{"id":75853,"date":"2014-04-19T01:43:03","date_gmt":"2014-04-19T05:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=75853"},"modified":"2014-04-21T11:18:56","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T15:18:56","slug":"easter-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/easter-the-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter — The Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

“I have a vision of a new America. I see an America that has turned her back on scandal and corruption and official cynicism … I see a government that does not spy on its citizens, that respects your dignity and your privacy and your right to be let alone … I see an American foreign policy that is as consistent and generous as the American people.”<\/em><\/p>\n

— Presidential candidate James Earl Carter, 1976<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here I am again on a Good\u00a0Friday, putting thoughts together that will, hopefully, make some sense and perhaps move the needle of our collective understanding of this period in which we find ourselves. As Eric tells us in this week’s excellent subscription edition, without Chiron’s influence in\u00a0the coming\u00a0Grand Cross, we might feel ourselves at a dead end. But with the Centaur lending vibratory input, no matter how dark the sludge we’re wading through now, we have options.<\/p>\n

\"PoliticalThat’s worthy of an atta’boy<\/em>, by the way. We’ve worked hard for a broader sense of ourselves over the decades — do feel free to discount the fuck-ups, they don’t resonate at the same rate — and we’re poised on discovering even more, the inevitable result of increased awareness. We’ll find more of that after we pass through this fourth of seven crosses, I suspect, headed for a new era despite all appearances.<\/p>\n

Speaking of crosses, a friend — more than a passing acquaintance but one who knows a lot more about the Pea Patch and its cultural norms than about me — gave my son a gift to pass along, something he bought from a vender selling handmade stuff outside a country store. It’s a wooden cross, nicely finished and uncomfortably large, sporting two crossed lengths of wicked-looking barbed wire on top. Ghastly. After thinking it through, I decided to hand it back, gently suggesting it find a home elsewhere since I’m “not into the death penalty.” No sense pulling him through a spiritual wormhole he has little knowledge of, as, while he’s not religious, most of his family dance with demons as evangelicals. And I’m sure one of them would welcome such a disturbing icon.
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\nMe, I wouldn’t want it even without the barbed wire, like hanging a little electric chair on the wall. In the past, I’ve made colorful stained glass crosses, sun catchers, for family and friends at Easter, gifted with a little scroll to indicate that the vertical bar represents spirit piercing the horizontal plane of matter. Although that sounds like an effort to soften and redress the symbolism, perhaps prompted by my natal Jupiter\/Chiron conjunction in Libra, it’s also how I see our experience, here on planet Terra — a foot in both worlds. Truly, I’ve never favored the Catholic version of the cross, with the Christ-figure hanging upon it, but this year I’m even more repulsed by the violence of the image than usual. I think that’s key to what’s going on now. We feel passionately about where we are, what we see around us, but — in Pluto\/Uranus fashion — we are “not together.” Some of us prefer barbed wire, others rainbows of art glass.<\/p>\n

Looking to news for examples is in my job description, but frankly, it’s been a hell of a week. It started on Passover Eve with a Klansman — a former grand dragon, diseased by a lifetime of race hatred — going after Jews in Kansas City and managing to kill three people before he was apprehended. The victims? A retired doctor and his grandson in a parking lot outside the Jewish Community Center, where the 14 year-old Eagle Scout was preparing to audition for a singing competition. Minutes later, about a mile away, a physical therapist and mother of two was gunned down as she entered the Village Shalom retirement community to visit her mother. Not that irony matters much — and evidently means little to the perp who yelled “Heil Hitler” to waiting reporters as he was pushed into the back of a black-n-white — all of the victims were Christian.<\/p>\n

Frasier Glenn Cross, aka Miller, had long been tracked by the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which keeps a close eye on hate groups, but having lost two bids for congress here in Missouri, he’s kept a low profile lately. Once a big fish in a small pond and now in his seventies, there’s speculation that he’s been trying to get his cred back since ratting out his brother supremacists in 1989. Perhaps this will redeem him in the eyes of the faithful, hate dressed in swastikas always seems to\u00a0find its audience<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let’s also acknowledge that the number of “patriot” groups and armed militias rose by 813 percent after Obama was elected in 2008. (Good thing he has that crackerjack Secret Service<\/a>\u00a0— hic! — detail, eh?) Those of us on the left of the political spectrum do not factor this in very often; it’s not our wound to heal. Ultimately, killing three here in Missouri may earn Cross (or Miller) the death penalty. Just lately, we’ve been swatting down our death row inmates like flies.<\/p>\n

Mayhem wasn’t limited to the Midwest. Mid-week, it was all about the patriots and the cowboys (no, not the football teams). Flying largely under the radar unless you frequent FOX News or Newsmax, the Bundy cattle fiasco gave government haters a place to put their rage. In short, Bundy is a wealthy Nevada businessman who, after twenty years of running cattle on public lands without paying permit fees, was issued a cease and desist notice from the federal government. This notice, which included a $200 per-day per-head penalty from that point forward, was delivered in 1998. Fifteen years later, additional court orders found that Bundy had not only ignored the first order but had increased his herd, which had now wandered into additional public tracts. The third court order allowed the government to impound any remaining cattle after a 45-day process period, and that’s exactly what Bureau of Land Management employees began to do until they met a lively crew of mounted gunslingers from around the country, come to Bundy’s aid.<\/p>\n

Bundy, who has declared that he abides by state law but does not recognize the federal government or its demands, has become the darling of Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and the like, who eagerly noted that the BLM employees were armed and planned to auction off the confiscated cattle in Utah to repay Bundy’s debts to the government. On the Alex Jones Show, Bundy told listeners to “go in there with force” to stop the (since delayed) auction. Militias around the country\u00a0mobilized in support<\/a>, with one such member pledging to be “a barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants.” It was speculated that if women were placed at the front, any harm to them would be good publicity for liberty’s cause. Other supporters said that while they’re not anti-government, they’re firmly “anti-corrupt government.” And, of course, armed, as the Second Amendment guarantees. Jones warned that confrontation at the auction “could turn into 1776 very quickly,” (although I don’t remember Betsy Ross being pushed to the front of that conflict at any point).<\/p>\n

For their part, the Feds behaved more sensibly than usual, deciding to back off in the interest of public safety and, at least for the moment, let the impounded cattle go. This allowed the gunslingers to holster their weapons and move along, ready to fight another day. You can bet your sweet ass that day will come, not just because the Fed will insist Mr. Bundy meet his obligations, but also because those willing to sacrifice the little woman in the name of freedom will be counting the minutes until the next adolescent pissing contest. The loss of life in stand-offs like Ruby Ridge and Waco still smart in the hearts of many of us, not just Libertarians, but their specter has been raised again and again by conservative pundits in the cynical hopes of provoking another event to keep the fear and paranoia alive. I have no doubt that should that happen, someone in the crowd will shoot off a rifle and scream, “BENGHAZI!”<\/p>\n

Makes my stomach lurch, can’t help it. Both these events are bad theatre, the white supremacist mindset echoed by the mayor of a small Missouri town who knew Cross back when, and “sort of agreed” with his sentiments on “Jew-run medical industry and government,” but thought the killing wrong. And the Nevada conversation seems the equivalent of tri-cornered hat-wearing, picketing seniors at Tea Party protests of last political season, toting their guns and puffing their chests, full of notions of victimization and very little else. I quite understand issues of liberty and I’m not happy about how this government takes advantage of the public on any number of levels, but the gawd-awful tyranny of charging fees for grazing rights on public lands ain’t one of them.<\/p>\n

In fact, as a supporter of the few remaining wild horses in this country, it’s clear that cattle ranchers get a good deal more access while the horses — unowned, and therefore unrepresented — are uniformly rounded up and sold for slaughter (unless advocates can raise enough money to rescue and place them). Somewhere in my soul, this whole thing summons that same visceral response as the barbed wire. The electric chair. The slaughter house.<\/p>\n

Our Len Wallick did an excellent piece last week about the Libra Full Moon eclipse doing a\u00a0flip along the Libra\/Aries axis<\/a>, which last occurred in 1995. A number of readers responded, confirming that their lives had taken a sudden shift in ’95. So did mine, a radical shift that was like one\u00a0story ending,\u00a0another begun. In looking at the news, then, let’s remember that on this very day in 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked his rent-a-truck loaded with fertilizer in front of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Let’s remember that the spring of 1995 brought us the first 2,000 reported deaths of the Rwandan genocide for reasons of “racism,” the sarin nerve gas attack in a Tokyo subway that killed eight and injured thousands for reasons of “religion,” and I suspect Mr. Bundy considers his cause just defiance against the loss of individual rights from\u00a0“government” in cahoots with the UN to achieve a New World Order. Tim McVeigh would speak his language.<\/p>\n

If you think what comes around doesn’t go around — and around and around — read that Carter quote above one more time. By the way, Jimmy Carter has urged the president to pass on Keystone, but of course he’s the one former leader of the free world Obama doesn’t consult, ostensibly because he’s critical of Israel for what he considers apartheid of the Palestinians, but more likely because he never gives an inch on matters of civil rights or populism. Money and influence get in the way of such human endeavors, don’t they? In Carter’s day, money didn’t scream quite as loudly as it does now, and the whole notion of influence and lobbying recreated itself when Jimmy’s successor, “One For The Gipper” Reagan, hit the big WA-DC klieg lights. A lot of things changed, right about then.<\/p>\n

Here’s something that changed that I simply can’t wrap my mind around: what happened to Christianity? In service to Christ-consciousness, I cannot discount the darkened face of Christianity we see today. It has earned a nasty reputation over the centuries, but at its heart, there was a pure signal of love that is hard to find these days. Here is a clip by comedian, Lewis Black, that makes me laugh, because I relate to his frustration and boiling point (and, gosh, I\u00a0worry that he’ll keel over from apoplexy one day!)<\/p>\n

Black calls himself a socialist, as do I. “As a Jew,” he tells us, he has a perspective on this and I think\u00a0it’s a good one. Living in a Christian nation\u00a0is like “enforced socialism,” says Lewis. It is, or at least, it should be. And Christianity, at its bravest and best, is about love and kindness, humility and charity, service to one another done in the name of those virtues because it was given as both transcendent practice and a tenet of faith. This week, Pope Francis washed feet again, this time those of disabled men and women. Once again, he broke old and prideful tradition to do so. So should we all.<\/p>\n