{"id":46896,"date":"2011-10-08T04:37:45","date_gmt":"2011-10-08T08:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=46896"},"modified":"2011-10-08T04:38:04","modified_gmt":"2011-10-08T08:38:04","slug":"walking-the-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/walking-the-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking the Wire"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

There’s a revolution brewing and we all own a piece of it. That’s because we collectively created the conditions that have proven so catastrophic to a nation struggling with poverty and joblessness, growing in rancor and division. Slowly but surely, as the trappings of daily life we’ve depended upon shift and dissolve, we’re changing our minds about how we want life to look. What’s political about that — a new iteration of human experience dropping down in the birth canal, positioning for entry — is how to go about reconfiguring the legal and ethical limits of government. We’re not there yet, but we can feel the waves of movement pushing us along.<\/p>\n

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All creatures eventually outgrow who they have been and transition into something else: we call that evolution. We are poised on an evolution of consciousness, letting go of what used to serve us to allow for a new sociopolitical understanding. The channelers have it that we’re going to accomplish this shift of Ages without taking the world’s population down to scratch, as has evidently happened in epochs past. With climate change looming, one might wonder about our ability to survive, but still, there is an indefinable “something” that pushes back fear and seems to inform this period from deep within the soul.<\/p>\n

What is new is coming into view, slowly shaping itself in our mind’s eye and encouraging us to keep our hearts open as it reveals itself. What is old and known is no longer useful to us. We’re moving past the old way of perceiving things, reconsidering the old ways of doing things. Let’s be sure to remember what we’re being called to do. Let’s remember that “the way we’ve always done it” is yesterday’s news. We must walk a high wire between the pragmatics that drive us forward and the idealism that inspires us. We must make this a spiritual endeavor if we are to have the needed spiritual result for which our hearts thirst.<\/p>\n

Because of the astrology tying this period to the dramatic struggles and cultural revolution of the 1960s, we have looked to the Tea Party as this season’s version of the hippie. Suddenly appearing last summer like a new and unexpected brand of conservative, the t-evangelicals were sold as a populist movement, which they aren’t, independent of the Republican party, which they aren’t. They are neither populist nor independent, but are regressive to the point of anachronism and express their collective outrage to the point of psychopathy. The Baggers have hostility all sewn up, gun-carrying revolutionaries willing to break with the republic as currently drawn. Compare them, if you will, to the Wall Street occupiers who have a library, a newspaper, and the likes of Deepak Chopra leading protesters in meditation.<\/p>\n

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There is a basic and decisive difference between the way a conservative and a progressive see the world. Let me give it to you, short form: conservatives are all about property rights while progressives value human rights. It comes down to people vs. property. Heart vs. head (wallet.) The founders would have understood these differences, which are neither Republican nor Democrat but older and more defining of consciousness than of politics. This is the difference between Jeffersonian politics designed to aid and protect the commonwealth and Federalism’s defense of states’ rights and the might of privilege (property owners.)<\/p>\n

Perhaps that’s why the loud and furious Tea Party hasn’t shown up to shake a fist at Wall Street, or why Herman Cain, front-runner in at least one presidential poll, has called the occupation “un-American.” The right seems to think that this protest against unscrupulous banksters and fraudulent finance is an attack on capitalism itself, and they’re partly correct: it’s an attack on rogue capitalism that takes no responsibility for its actions nor counts the human cost of its fraud. It’s a cry against the financial victimization of the public that began well before the Enron era and continues today as a self-indulgent explosion of fiscal recklessness. The arrogant traders and speculators looking down on the crowd in Liberty Plaza are the ones who must now be called to pay the piper.<\/p>\n

The voice of protest will only become more demanding, despite Bloomberg’s police presence. This is a growing movement. Our lethargy has been broken by the success of the occupiers. As the movement spreads, it is welcomed by those who consider themselves among the 99% whose interests are not represented by Wall Street, and let’s face it — that’s just about everybody. In Los Angeles, mayor Antonio Villaraigosa handed out rain ponchos to the group that has been camped out at the city offices for several days. Villaraigosa backs the protest, as do seven of 15 city council members who supported a resolution for the protest as “a peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment rights.”<\/p>\n

Maybe the Baggers aren’t the new version of hippie after all. Maybe the new social disrupter is the young and disenchanted holding a college degree, unable to find a job, quietly buoyed by those who remember the majesty of flower-power. Maybe the corporate-busters of this period will be the underappreciated veterans and overextended householders, union workers and school teachers, fire-fighters and airline pilots, encouraged by the virtual march<\/a> of those who support them, projected onto the side of a building.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, this wrangle between Dem and Pubs isn’t really political, it’s emblematic of the divisions of human consciousness. Conservatives do not want big government to come between them and their money. Progressives simply want their government — an organizational instrument to assess public needs and provide for the national good with public funding — to be competent, ethical and unbiased. A nation of 300 million people simply can’t sustain itself with minimal government and a capitalistic wet-dream of privatization; those days are long gone, if they ever existed.<\/p>\n

If you are NOT part of the 99% protesting what big money and power have accomplished in the last 40 years, you are backing the wrong horse and denying your own good. We should all, to borrow a phrase from MSNBC’s Jason Likins, object to “bought government.” And it must be evident to everyone by now that unless we are able to get money out of government<\/a>, we will not be able to break the momentum of greed that has us in a stranglehold. That’s the finish line, far from sight but acknowledged as the ultimate goal. When the piggy bank is no longer considered the highest power in the land, we will have accomplished our shift.<\/p>\n

Balancing precariously on this high wire, we need to practice our activism with a serious intention for loving interaction and mature understanding. It’s difficult to face hostility and still keep our peace, but we must try. It’s harder still to proceed without an enemy, but if we do not stop that kind of thinking, we are destined to repeat this process again and again. Should you wish to explore that concept further, I recommend reading The Big Picture: A 40-Year Scan of the Right-Wing Corporate Takeover of America,<\/em> an article<\/a> by Don Hazen and Colin Greer, especially the last few paragraphs, where Greer discusses how his need for political purity wounded and limited the very movement he nurtured. I see us repeating that now, on both the left and right, and it worries me. We need to be bigger.<\/p>\n

We have allowed our idealism to grow flabby, our ethics to flag and fail. Far too many of us no longer love justice in this country, nor do we attempt to hide our selfishness or cruelty. For too long we allowed ourselves to go along to get along, ignoring the growing disparities that divided us. Now the progressives are sandwiched between the gun-toting Baggers on one side and the arrogant upper class on the other, squeezed until our voices can be heard howling up the canyons of New York’s most expensive real estate. This situation can no longer endure, and it’s up to us to change it. We are bigger than this challenge. We’re wire walkers.<\/p>\n

We have not come so far to face one another as we did at the Democratic Convention in ’68, bloodied and bruised. The revolution must look different, feel different, be different. Neale Donald Walsh tells us, in his book The Storm Before The Calm<\/em>, that this is “a revolution in the mind. It is our thinking we must change.” Following the dictates of our heart, we must bring our courage to this uprising to face what Van Jones calls “the dream-killers on Wall Street.” Who knew this end-game would be about the most mundane of human emotions: greed? This is a clash, says Jones, between “the most selfish people in America, and the most selfless.” This really isn’t political, of course. It’s a spiritual throw-down with our most ego-centered fear and desire in order to create ourselves anew.<\/p>\n

We may not feel we’ve done this before, not the exact thing we’re called upon to do now, but we can’t sit this one out, can we? Somewhere, sometime, we’ve walked this wire before. Even if we’re not sure what to do next, intuition will push us along as we put one foot in front of the other. I urge you to visit Van Jones and listen to his call<\/a> for sane reclamation of the American Dream. I urge you to keep a positive vision, let go of any old thinking that is hindering your progress, and keep yourself from the vanity of creating an enemy. I urge you to love more, keep courage, and forget what you think you know: your heart will do the rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves There’s a revolution brewing and we all own a piece of it. That’s because we collectively created the conditions that have proven so catastrophic to a nation struggling with poverty and joblessness, growing in rancor and division. Slowly but surely, as the trappings of daily life we’ve depended upon … 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\/46896"}],"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=46896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}