I Live By the River

We’re living in times, like Paul Simon writes, “of miracles and wonder.” Arab Spring. Massive protests in Israel. England is burning, and America is inching closer to the flame.

In America, we’re in a race to see how far and how fast we can hit economic, political and social bottom. We’re close to succeeding, thanks to a powerful minority of sociopaths and their political tools, the Tea Party.

To recap, a sociopath suffers from a mental illness whereby they exploit the strengths and weaknesses of their adversary with no regard to their adversary’s well-being or anyone else for that matter. They generally get away with it, until people catch on, by way of their misleading charisma. Sociopaths do everything they can to create chaos for their adversary until they surrender or leave. They benefit from acquiescence, and obtain their desired effect, which is to take from others what is not theirs.

If this sounds suspiciously like the characteristics of a spousal abuser or Dick Cheney, it is. Since 9-11 and even before, many of us already know that we have been terrorized by the sound of the abuser’s keys rattling the front door. Humiliated for being social and economic ‘wimps’, we have been shamed for caring too much for people who ‘cheat’ the system, or showing concern for the ‘lazy who don’t pay their fair share’. Why are we looking out for those who are taking away our jobs, getting a ‘free education and health care on our dime’, taking away our medicare and social security?

Following the incessant drumming of a zombie rhythm, aided by a press that knows no shame, there really is no difference between democrat and republican, not when it comes to taxes. Politicians of both parties are so cowed or so bought by special interests that the thought of letting the Bush tax cuts expire to end the deficit is too abhorrent to even think about. It’s austerity and it’s on the rest of us, grandma included.

Our once-greatest asset — our generosity and humanity — has been forced to go largely unheard over the shouts and the screaming, the accusations and blame, the shrugging of responsibility, and the cold-hearted, selfish and relentless pursuit to anesthetize compassion until it can’t awaken any more. All because billionaires need to keep their tax cuts. In degrading our credit rating, Standard & Poor’s was right. American government is ineffective. By ruling for corporate personhood in the case of Citizens United, the Supreme Court did not change the nature of American politics. It only canonized it.

But this is not just about government, American or otherwise. It’s about the new and uncivil civil war: not fought between north and south, but between a small minority of the greedy-and-wanting-more and the rest of us. Sociopaths like the Murdochs, the Kochs, the Camerons, the Cantors, the Ryans and the Walkers need us to feel powerless, because that’s how they can take everything, while you can suck on austerity. They don’t care if they drive you or anyone else on the planet or the planet itself into the ground, as long as they have theirs. We’re nobodies and they are the status quo, and have been for years.

Abusive spouses.

If you’ve noticed on the streets of England, the fires burning on the outside have been seething on the inside for a long time. From Al-Jazeera:

In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?

Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night, a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.

There are communities all over the country that nobody paid attention to unless there had recently been a riot or a murdered child. Well, they’re paying attention now.

I’m not a proponent of violence or looting, but I can certainly understand why it happens. I come from a city five miles from Oakland, California, another scene of riots and looting. It’s where a young black man, Oscar Grant, was shot and killed on New Year’s Eve at a public transit station by a white transit policeman who mistakenly believed Grant was carrying a weapon. Occurring in a neighborhood in a city where tensions and unemployment run high and hope nonexistent, all it took was one lit match to blow up the whole frustrated tinderbox.

The people of the United Kingdom got a peek at the cozy relationship between government and the corporate elite the day Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp was caught with its hands around Tory Prime Minister David Cameron’s office. Happening after conservatives called for cuts to public services and proposed privitization of UK’s vaunted public health system, and add to that long-standing unemployment for the working class — especially the young — enough was finally enough.

Thanks to Uranus, the Great Awakener in the fires of Aries, it’s called, “I am fed up!!” Pluto in the sign of government and major corporations, says: listen, change or die.  This is not just about Washington, or Madison, or Brixton. Not anymore. Six months following the Arab Spring, we’re at the wall that hides the stone cold heart of relentless greed and lust for power around the world, and we’re ready to tear it down with Uranus on our side.

London may just be a place. But in these days of miracles and wonder, like Tunisia and Tahrir Square, it’s also a calling. Time is a river, winding itself around the world. This river is also a fuse, lit at one end, catching sparks and fully igniting at others. Cairo. Gaza. Benghazi. Athens. London. Brixton. Birmingham. Madison. Detroit. We are feeling each other now, checking the length of the river as she rolls, living by it. And we are not alone.

It’s time for all of us to make that river bend.

The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in, meltdown’s expected, the wheat’s growing thin
engines stop running, but I have no fear, ’cause London is burning, and I live by the river
-from “London Calling” by The Clash