{"id":37039,"date":"2011-04-16T03:31:51","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T08:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=37039"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:05:34","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:05:34","slug":"plowshares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/plowshares\/","title":{"rendered":"Plowshares"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I’m being stalked by a word: conciliation. It intrudes on me night and day. I hear it in the back of my mind at the oddest moments; I dream it, along with a note-to-self to ‘remember’ when I awaken. My inclination is to ignore it, but I know I can’t. In such deeply divided political times, the concept strikes me as feeble, weak-kneed and pleading, like the whine of battered victim of police brutality, Rodney King, when he said, “Can’t we all just get along?” With emotions gone wild and fears escalated to pitch-point, conciliation is not a first choice of response for the battle-weary. In short, it’s not a word we might use in facing down a radicalized, fascist right wing, nor is it a policy I would recommend to those who are standing up for their rights, perhaps for the first time. Still, it’s a word — and a concept — that won’t leave me alone.<\/p>\n

The level of activity coming from the Republican right wing is relentless. Having barely avoided a government shutdown, we expected to take a breather for a few days, to ruminate on how close we came to complete chaos and discover how cruel are the cuts to programs that kept many of us functional in this economy. But no — not in Paul Ryan’s America<\/a>. Today the House of Representatives will vote to crush Medicare under its heel, exchanging it for a program of vouchers that will pay a mere portion of seniors’ medical insurance instead. They’ve already repealed part of health care reform, removing money from communities for preventative care. Both of these pieces of legislation will be vetoed if they pass through the Senate successfully, but they are the equivalent of shots heard around the world. This is the vision of a Republican America — privatized, ruled by lobbyists at the behest of wealthy benefactors and completely for-profit. As pundit Ezra Kline asserts, the Righties work tirelessly to prove that “America is an insurance company with an army.”<\/p>\n

This week Obama reframed the conversation in his budget speech, asking us to choose which version of America we stand behind. Essentially, he said the nation was founded on the notion that we are our brother’s keeper and asked us to reaffirm that choice with him. He was harshest on the Ryan proposal, which effectively guts any assistance for our most vulnerable citizens (and those soon to become so), while protecting and rewarding the military-industrial complex, corporate welfare and the wealthy. The rashness of these proposals is stunning. I don’t understand where the Righties think these fallen citizens will go when there is no health care or food and housing assistance for them. Pubs are very vocal about seeing such ‘trash’ wandering the streets, panhandling. They’re vehemently against funding shelters or programs to ‘enable’ the poor in their ‘lazy’ lifestyle. Are they simply to disappear, those millions of Americans unable to scale the financial and social hurdles that corporations put in the way of the average citizen?<\/p>\n

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Obama is a conciliatory man, so they say. Pre-released versions of his speech did not include the lines in which he said he believed that Republicans wanted the best for their country. “I really do,” said the president, in what seemed a singularly unpracticed portion of that speech. You can’t fault this man for compassion; he continues to lean over backwards to give Republicans a chance to prove their humanity. Those on the Left fault him for his leadership style, his ability to stand above the fray; to the Lefties’ frustration, Obama has too often failed to deal a death blow, hedged in the face of overwhelming odds, lost his edge to the competition. I confess my own frustration that he often seems too late to the party with too little clout to win a progressive outcome, but frankly, I am not surprised to see his swing to middle during a campaign season of this magnitude.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to see how being so civilized can win the day for those who are being thrown under the bus. My mind tells me that being conciliatory is useless against so ruthless an attack upon progressive ideals. There is no ‘center’ in this country that is not firmly in Red territory; years of dialing back the nation’s priorities have created a right-of-center Washington D.C. in a left-of-center United States of America. All the polls show average citizens to be more level-headed, fair-minded and ethical than their elected representatives. In today’s polls, we want the rich to fund their share, the wars to end, and Wall Street to be held accountable. One would think such popular support would give the Democrats an edge, but they are meek before the Republican claim of mandate to intrude their class war into the lives of every American.<\/p>\n

The average citizen is not a political wonk and may not be invested in how divided the nation has become. The entire preamble of Obama’s speech was a necessary lesson in how we came to this moment; some will hear it, others won’t. Over several decades the public has been purposely convinced that government is unwieldy and ineffective at handling the nation’s business, and every Pub administration has proven the wisdom of that contention. Now we’ve come to the tipping point where government inability to provide meets a growing suspicion that it is no longer our friend but, instead, our abuser. Jaded and dispirited, the public is frightened for the future. Busy trying to make their own lives work, people want Congress to find a way to work together to solve the problems of a faltering Republic. As improbable as that sounds, that is what Americans want from their government — they want conciliation.<\/p>\n

Conciliation, according to the dictionary, is not placation, but rather, “the state of manifesting goodwill and cooperation after being reconciled.” The citizens of this nation expect, and increasingly demand, that congressional leaders do what THEY are required to do, day in and out, which is to work together. Not too much to ask, unless the country is as divided as it was in the Civil War — as it was in the Revolutionary war — over what it will be when it grows up. We have come, once again, to the question that has gone unsettled since our inception. Are we in this together or is each of us out for what we can get?<\/p>\n

That’s the question we must answer; each of us individually and all of us together, not only in this nation but across the face of the planet. The concept that stalks my waking and dreaming world is one that we must all embrace if we are to make an evolutionary leap. We cannot kill an idea, but we can grow out of it. We must grow out of selfishness if we are to survive this new century, and we are well on our way. Each day, more of us turn to the simple truth of community and commonwealth. Each day, more of us understand that there IS no political answer to our current dilemma but only a spiritual one, waiting to be embraced. Pundit Matthew Dowd wrote an article<\/a> about how we might use compassion and tenderness to influence one another; it seems to me an expression of what conciliation really means, and means to do.<\/p>\n

The answer to ALL of our challenges has been known by those whom history remembers with respect and affection: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Mandela. None of these wished to kill those that opposed them, but instead to turn their hearts. That is what conciliation is, essentially, and included in its definition is the word peace, or “the state prevailing during the absence of war.” We must finally realize that until we come together — caring for one another — we can only come apart. Until we decisively choose peace, we must live in a state of war.<\/p>\n

Winning or losing each little political skirmish does not feel so important to me these days. The 2012 energy that foreshadows our future is going to take us into new territory, undiscovered by our egos but perhaps encoded in our hearts. My\u00a0intuition tells me that our vast tomorrow will not look like our conflicted today; that the energies that are gathering make all this angst moot in ways I don’t understand. I’m willing to give conciliation a chance, because it’s very clear to me that in this spiritual season, we must think outside the box and do those things that have been too often untried during our contentious history.<\/p>\n

Understanding that we are not separate, one from the other, is the end of division, the end of war, envisioned by Isaiah long ago when it was given, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” And that’s a dream those of us birthing a new Era can wrap our arms around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves I’m being stalked by a word: conciliation. It intrudes on me night and day. I hear it in the back of my mind at the oddest moments; I dream it, along with a note-to-self to ‘remember’ when I awaken. My inclination is to ignore it, but I know I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37039"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}