Dear Friend and Reader:<\/p>\n
TONIGHT John McCain and Barack Obama will meet in their final of three Presidential debates in Hempstead, New York. Just hours after Mercury has stationed direct in Libra, we begin what should be the final sprint to the presidency.<\/p>\n
The candidates come into the debate with Obama-Biden in charge at the polls and McCain-Palin negatives high. The economic downturn is pointing a big fat red arrow at the cost of thirty years of Reagan Era de-regulation, and big government in cahoots with corporate greed — all chickens coming home to roost. Republican party officials are worried about down-ticket races — having possibly conceded the presidency.<\/p>\n
It is in this atmosphere with McCain having nothing to lose, and an attack dog VP without a whit of shame or remorse — that we re-enter the story of McCain vs. Obama in their last verbal matchup before the Saturn Uranus opposition on Election Day. The astrology does not give any indication of this being a sleep-inducing event. On the contrary — the gloves will be off on both sides.<\/p>\n
A reader wrote in recently, commenting on Planet Waves’ coverage of the election astrology, proposing that McCain is represented by Uranus retrograde in Pisces (lacking focus, erratic, full of surprise moves) and Obama is represented by Saturn in Virgo (steady, intelligent, intellectual and well groomed). We shall see; in the early Greek mythology, it is indeed Kronos (Saturn) who unseats Ouranos (Uranus) from his role as sky-god.<\/p>\n
Looking at the last few weeks in this campaign, I was reminded how horribly sick I felt back in January of this year, the week before the South Carolina primaries when the Clinton and Obama campaigns engaged in some heavy-duty artillery fire using race-baiting, sexism and fear-mongering tactics, mostly between campaign surrogates.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t pretty watching a former president call a serious contender’s campaign a “fairy tale,” or the use of a smear from a party leader in New Hampshire regarding Senator Obama’s adolescent dabble in drug use, which he freely admitted in his autobiography Dreams of My Father<\/em>. Many of Obama’s supporters knew this type of attack was going to come — he had predicted it.<\/p>\n What happened last week made me appreciate the trial by fire that Senator Clinton’s campaign engaged in when attacking Obama mid-January during the primaries. They saw the cliff edge their campaign was headed for and put on the brakes before things careened wildly out of control. The Clinton campaign prepared us for the inevitable we saw these last few weeks, only they were saved by a crisis of conscience in their strategy, seeing that these tactics were backfiring. That, coupled with the good sense of the Democratic Party which for once didn’t allow themselves the luxury of standing in a circle and shooting at point blank range.<\/p>\n McCain-Palin’s demagoguery was South Carolina on steroids. When John McCain and Sarah Palin asked “Who REALLY is Barack Obama?” the cries of “terrorist,” “God-hating Muslim,” and “KILL him!” rose from an angry mob. What answer to that rhetorical question was she seeking? It’s really a statement. She is saying he’s someone<\/em>: we don’t know who. It’s amusing that both Obama and Palin have been described as the anti-Christ.<\/p>\n If we think stirring up of racial and religious hatred and exhorting crowds to violence isn’t going to have an affect on the elections, don’t kid yourself. It will. It has proven to be successful before. Fortunately, we are also in the 21st century, where demagoguery is as accessible as YouTube, where macaca moments are highlighted like sunlight hitting a mold-covered rock. When my friends in DC tell me they have Republican friends who are so distraught with their nominee that they cannot bring themselves to the voting booth tells me a lot about the cesspit the McCain campaign has become.<\/p>\n But ongoing racism and our culture wars are symptomatic of the still very powerful wounds in this country. As a nation of varying tribes, to a large extent we operate on racial, social and cultural expectations. It’s the basis upon which this country was formed.<\/p>\n These expectations (poor vs. rich, white vs. black, Christian vs. Muslim, immigrants vs. natives, straight vs. gay and old vs. young) are used to set up the divisive politics that keep sectors of Americans marginalized and afraid of each other to the economic and political advantage of the powers that be. We’ve known this for quite awhile. So even if McCain decides to “go there” using fear-mongering to solidify the race-fear vote amongst the extremist right wing, all he’s doing is unleashing the shadow part of this country that we have always known exists. That he does so in the presence of the (dark-skinned) “Other” who is Obama, is the crux of this very potent moment in our history as a nation.<\/p>\n Recently, my sister’s 80-year old father-in-law underwent knee-replacement surgery. It was his second and he was recovering slowly, bed-ridden, complaining of severe pain. When I asked my niece about it, she said with a wise confidence that in the evidence of this pain, that the end of the post-surgery crisis, or “Healing Crisis” was underway, and the slide back to recovery apparent.<\/p>\n For those of us who have witnessed the events of the last week or so of this long campaign season with alarm, and approach tonight with a sense of apprehension, I want to encourage you to watch tonight’s debate with heart and compassion for the patient in the room — the body of this nation, with all its flaws, boils, cancers, breaks and wounds.<\/p>\n The darkest amongst us are still US. They are our fathers, mothers, our brothers and sisters, our co-workers, neighbors and colleagues. And they are the unexamined, unacknowledged parts of ourselves. To deny them, even when they’re wrong their right to speak and air their views is as un-American as they claim us to be. They have been afraid for a long time. We don’t need to be afraid of them.<\/p>\n This debate between John McCain and Barack Obama is really US versus US. The meeting of the polarities of our country’s psyche. Its an opportunity to shine some sunlight and come to grips with how far we have to travel in order to unite and work towards resolving the economic, environmental and geo-political problems this country faces. In a way, the movie we’re going to be watching of McCain v. Obama is really the floating image of ourselves. And hey, unlike when Al Gore’s victory in Florida evaporated like ether one night eight years ago, Mercury will be direct.<\/p>\n So be ready and calm with your popcorn. I like mine with a little olive oil and sea salt.<\/p>\n Yours & truly,<\/p>\n Fe Bongolan from San Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Friend and Reader: TONIGHT John McCain and Barack Obama will meet in their final of three Presidential debates in Hempstead, New York. Just hours after Mercury has stationed direct in Libra, we begin what should be the final sprint to the presidency. The candidates come into the debate with Obama-Biden in charge at the … 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":[415,109,52,117,416],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3756"}],"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=3756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}