{"id":66488,"date":"2013-04-27T02:20:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T06:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=66488"},"modified":"2013-04-27T10:07:41","modified_gmt":"2013-04-27T14:07:41","slug":"the-writing-on-the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/the-writing-on-the-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"The Writing On The Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

It’s easy enough to fall prey to the thought that the world is devolving, that our species is on the brink of existential crisis, given the headlines around the world and the inability of the principals of American governance to break through the corporate coup that has nibbled away at our democratic model for decades, rendering our system in shambles. It’s a hard truth, but evident on all levels, that politics in America is broken — tainted by money and corruption — seemingly beyond repair. Certainly politics is due an overhaul if democracy is to survive, either by revolution or evolution, perhaps both.<\/p>\n

\"PoliticalA tense public looks on, waiting to see what will happen next. While many object to the remarkable dearth of progress<\/a> in Washington, most of us are no longer shocked that the majority of our store-bought politicians devalue human life in pursuit of profit and power, much like their corporate masters. If we question why the public doesn’t react with outrage, we don’t have to look farther than the decades of programming to want more, more, more of everything without looking at accountability to the planet or to each other. We cannot demand from our leaders what we don’t expect from ourselves.<\/p>\n

A surprising number of us have continuing sympathy for the “greed is good” meme, hoping that the next Lotto ticket brings us a chance to experience a bit of that good life we hear so much about. In fact, polls show that most of the lowest wage earners consider Lotto purchase equivalent to retirement planning. That, and stalled earnings since the mid-70s, may contribute to the fact that fully half of our retiring seniors have nothing to depend on in old age but a meager Social Security allotment. This kind of wishful and disastrous thinking could be managed by better education, but we don’t fund that; some states, most of them Red, seem to like it that way.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Public opinion has soured toward the right’s strident, stringent vision of the future. Today, less than 25% of Americans are willing to call themselves Republican, and they are, by and large, to be found in the board rooms, the country clubs and the rural areas of the nation where they enjoy a modicum of respectability as business persons. Not so the Baggers, who represent an ideological (and illogical) purity imposed by a small cadre of zealots who have literally brought the nation’s House down. The few remaining mainstream Pubs are well tolerated, but due to the dire results of their absolute inflexibility, the majority of the nation has buyer’s remorse when it comes to the Tea Party. Lord knows, I do.<\/p>\n

For instance, the same idiots who insisted on sequester began to freak out this week, as furloughs hit airports hard with long delays and canceled flights. Accusing the administration of gross mismanagement (nothing EVER happens in this country that isn’t Obama’s fault), the House quickly created a bill<\/a> to fund airports, allowing them to keep air traffic controllers in place and placating frequent fliers (themselves and their friends). No such help for Meals on Wheels, of course. None for Head Start, cancer treatment, or poverty programs. The faction who call themselves ‘patriots’ have agreed among themselves that loafers who only take from the system need to be moved to the edge of the herd, while the administration began its negotiations too close to the bone to be any help in the crunch. That leaves 99% of us outside, as usual, looking in. Sequester is nothing less than Kabuki. It should be canceled as cruel and unusual.<\/p>\n

And let’s not forget that the Baggers and their supporters are not just hardhearted and hard-headed, they’re delusional. Here in Missouri — where if you haven’t bagged your first turkey by the time you’re four, you’re a Loser with a Capital L — a flap over making concealed carry permits available to the police has resulted in the state senate eliminating funding<\/a> for the Department of Revenue. This means that at the moment, nobody can get or renew their drivers license. The apparent terror over making copies of carry permits available to authority has to do with a conspiracy theory about United Nations mind control called Agenda 21, which will “transform America from the land of the free, to the land of the collective\u201d through \u201ca mind-control\u201d tactic called the Delphi technique.<\/p>\n

If all politics is local — and you start here in the Pea Patch — then I guess we can count our lucky stars that similar delusion hasn’t yet transformed Washington D.C., where NOTHING is going on, to speak of. Maybe it’s a blessing that we’re in stalemate. I mean, we haven’t bombed the U.N. yet. Congress hasn’t passed a bill requiring each household to have an AK-47. You laugh; don’t. Michele Bachmann was reelected last fall. Crazy is still well and has an office in Washington.<\/p>\n

Consider: Minority Senate Speaker (recently polled as least popular politician in America and turtle look-alike … OK, I added that last bit) Mitch McConnell just issued his 401st filibuster. This is astounding, to say the least. In the last century, incidents of filibuster were rare, counted on one hand. As late as the Carter administration, the count was a mere 20 per political session. Back then, of course, the Congress was usually busy doing the people’s business. After the New Deal, ideological wars were properly staked in their coffin until Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority came into fashion and the intrusion of church put state out of balance.<\/p>\n

The Bush years ripped the last nail from the lid. Under Tom DeLay’s leadership the Democrats were so ill-represented and ignored that they reluctantly turned to cloture as the only way to enter the conversation. Never ones to forgive a slight, with the advent of the Republican House in the 2010 mid-term, the Pubs began a filibuster assault<\/a> that has brought governance to a stand-still. If you examined the congressional record for legislation passed since the beginning of the year, you would find a very slim volume, most of it irrelevant. Think of it: five months with little or nothing done but the sequester. Now add the two frustrating years that came before. In Washington D.C., there ain’t nothin’ up but the rent.<\/p>\n

Yes, when we look around us, we see chaos, we see suffering, we see the unexpected, but we don’t see much help for our social and political ills. That seems especially true in the last difficult weeks, defined by potent astrology and the first of three eclipses demanding our attention, our clarity and sound decision-making. That a good portion of the population makes life-changing decisions in haphazard, knee-jerk fashion simply adds to our angst, but we can take some comfort in recent polls that tell us a vast majority of Americans are coming down on the side of civil liberties, corporate accountability and common sense. Now, if we can push back the hyperbolic nationalism inspired by security issues, used by Pubs like a cudgel, we may still find that the majority of citizens are at odds with a handful of powerful politicians, only some of whom are playing with a full deck.<\/p>\n

Echoing that same belligerence world-wide, examples of radical and irrational government pop up and down on the radar like an unending game of Whack-A-Mole. For instance, in Syria, Assad’s probable use of Sarin nerve gas on his own people is goading the United States into some kind of response, but Obama refuses to move, calling on the (gasp!) U.N. to investigate and confirm reports. For the military minded who think this stance is too little, too late, there are understated reminders of the missing WMD that Dubby leveraged into an illegal and immoral war on display this week on the campus of Southern Methodist University. We would do well to remember how easily we lost our national treasure and international respect only a handful of years ago, fallout from which we have yet to resolve.<\/p>\n

There are other concerns, as well. The war hawks have been particularly pissy about the administration’s reluctance to enter the fray, but there is apparently no acceptable rebel ideology the U.S. can get behind. Israel is already in a fit of paranoia over which armaments will fall to which factions, all of them pointed toward Jerusalem. Meanwhile, genocide goes on, whether by mortar shell or chemicals, as do the lower-level civil wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where ideology is split as decisively as it is here in the United States. We’re all alike at the bottom, as me Mum liked to say with a wink, and that’s our existential conundrum.<\/p>\n

As we question our purpose on this planet, and our inability to come to collaboration on circumstances that now resemble an emergency of the species, we need to return to the notion of the collective, of the Hundredth Monkey concept that moves the whole of us forward, unhindered by division. Presently, we appear to be stuck in a decades-long process of moving our existential boulder, hoping to shift it just a bit instead of rolling it away entirely. Surely this current level of obstruction can’t remain static much longer. Pluto and Uranus will guarantee rock moving of some sort, proving that perhaps we’re not quite as stuck as we think.<\/p>\n

I connected with a friend this week who despaired that we’d gone through the 2012 shift but hadn’t reaped any benefits. Where are they, she asked? Why aren’t we seeing them? I told her I thought we had to develop “ears to hear” and “eyes to see,” because this new place\/space we inhabit asks us for a different set of intellectual and sensory skills than that last place in which we dwelt. For starters, we have to mind where we put our attention. What is raw, tragic and outrageous gets our attention; what is healing, encouraging and progressive rarely does. Consider this glimpse of the larger picture from the Dalai Lama:<\/p>\n

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are “news”; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s glaringly true that ‘dog bites man’ doesn’t make the front page, but ‘man bites dog’ does. When I began with Planet Waves ten years ago, I was determined to post as many bits of good news as bad. I failed miserably during the Bush years, when the sharp downward spiral kept us all clutching at our hearts. It’s easier to find items that seem hopeful now, probably BECAUSE so much was lost that we’ve determined to restore. Now, the writing is on the wall for so many of the policies that progressives abhor: DOMA, the drug war, the Tea Party, religious extremism, immigration, military expansion, poverty wages, the prison-industrial complex. We can’t throw a rock without hitting some progressive cause that used to exist on the fringes, now incorporated into mainstream conversation and acceptable thought.<\/p>\n

Here’s other handwriting on the wall, waiting to break through the echo chamber: austerity has been found wanting, both by the tragic experience of the Europeans who came before us, and because faulty spreadsheet calculations by a pair of famous economist have recently come to light<\/a> proving the Pub’s hysterical harangue against the dangers of debt to be mere political gamesmanship.<\/p>\n

Paying down the debt is obviously important, but not when the public doesn’t have jobs, hence earnings to buy what the market offers. That brings everything to a halt, and surely we’ve all seen enough of that. Economists like Stieglitz, Krugman and Reich have railed against forced austerity and limited spending, and now they’re proven right. That news is big enough to echo through the capitol. Will D.C. hear it, I wonder? Can we shout loud enough to make them listen?<\/p>\n

Here are more productive scribbles that need to be passed around: the Environmental Protection Agency has rejected the State Department’s Keystone Pipeline draft environmental impact statement. They ask if State even considered alternative routes, and accused it of using an outdated “energy-economic modeling effort” in its analysis. It also suggested that State rethink their conclusions that Keystone would not encourage further production of Canada\u2019s carbon-intensive oil sands or significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

Delivered on the last day comment was accepted, the EPA critique includes an investigation of prior spills and discusses the many differences between sweet crude and tar sands, along with the industry’s inability to restore spill sites to their previous sound ecology. This is welcome news for the millions of environmentalists calling for the demise of the pipeline. A final proposal will be issued by the the State Department in September, and Obama will make decisions on the pipeline sometime after that.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, calls for civil disobedience in that regard continue, as will events where we are likely to see it. Obama himself has said we can no longer avoid climate issues, even as he is pressured on all sides to sign onto XL. We need to continue to write our refusal of tar sands in large — and BOLD<\/strong> — capital letters!<\/p>\n

Remember, it was only a few weeks ago that we were staring down the glassy-eyed specter of a Romney presidency with everything turning back on itself in a capitalist feeding frenzy. Then came November 7th when we hoped for the best; then December 21st when we believed in our brightest dreams. So much has happened in the court of public opinion since then, it makes the head swim. Where are the changes? There, they’re right there in the public polls, the explosion of political petitions and the opening heart of a world both aware of its wounding and determined to heal it. It’s there in the words we use, the conversations we have, our growing awareness.<\/p>\n

The channelers tell us that all is in place for our delivery from old paradigm attitudes, that the dark forces are no longer powerful enough to hinder our dreams, but that we — collectively — are enormously powerful in making them come true. That’s what needs our focus. That’s what asks us to step up, be counted, decide our future with discernment and create it with compassion.<\/p>\n

We must believe in our collective wisdom, learn to recognize our power to change the world for the better, extend our intent to love our brother and sister as our self. That’s what’s missing from the front pages: the news that we have joined together, arm in arm, to bring one another into a newly created 21st century. Those are the pages we aim to fill, writing the inevitable, together, on the wall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves It’s easy enough to fall prey to the thought that the world is devolving, that our species is on the brink of existential crisis, given the headlines around the world and the inability of the principals of American governance to break through the corporate coup that has nibbled away … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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\/66488"}],"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=66488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}