“I cannot even stand to look at you” — Purported statement by Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) to President Barack Obama during a meeting over the federal government shutdown earlier this month.
Even after witnessing the Republican shutdown during the Clinton Administration of the 1990s, I have to say I’ve never seen such an overt display of childish petulance from purportedly full grown adults in Congress such as with the Tea Party Republicans this last month.
These are the same “adults” who it seems have no idea they’re at the wheel of the engine that holds the fragile economy of the world together, while talking trash to one of the most powerful leaders on the planet. And that is why today I rejoice, breathing a sigh of relief.
Its almost easier to handle a person’s racism, born of ignorance, when its in your face. At least you know who your enemies are rather than letting them shiv you furtively, behind your back. It also lets you navigate the geography between you and them, so you don’t have to suffer the pain and embarrassment of another’s stupidity.
So now that the Republican Party’s far-right wing branch of Tea Party leaders have 1) admitted their stone-cold hatred for America’s first black President; 2) go apoplectic whenever they’re confronted by the media over misstating facts about Obamacare; 3) have a conspiracy theory hissy fit when a woman faints during President Obama’s speech, I know that the party of elephants have cut their moorings and their boat is tragically listing off to sea.
It was highly synchronistic for Amanda to post the Karpman Triangle earlier this week. It was a perfect portrait of America’s socio-political malaise, embodied by Congress today. It’s a pyramid of denial. The implosion of young brown voters is coming like a tsunami a few miles offshore, and bastions of white entitlement are shaken. This is why I think there has been such lax regulation by Republicans in Congress over the shamelessly lame mouths of its own Tea Party members, whose offhanded public statements give permission and empowerment for racists and misogynists around the country to continue to feel that way and propose policies that back those feelings.
The stupidity in this country, especially isolated to this one very public place — our government — is not over by a long shot. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s administration, evolved through Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America”, furthered through the Bush/Cheney administration’s infrastructural racism and classism, it continues to this day. All this has been in reaction to the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, which was the last time Uranus-Pluto was in aspect. That was a time when we all wanted and fought to finally be better than we were. It was rough, but we made it.
Its rough now. But I think we’re going to make it through again. The “Do or Die” planet Pluto, in Capricorn, the sign of government is helping us identify and isolate cancerous lesions in American politics, based on ignorance and greed that refused to die the last time those two planets were in aspect. That is healthy. Bearing the onslaught of today’s news of so much government-sanctioned stupidity, we may not often feel or sense or even be aware that something good is happening in this time of chaos, but in so many ways, it is.
With all its faults technical or otherwise, Obamacare is providing health coverage for those who have a hard time affording it. State by state, despite pleading by DOMA advocates and right-wing conservatives, gay marriages are being sanctioned by law. Voter suppression of African-Americans in red states is being called out. And people on the streets who are feeling the pain caused by heartless politicians in Washington DC are damn mad. The recent government shutdown drama to try to stop Obamacare has resulted in a terrible price for the party of God, guns, and rich white males like the Koch Brothers. It is now in turmoil.
When I cook, and I do cook well, I need to know the ingredients I am working with, backwards and forwards. It helps to know how the bitterness of one ingredient works with the sweet, salty, sour and the toothsomeness of others while the element of fire works its alchemy. Like a rich strong stew, our democracy is a powerful blend of bad and good, moderate and extreme, and lots of skirmishes in between. It is neither peaceful or cordial. It is a cauldron.
For what its worth and for as long as they’re here, the Tea Party now is a catalyst for change that will take years to work through. In witnessing the evolution of the former party of Lincoln to the Party of Reagan and now the party of Cruz, the nation is in the midst of deciding whether it must root itself deeply in the past or accept a broader, more diverse future which seems ultimately and demographically inevitable. I think, hope and believe the latter is true.
Before that happens, we need to stay vigilant to make sure that things fall into place with justice for all, across all the social, economic, cultural and racial lines that keep us from succeeding. The flame is getting hot, lighting up and cooking away all that excess that needs to go. Awakening time is over. Time for us to get up, get into the kitchen, and watch the pot burn.
Have a great Samhain, everyone!
A lovely read, dearheart. Encouraging. I’m in full agreement. We have everything we need in front of us to make new choices and it’s only a matter of time. The more ridiculous the situation, the more impatient we become. It’s the burr under the saddle that makes the pony buck — you know — the one hidden somewhere in all this horseshit. Thanks, kiddo!
You see it so well my friend Fe, the toxins have reached the surface of the skin and you are right, it’s not over by a long shot, but it won’t be too very long before it all comes oozing out. The disease’s fever has been broken and it’s just a matter of time until the patient will be free of pain.
In 1960 I was finished with school for the most part and a working girl full of illusions for a future of my own making. I’d grown up with kids whose parents, unlike mine, were intolerant of people who didn’t look or talk like they did. By the 60’s those kids had grown up and were beginning to teach their own kids the same racist trash their parents had taught them. Those kids in the 60’s didn’t have the access to communication devices like kids do now, but television had been around for almost a decade by 1960 (my family got our 1st TV in 1952) and they would grow up not knowing what it was like to be without one.
I was working for a TV station in the 60’s and know that those kids who had TV’s in their homes got to see coverage of riots and protests, something their parents would not have been exposed to when they were growing up. As young adults, many of the people my age were wondering if the world (our world anyway) was coming to an end when they saw the news film of protest marchers and flower children and it reinforced what their bigoted parents had taught them. But not their kids. Their kids saw there was something going on that their parents were missing. Twenty years later in the 80’s many of them would be less fearful of change like their parents were, and many of them would participate in the push for equality and freedom.
Now those kids of the 80’s have grown up and have kids of their own, and those kids have ways of connecting with each other and the rest of the world that would have amazed their parents in 1985. Communication with the outer world frees us from the fear instilled by parents (and neighbors and church members and relatives) and, in some ways, kids now might be growing up too fast. But the good news is that most of the kids now have outgrown the toxic hatred of others that their grandparents got from their parents. What has been passed down for generations is being diluted through mass education.
Those parents and grandparents who are still alive and never got a chance (or wouldn’t take it if they did get a chance) to get over their fear of those different from themselves, are the people who elect the Cruz’s and Sessions who play on their fears, as do the majority of FOX Network commentators and right-wing talk radio hosts. But they are dying off Fe. Their numbers are dwindling, and like the cornered animal fighting for life, they can be vicious.
When you cook you know what happens when you water down the stew; nobody will touch it.
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Golly, Fe, you just made me cry. My tears are applause. Give `em hell. Heck, the United States could do very well with somebody who really knows how to cook making the White House her elected home from 2014 to 2022. That’s about how much time Pluto has left in Capricorn. You have my vote. Imagine the look on Pete Sessions’ face when you offer him the job of dishwasher. Give `em hell!
Diva:
The only growing voter demographic is leaning towards the Democrats: Millennials, people of color, females and educated.
The Republicans are staring down their one stable demographic: old and white. That is what scares them the most — the end of the cycle.
Fe, your opening line, the purported statement by Sessions, takes me home and not in a good way. I remember my daddy saying that to the television when a black singer or comedian would come on. Come to think of it, he had more tolerance for the comedians. The magic of laughter. Anyway, I heard that statement a lot growing up. It’s a line that outs the racist like no other. It’s mindless, because it’s in the speaker’s blood, and cellular memory, Dixie DNA, though perhaps, not confined to Dixie. It’s chilling to hear that line purportedly used directly at the president.
Looking for the gift in this sorry mess.
I watched some of Poptech conference live streamed. It happens in my town every October. The consensus of the Poptech fellows was that the guiding policy question at all levels and disciplines must be: What kind of world do we want to live in?
Teaparty is helping the whole country ask that question. It’s up to all of us, aided by that brown voter tsunami perhaps, to shout that the kind of world we want is NOT the one the racists, misogynists, homophobes, sexists, and I need a new word for hatred of the poor. … Oh, bible thumpers.
That was mean. Certain bible thumpers, not all. I’d better quit now.
Thanks for another good article, Fe. Blessed Samhain to you!