more powerfully than even watching FOX. We need to see what is in front of our nose: a cold civil war has broken out between those properly called conservatives, defending the credit of the government, empirical reality, and adjustments to modern life and those properly called radical reactionaries declaring our current elected president and Senate as illegitimate actors, bent on the destruction of America, and therefore necessitating total political warfare, even to the point of threatening to destroy the global economy.”

Even more ironic, the people pulling the strings of the puppets in this charade in DC — such as the Koch Brothers, Freedom Works and Heritage Action, all major political funders for Tea Party candidates — are starting to get perturbed.

“the Koch brothers’ company sent a letter to Congress this morning, making clear that Koch Industries is not on board with the idea of tying the Affordable Care Act to the government shutdown. Around the same time, Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham told reporters he wants to defund “Obamacare,” but he doesn’t want this to be tied to the debt ceiling.”

When and how will they, not we, but THEY get their crazy djinni, the Tea Party, back in the bottle? I don’t necessarily want to celebrate the end of the Republican Party. You do need checks and balances to govern. You need a loyal opposition to the party in power to form the crucible capable of forging laws that will govern the country and serve its people.

And perhaps that is the deeper point behind what is happening as we observe this theater of the absurd. We’re finding out what it means to have a government at all. How all our lives are affected with and without it. That government does matter. And perhaps, when all is concluded, that maybe a third party does take shape, forming the next crux of the squares between Uranus and Pluto between now and 2015. And what all that means is anyone’s guess.

This is a litmus test for our country, checking if we are still a republic. If we as a nation succeed even during this crisis — that is, we continue to care about our country’s future, and build on our desire to continue it — then, given the polls showing growing disapproval of these terrible theatrics in Washington, it seems that we are.

Even the billionaires are worried that the debt limit crisis — pushed to the brink in this war between Boehner, the Tea Party and Obama, with the potential to destroy the full faith and credit of the U.S. and the world — DOES have an impact on their bottom line. Default would cut their wealth by half. That means the very Tea Party politicians they bought to sit in Congress are screwing them right now with this debt limit crisis charade.

Yippee Kai-yay, mother@#$%ers!

7 thoughts on “The Litmus Test”

  1. Green star gazer:

    Yay and double yay! Times like these make all of us gather in group prayer to move this stagnant, backwards energy out! Love your calls to the Jesus. Yes, please Lord, let’s work to make life on this earth the heaven it deserves to be.

    Be:

    This time I am not a canary in a coal mine. Today, I feel like a finch in a fig tree, situated by the train tracks, watching as the train wreck approaching passes by me. May the damage be limited to that which needs to change, even if we have to bear with the noise and the mess!

  2. Well put Fe, I remember not too long ago media darlings were commenting about how the moneyed corporations and individuals were taking over the tea party; overriding the base. Now the disclaimers from Koch Bros. and their ilk are being made uncomfortable by the crazy aunt locked in the basement (or attic) who has surfaced and she has voting power. So again, just who is pulling the strings of those Republicans now?

    What it all means is anybody’s guess as you say, but my money is on your “karma has set in”. U.S. Karma the asteroid is conjunct the U.S. Sibly Venus and Venus is just another way of saying money. Transiting Karma on the other hand will enter Scorpio in 48 hours and right off the bat it will conjunct the U.S. Sibly Uranian Point Hades at 0+ Scorpio. (Transiting Hades is still conjunct the U.S. Sibly Venus and Karma by the way.)

    I’m not intimate with the workings of government like you (armpit stink is more than enough to keep me at a distance) but so often I’ve heard that our money is worthless since we went off the gold standard, so why all the fuss and worry? Is it because we can’t admit to the whole charade? You know, fake rules that everybody in government breaks, fake promises made to one audience and other promises to another audience by an elected two-faced politician being common practice. Even retired politicans become actors (or the other way around) because show biz is so much like politics. Many an actor has said that timing is everything in show business, especially comedy. Timing is ruled by Saturn.

    Transiting TNO Typhon is now breathing down the neck of the U.S. Sibly Saturn (14+ Libra) and they will be tightly conjunct by the solar eclipse on November 3. The yod in that eclipse formed by the New Moon sextile Mars with the apex (point) being Uranus in Aries is too close for comfort in his opposition to the U.S. Sibly Saturn and trans. Typhon. Something unexpected could hit the Saturn fan and we could all be smelling of armpit stink. Or worse.

    By that time transiting Karma will be at 8+ Scorpio and trine trans. Chiron in Pisces and the transiting duo of Kronos (aka Saturn) and Magdalena in Cancer providing easy access to the tears and tissues. For some it might be comedy, for others it could be tragedy. We will just have to wait until the awards are handed out to know into which category history will put it.
    be

  3. It cannot be forgotten that this unfolding drama (with its very real consequences) is yet another manifestation of the sputtering out of Patriarchy. We knew it was going to be messy. The Feminist and Women’s movements took their experience of dis-empowerment and learned how to be organized, politically active and eventually brought about cultural change. It worked because it was forward-leaning, based on Social Justice and was collective-embracing and inclusive in how it transformed society.

    What we are seeing now is the desperate thrashing of a backwards-looking, dis-empowered (mostly) male collective which is espousing the “traditional” values of the patriarchy as our salvation. I can understand the sense of outrage and indignation, powerlessness and frustration that motivates them. Those are the very same emotions that motivated the Women’s movement. But the major difference is that the rabid-right of the Republican party has built into their ideology that destroying the government and even the world’s economic system is a “good” thing because for them it signals the Second Coming and they very much want to be foot-soldiers in that dream/nightmare.

    Sharia law and this mess come from the same root: the desire of patriarchy to re-assert itself as the egoic male cultures, collectives and individuals are unable make their way into the future of an equality-based world because patriarchy is no longer desired or wanted here on this planet.

    Personally I wish Jeezus WOULD come down here and collect his tribe and then get out of here. I wish Mohammed would come and collect his acolytes. And anyone else who is sitting around waiting for a Super-Daddy-God to come and save them… pack your things and get ready to catch the next train outta here I say!

    The rest of us want very much to get on with co-creating the vibrant, life-affirming, mutually supportive, sustainable and environmentally respectful co-operative cultures we know are possible. We are soooo ready to get on with this vision! I wish the old male gods would come and get their ardent, death-worshipping, hierarchy-loving, backwards thinking followers and take them the hell off this planet and leave the rest of us alone!

  4. Thanks, Fe. Chilling: “There is a radical movement to destroy the modern American state and eviscerate its institutions in favor of restoring a mythical, elysian, majority-white, nineteenth-century past”

    and obvious. Last night a politically aware friend said, The dying mule kicks the hardest. We are seeing the violent end game of patriarchy, and it is ugly. The elected Bagger fascists are loose cannons, rogue agents. Can they be corralled or hog-tied before they take down the world economy?

    Focus on the real power that we citizens hold.

    Uranus brings the unexpected, and it can be unexpected benefits, solutions from a surprising corner, success beyond wildest predictions. I’m reminding myself of that every day.

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