{"id":28015,"date":"2010-09-04T10:00:51","date_gmt":"2010-09-04T15:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=28015"},"modified":"2010-09-05T08:14:21","modified_gmt":"2010-09-05T13:14:21","slug":"conservative-backlash-in-the-21st-centur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/conservative-backlash-in-the-21st-centur\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Lie Meets the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cruelty exists in the world, like bacteria. But it grows better under certain conditions, fueled by its fertilizers, intolerance and hatred.
\n<\/em>–Eric Francis, Auschwitz Photo Diary<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I first read\u00a0Eric’s\u00a0work on Auschwitz,<\/a> I thought it was such an\u00a0important piece of historical journalism that I\u00a0kept it close by, bookmarking it in my computer.\u00a0 At the time\u00a0it was\u00a0first published\u00a0in Planet Waves, the Republican majority in Congress had just pushed through the Military Commissions Act<\/a> suspending Habeus Corpus, reversing a primary tenet of the\u00a0US Constitution: that you cannot be detained indefinitely.\u00a0 I keep the Auschwitz Photo Diary around like a personal Fe-911 fire alarm,\u00a0as\u00a0 “In Case of Emergency – Break Glass.”<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Listening to\u00a0the national screaming match over a mosque in Manhattan last month, I\u00a0was compelled back to\u00a0that\u00a0photo diary. There was something about the tone of New York City’s downtown mosque controversy —\u00a0the near hysteria and xenophobia reminiscent of and even worse than the days immediately after September 11, 2001\u00a0— that sent a chill.<\/p>\n

Nearly a decade later, Democrats are\u00a0in and Republicans out but struggling to regain a foothold back into power. We\u00a0are at\u00a0a new period of\u00a0economic contraction —\u00a0a perfect breeding\u00a0ground for\u00a0fear, intolerance and\u00a0hatred. Throughout\u00a0the\u00a0history of the world, periods of economic crisis and uncertainty are often marked with\u00a0the socio-psychological phenomenon\u00a0called the\u00a0frustration-aggression complex: the violent acting out of group fear, usually against\u00a0an outside group, based on economic uncertainty and powerlessness.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In America, we have been particularly adept at that form of group isolation,\u00a0 scapegoating and punishing of the other. There is now\u00a0a\u00a0spike in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim\u00a0activity,\u00a0a rise\u00a0in hate crimes and other acts of violence against\u00a0Muslim groups and individuals,\u00a0and\u00a0moves to\u00a0legislate\u00a0intolerance against immigrants, gays and lesbians. The economy’s slow, imperceptible recovery is not loud enough to distract and drown out the noise. It doesn’t help that while reaching for power during this year’s midterm elections, the Republicans are doing everything in their power to resurrect the ghosts of 9-11, screaming anti-Islamic rhetoric and asking for the President’s baptism certificate to prove he’s not a Muslim, using lies and disinformation all in an attempt to reclaim control of Congress this election cycle.<\/p>\n

The controversy\u00a0over the downtown New York mosque\u00a0spiraled out of control with the help of the media further fanning the flames:\u00a0there was that\u00a0wildly misled kid\u00a0Michael Enright who slashed Ahmed H. Sharif, the New York City cab driver whose misfortune was\u00a0to pick up\u00a0Enright\u00a0for a fare.\u00a0 Then the\u00a0drunk guy in Brooklyn who urinated on a prayer rug in a local mosque, calling worshippers “terrorists”.\u00a0The week the mosque controversy was at fever pitch, there was a\u00a0mosque attack in California 3,000 miles from New York and nowhere near having any jurisdiction over what New Yorkers wanted built in their city.\u00a0Bricks were thrown and a sign posted reading\u00a0 “No temple for the god of terrorism at Ground Zero”, left by members of a group called the American Nationalist Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

Last weekend on the anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech,\u00a0 Fox Network television personality Glenn Beck staged\u00a0the strangely named “Restoring Honor”\u00a0event\u00a0at the steps of the Lincoln Monument in\u00a0Washington DC, co-opting the civil rights movement as\u00a0their own\u00a0own, at best a well-meaning but inappropriate interpretation of the history and meaning of that speech and the historic struggle for civil rights in America. Appropos to the demographic breakdown of the event, Mr. Beck’s\u00a0rally was nicknamed “Whitestock 2010”.<\/p>\n

Now as we approach another anniversary of the false flag event that brought down the World Trade Center, the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida plans an “International Burn a Quran” Day,<\/a> to commemorate 9-11.<\/p>\n

America is\u00a0not in\u00a0its finest hour.<\/p>\n

Crisis,\u00a0contraction and the accompanying conservative backlash is\u00a0the astrological signature\u00a0for Saturn-Pluto\u00a0aspects, in this instance a square. We have been through\u00a0three Saturn-Pluto squares since late 2009, and therefore, the events of today, including the mosque controversy,\u00a0should not be a surprise. What is a surprise is that there is still some measure of stability and some civility in our society. To count on that stability to remain is not a certainty. Not without\u00a0requiring us to stay vigilant.<\/p>\n

The ascent of the Nazi Party began with a Saturn-Pluto opposition\u00a0in 1931. \u00a0In 1933 in the aftermath of an arson attack on the Reichstag, home of Germany’s Parliament,\u00a0 Hitler became Chancellor.\u00a0At the time of the fire, Germany was\u00a0suffering a post-war economic downturn and\u00a0social unrest. The\u00a0Nazis further consolidated their power\u00a0finding convenient scapegoats —\u00a0communists, homosexuals, gypsies and Jews\u00a0as stepping stones. We all know what happened next: the scapegoating\u00a0was ultimately\u00a0so brutal that its cruelty became a benchmark for the lowest depth of modern-day human evil.<\/p>\n

We felt the echo of these two planets again when Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, ushering\u00a0in the rebirth of the American conservative\u00a0movement,\u00a0much of which\u00a0we still see today and for which we are now paying a terrible\u00a0economic and environmental price — yet\u00a0many present-day Tea Partiers still yearn for its return.<\/p>\n

September 11, 2001 happened on the heels of an economic downturn in the aftermath of the dot.com bubble bursting a year before and right after the 2000 elections.\u00a0 Saturn and Pluto were in exact opposition throughout that summer prior to the event. Today, we are regurgitating xenophobic and racist sentiments stifled even under the Bush Administration and in some cases acting on them. We are backsliding right into our dark side.<\/p>\n

Joseph Goebbels was chief propagandist for the Nazi Party and the promoter of the Big Lie,<\/a> used to isolate and scapegoat\u00a0a targeted enemy.\u00a0It is described this way:<\/p>\n

Never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Welcome, Big Lie, to the 21st century. We’re embroiled in a combination of our shortened attention span,\u00a0impatience with detail, easy willingness to blame others for our current economic malaise, an opportunistic corporate-driven agenda ready to dismantle the justice we fought for in the 20th century and a media willing to use that for its profit and gain. We are ripe to ignore the lessons of history and need to pull ourselves from the brink of waltzing forever with our dark side.<\/p>\n

History is\u00a0there if we choose to utilize it — meaning study and understand it. History also has\u00a0a terrible way of repeating itself\u00a0 if we insist we must forget. Even in the midst of our own economic uncertainty we can’t afford lies and misrepresentation of history to\u00a0lose the meaning of\u00a0what happened even in our recent past, or cloud our judgment in the present day.<\/p>\n

1931, 1980, 2001, 2010. History marks these years with hard lessons, and even harder aftermaths. We have enough information available to recognize the patterns and mistakes of the past. We have enough media available to us to keep us awake and informed or to shut us down and lull us to sleep, if we choose to.<\/p>\n

I know we are capable of great things, even at this point of economic crisis if, quoting Eric,\u00a0we don’t let\u00a0ourselves be limited by\u00a0a prior concept of what is possible. This phase of multiple Saturn-Pluto squares ended last month and soon, Pluto will begin its dance with Uranus, the awakener. Maybe, if we find ourselves falling asleep, it might be a good idea\u00a0to keep beside us a\u00a0loud fire alarm to make sure we\u00a0stay awake, preparing for and welcoming the big wake-up call to come.<\/p>\n

Yours and truly,<\/p>\n

Fe Bongolan<\/strong>
\nSan Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cruelty exists in the world, like bacteria. But it grows better under certain conditions, fueled by its fertilizers, intolerance and hatred. –Eric Francis, Auschwitz Photo Diary When I first read\u00a0Eric’s\u00a0work on Auschwitz, I thought it was such an\u00a0important piece of historical journalism that I\u00a0kept it close by, bookmarking it in my computer.\u00a0 At the time\u00a0it … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1685,217,29,1789,1788,52,1054,1686],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}