In the Wake of December 21, 2012

 

The 21^st of December has come and gone, and the Mayan Calendar has ended.  Having never been one to subscribe to end time prophecies I am not particularly surprised that we are all still here.  I have never been able to give serious credence to the idea that the world would destroy itself to get rid of the insignificant likes of us.  As a Pagan who believes that the Goddess is the world and the world is the Goddess the idea of Her suicide is ludicrous to the point of being incomprehensible.  As a sometime student of Christianity – largely for self protection – The Book of Revelations seems to me to be much like a journal that was passed from lunatic to lunatic as a crude form of Occupational Therapy in an ancient asylum and cannot be taken seriously.

Still I have no doubt that there is more than one way for the world to end.  I have said before and will say again that I believe that we are leaving a Dark Age and moving into a new Renaissance where the light of consciousness will serve the common good.  Not indirectly or incidentally as was the case with the first Renaissance before the nuanced understanding of freedom and diversity.  Instead it will be sweeping and profound, involving anyone who is interested in giving up their old thought forms.  

The American architect, Louis Sullivan said, “Form follows function.”  It is clear to anyone who thinks deeply about the world around them that most of our forms no longer function.  They are eroded, corroded and bastardized by every manner of corruption.  We have lost our way and whether we know it or not are wondering in the darkness.  The fear, frustration and panic that we feel is the collective unconscious knocking on the door of perception and screaming, “Open up.  It is time for the next leap.  I have much to tell and show you.”

I believe that locked in the collective unconscious with Jung’s primary archetypes, including the Shadow, are the pure ideals on which our forms rest - Love, Faith, not necessarily in a God, Peace, Truth and Justice.  The last three are polluted.  Peace is unprofitable and therefore unattainable.  Truth is relative and disposable and therefore unreliable.  Justice is pimped through the laws created and distorted by legislators and politicians of every stripe until like an old whore the blind lady limps around behind anyone who might give her the price of a meal for one more humiliation, and is therefore unidentifiable. 

Love and Faith have been disfigured and compromised by commerce to such an extent that they are nearly meaningless as unspoiled expressions of the dignity of the human soul.  Many Pagans view love, both romantic and collective, through the image of the Great Aphrodite, Goddess of Universal Love.   Via the contrivance of greed and shallow thought she has become a cosmic bimbo with augmented breast, cheek implants and the IQ of a guppy.  Her only universal aspect is an unqualified desire to fall into every bed in existence.  Faith is a bargaining chip in a high stakes card game.  The pot isn’t money it is political power.  The right God, the right church and the right “values” are critical in amassing political authority, and in fact are a litmus test rigorously monitored by the unscrupulous who lead the unthinking blindly to the polls election season after election season. 

Taken all together it is a god-damned mess, and one that is becoming increasing unbearable for thinking people who see life as a path to enlightenment and a higher consciousness.  The energy which so many of us have felt, are feeling, will begin to feel – sadly for some will never feel – is building day by day, betrayal by betrayal, lie by lie, bullet by bullet toward implosion.  Although we may perceive the anticipated leap of consciousness as taking a fair amount of time in our reckoning, this bloodless coup will clear away old worn-out ideas and shatter form relics with the relative speed and intensity of a great storm; yet, without a single shot being fired, a single grenade being thrown or a single explosive charge being detonated.  That in and of itself will be a mighty leap forward.

Crisis of Faith

 

When Obama turned his back on the will of the people in 2009 with regard to the Public Option he earned himself the 2010 election in which he lost control of the House and effectively, owing to the filibuster and the super majority, control of the Senate.  He is apparently preparing to turn his back on public sentiment once again by putting Social Security on the table in the Fiscal Cliff negotiations.  I submit that if he does the 2014 election will make the 2010 look like the 2012.  To put it plainly, even though it looks now to be a likely national overthrow of the Right owing to strategically stupidity of the Republican Party, the president’s party will be beaten and beaten badly.  He will spend the last years of his presidency living the meaning of the phrase, "lame duck."

I am angry, and I am frustrated.  For the first time in my life I am about to swear off of politics and never touch a ballot again.  What in hell is the point?  The American people are simply chump change in a high stakes poker game between indifferent and insensate people who care for nothing but their power, their elections and their legacies.  Party affiliation, philosophy, background, or promises aside they are all alike. 

Activists like me are driven by idealism.  It is what fuels our commitment, heats our blood and ignites the fire in our belly.  Suddenly and with surprisingly little regret, I am beginning to see the deep spiritual truth of the one statement of Jung's that I have never agreed with.  "Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”

Have We Come To This?

 

 

I keep hearing from people who think that the mass murder in Connecticut boils down to a need for more people to carry guns.  This country is suffering from a virulent and systemic disease - a disease of the heart, if you will, that has permeated and compromised every area of life.  You can't kill a disease with a gun; you can only kill the sufferer. So it feels like it is our culture, certainly our future, in the crosshairs.

This hideous assault on school children should not become a political football, but it will.  This horrible loss of life and potential should not become a partisan issue, but it will.  It is my opinion that the problem should be approached with a three prong solution to stabilize and treat our society, in the same way that a post MI cardiac patient is stabilized and treated.   

1) Frontline drugs and initiation of appropriate emergency measures - that is to say sensible gun control and reinvigoration via funding and restoration of resources to our mental health community for diagnosis, treatment and long term care.  These two things are equivalent in my mind.  

2) Investigation of the onset of the disease, life style contributors and initiation of long term drug and other medical therapies.  Our primary underlying problem is the corruption of our government.  The brothel formerly known as Congress is coin operated and serves the needs of moneyed special interests.  From the gun lobby to the Koch brothers, the system is rotten with corruption.  One of the major contributors to this disease process is the corporate owned media – there is no free press anymore.  They lie through omission, usually promote a partisan agenda and often engage in mere propaganda.  This has gone on for so long that it feels like it can’t be changed, but believe that it can.  After all there are exceptions, Maddow and Klein to name but two.  We must commit ourselves to change.

3) Ongoing monitoring of drug and medical therapies as well as life style changes and the advance if any of the disease.  Get involved; pay attention; demand more from your government and media. Reestablish civility in this society, perhaps we need to rethink how we discipline and teach our children, including what we allow them to see, what we allow them to hear.  Insist that greed is not an acceptable character trait.  Money is not more important than people - the idea that it is feeds the concept that people are disposable for whatever reason.  

Get past the bullshit because it doesn’t serve you.  I don’t like guns and I want sensible gun control, but I don’t want to take the guns of responsible gun owners.  I never have.  Keep your guns, dance with them, sing with them and make love to them – just don’t let them fall into the hands of a lunatic.  

Learn to identify double-speak because we are inundated and swimming in it, and this bastardization of language and communication is to corruption what cholesterol is to heart disease.  For instance, next time you run into a bible-thumping, gun-loving, fear-mongering, Rightwing-nutjob who is promoting a prolife agenda and squealing about freedom and the Constitution, you might advocate that there is no respect for life in demanding a freedom based upon a Constitution that must be bathed in the blood of our children.

Shameful

The following 38 jackasses under orders from the prolife lobby, indoctrinated by the mad ramblings of Rick Santorum, consumed with malignant nationalism fed by paranoia defeated the ratification of the treaty in the Senate today that would extend US standards of law with regard to the treatment and accommodation of the disabled in the world at large.  They ignored the counsel of senior Republican statesmen like Bob Dole and George H. W. Bush, not to mention John McCain.  Part of their problem with ratification is that the UN would be supporting the treaty that has been signed and ratified by many nations.

The hatred of the UN by these moronic rubes is founded on the idea that the United States is the only country in the world.  All the other countries are just potential parking lots for Texas.  The most despicable part of this is not the disrespect they have for the rest of the world but the disrespect they have for the people our government has sent into harm’s way ostensible to make the world safe for a democracy they persist in undermining with damn near every breath.  While 386 Veteran’s groups standby the treaty these 38 monsters ignored their concern for their brothers and sister around the world.  Thus, they disregard the will of those they will happily invoke next time they face their electorate – in effect wiping their asses with the flag.

Please share these names.  Spread their dishonest, disreputable and diseased behavior to everyone you know.

Alexander (R-TN)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Enzi (R-WY)

Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lee (R-UT)
McConnell (R-KY

Moran (R-KS)
Paul (R-KY)
Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Toomey (R-PA)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

 

Language is the Currency of a New Consciousness

 

On an evening while watching the Rachel Maddow show I heard Mr. EJ Dionne say something that was for me the catalyst of a profound ah-ha moment – you know what I mean suddenly a light snaps on and something you’ve known all of your life without saying it has suddenly been said. He simply remarked that in our system of economics, “capital is more important than labor.”

Within seconds a series of associations popped into my mind: money is more important than people; unearned income is more valuable than earned income thus should be taxed less; retirement based upon accrued wealth is more deserved than retirement based upon earned benefits.

I would even go further and say that in the presence of an unbridled Free Market and vulture Capitalism, labor is indeed the enemy of capital.  This is the unstated assertion that supports the belief that while the workers who walked out on strike at Wal-Mart are disruptive-ungrateful-wanting something for nothing slugs, if not just plain foolish, the Walton family who owns Wal-Mart is a clan of heroes in the Capitalist paradigm for paying their employees less than is needed to support a family and offering no benefits. Accordingly, when these worker’s families are forced to go on public assistance such as food stamps or Medicaid in order to survive, the moral responsibility reverts to them and them alone.  They become an object of derision by the very people who hold their offices through the legalized corruption of government by big lobbies representing employers like the Waltons.  These are the same corrupt individuals who promote that paradigm as a secondary implication of the peddling of influence. 

Any political or other leader who dares to elaborate on this inequity too often, too loudly, or too eloquently is immediately labeled a Socialist, a Communist, a Leninist, a Marxist and for those stupid enough to not know their left from their right a Nazi or Fascist. Consequently, terminology like labor’s right to have some ownership in the means of production, alienation of labor, workers rights, Laissez-Faire Capitalism and income distribution equity have been dumb-down and prettied up into “fairness to Middle Class families.”  The poor and the working poor are seldom spoken of these days, although Mr. Obama often speaks of giving those outside of the Middle Class a way in. All of this subterfuge and linguistic sleight-of-hand contributes to a pervasive and pernicious ideology by people such as the Waltons which can be summed up in, “we hired them; we can kill them.” This belief has been given the force of law by their allies in the brothel formally known as the United States Congress.

I subscribe to the Mayan belief in a radical change in the world on December 21st, but do not accept the validity of end time prophecies. Thus, I believe that we are entering a shift in consciousness for good or ill - it’s hard for me to tell. However, I propose that it is possible for us to determine the nature and quality of this shift for ourselves. One way is for labor - workers - to take back control of the language of our liberation. We need to begin to think and speak of ourselves as an indispensable source of production and as wealth engendering. No fortune has ever been made without us. We are not just the chattel of Free Market Capitalism and a consumer culture gone insane.

The intellectual sludge born in a toxic stew of corporate arrogance and gluttony which holds that big money can continue to earn big money without an economically empowered, constantly expanding Working/Middle Class is evidence of the mind numbing properties of chronic greed. The consumer orgy which corporate America has encouraged, indeed mandated, is not possible without a fully enfranchised, stable and economically viable Working Class. You may find this hard to believe, I did, but I actually heard a CEO of a Fortune 500 company say as much recently. 

Since language is the currency of a new and shared consciousness, it follows then that it is time for workers in this country to stand up and demand clearly and loudly the respect they deserve as creators of wealth both in production and consumption. It won’t do any longer to consider workers as red marks on company balance sheets under the heading Cost of Doing Business. We are business. We are the financial system. Without us nothing works, nothing runs and the great engine of the economy stalls like a faulty motor. 

If this is Socialism so be it. It is none of the other aforementioned political/economic systems, and it would behoove those who don’t know the difference to read a damn book once in a while - if they can read that is. The question becomes, is it worse to be a so-called Socialist than it is to be an entrepreneur who benefits from an undeclared Socialism by working their employees for much less than is needed to subsist while throwing them off on the public dole to subsidize their income, thus smugly expecting the taxpayer to pick up the slack?

Labor might want to remind the consumer public that when people don’t make enough to live on and must rely upon federal or state government assistance the five dollar shirt happily purchased at Wal-Mart actually costs much more. Perhaps, when Wal-Mart patrons rushing to save money realize that they will pay for those savings out of their family budget in sales tax or state tax or federal tax they won’t consider the bargains at Wal-Mart such bargains.

My husband Bradley believes that an excellent way to help reduce taxation and perhaps the deficit would be to force people like the Waltons to pay back in taxes the money that must be taken from the tax coffers by their employees in order to live. In addition, since these are the business owners supporting a government culture that resists single payer medical coverage and hates Obama Care, they might be required to help subsidize their community hospitals to defer the cost of treating their uninsured employees. 

I’m not an expert on tax policy or deficit reduction; however, I know a little something about working for a living. The idea that labor is a charitable investment and/or a parasitic drain on the likes of Wal-Mart is patently stupid if not insane. It is unlikely that we will hear our elected officials, in office or running for office, emphasize this so we must emphasize it. Without us there are no great industries, no great corporations, no small or large businesses - no Wal-Marts! In the final analysis capital and labor are equal partners in the creation of any economy, particularly the Free Market Economy. They should enjoy equal respect and recognition - if for no other reason than because the vast majority of this country works for a living, and we are the consumers of the products of all industries, corporations and businesses small and large. The people who squall and whine about paying taxes at the top end of the income scale are often the same people who are more than happy to take advantage of the government’s ability to subsidize the income of their underpaid employees.  What can we call such infants save entitlement babies or Welfare monarchs?

 

Our Coin Operated Media

 

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. . . Edward R. Murrow

I grow increasingly disgusted with the corporate-owned, open sewer that was once our free press.  Their collusion by omission, their refusal to tell both sides of the story, their insistence upon limited vision via limited scope appalls me.   For instance, in the current mess in the Middle East the American news viewing public has been consistently treated to the world according to the pro-Israeli lobby while the voices of the pro-Palestinian camp are conspicuously ignored.  The ever present chant “Israel has a right to defend herself,” rattles through the ether like the chains of Jacob Marley in Dickens’ famous Christmas Carol.  However, what of the settlements that Israel persists in extending into the occupied territory of the Palestinian people in violation of international law – nothing, silence, they aren’t relevant enough to mentioned.  Apparently, Israel has a monopoly on the right of self defense. 

Don’t get me wrong, Hamas is an abomination.  It is a terrorist organization that lends the stain of a terrorist state to the hopes and dreams of the Palestinians.  On the other hand, to whom do they turn for fair treatment?  Certainly not us, or the UN or the EU or Ralph Nader.  So the terrorists move in and we are astounded at the bad judgment of the Palestinian electorate.  We lead the world in being astounded at the ramifications of crises of our own making. 

The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi is yet another example of the media playing fast and loose with critical information.  While the Republicans line up in pairs chains and clusters like bacteria to pillory the Obama Administration and Ambassador Rice for failure to protect our diplomats and the alleged reporting of misleading information concerning that attack to cover negligence, these same partisan Republicans conveniently forget that earlier this year their House cut billions from the State Department’s budget some of which was earmarked for protection of our embassies, consulates and missions.  The Viagra brothers McCain and Graham, always happy to rob State to pay Defense and keep George Carlin’s bigger dick theory of diplomacy alive, never objecting to the action taken by their colleagues in the lower chamber are suddenly prostrate with grief at the loss of our diplomats in Libya.  The media allows this circus to go forward, never calling any of them out no matter how vicious their insinuations or accusations. 

In much the same way the press allowed Republican pundits and assorted hatchet people to refer repeatedly to Obama as a failed president during the election.  The same press did not make a point of reporting on the organized Republican obstructionism – conceived of on the night of Mr. Obama’s inauguration – that was responsible for the failure of the president’s first term agenda where it did fail, until well into the campaign.   Now, many of these obstructionist Right-wingers who were driven by an irrational hatred of this president are counting on a similar pass from the media as they try to reinvent themselves as reasonable leaders for the benefit of an electorate that kicked their buts earlier this month. 

This puts me in mind of the old story about the lunatic inside the asylum gate who notices a car stopped outside.  The lunatic informs the car’s driver that he has a flat tire to which the driver responds with an astonished look.  Prompting the lunatic to announce, “I am in here for being crazy not stupid.”  Let that be a lesson to us all.  Just because someone is capable of presenting themselves intelligently and rationally in one instance does not make them sane under the surface no matter what the corporate whoring, fact hiding media of limited perception and short memory would have us believe.

What Tomorrow May Bring

 

So, it is almost over.  The speeches, the rallies, the robo calls, the idiots showing up at my door wanting me to vote for Romney, only to be told that I would rather vote for Charlie Manson  - all of it is almost over.  If the Right wins tomorrow the American people will acquiesce to a new path to the White House strewn with lies, half-truths, scare tactics and racially charged innuendo, not to mention rewarding obstructionism at the expense of the country with a return to power.  The American people will have opened the front door and let the vampire in to suck them dry as the Bush Administration did, and the Reagan Administration did, indeed as hardcore Conservative Republicans have done going back to Hoover and before.  We will have dumped leadership and solid public policy into the ashcan along with education, health care, women, labor and voter’s rights, our national social conscience and our international dignity.  We will be back to what George Carlin called, “the bigger dick theory of diplomacy.”  We will have moved retrograde into a time when robber barons can drive Wall Street all over the lives and dreams of working families on Main Street.  Then the people who have cast their lot with the Romney/Ryan vaudeville act and those who didn’t bother to vote will have the nightmare they deserve.  The rest of us will have another long walk in the wilderness until we can mobilize to take the midterm elections in ’14 and start to turn the clock back to the future.  If on the other hand, we awake on Wednesday morning to learn that our good President Obama has been retained and we have gains in the House with continued control and/or a larger majority in the Senate then it will be time to round up the lunatics and put them back in the asylum so that the rest of us can continue rebuilding OUR country.  OBAMA/BIDEN 2012.

Beyond Maddening

Our free press is a low rent brothel.  Our so-called-journalists report what they are told to report.  To wit: I think the polls are being ginned up, distorted and/or wrongly reported to keep the talking heads and pundits relevant as the days pass into the election.  Why do they keep referring to Mr. Obama as a failed president when he was stonewalled and obstructed from the day of his inauguration by treasonous K Street operatives masquerading as elected officials working undercover in some kind of media blackout?  In all this talk of the character and motives of rape victims why aren’t we talking about the character and motives of rapists?  Are they psychopaths, sociopaths, sexual sadists, repeat offenders who are not considered treatable by most authorities?  One thing is certain they weren’t trying to show their victim a good time.  Why do more than thirty states give these monsters parental rights?  The silence is deafening and the unanswered questions crippling to the electorate. 

Yes, a low rent brothel run by the corporate pimps and madams who have seemingly taken over the world.  Be clear, I am not speaking of Brashir, Matthews, Sharpton, Shultz, or the great Rachel Maddow.  Nor am I speaking of the impeccable Brian Williams.  I am speaking of all the noise makers who control our airways with misinformation, half truths, innuendo and unchallenged lies from the right, the left and down the middle – if such a place exists. 

I have turned to watching horror movies on TCM.  I hate horror movies because they frighten and unnerve me, but not as much as the imitation reporting on this election. 

Polls

 

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I am bloody sick and tired of polls.  They are all over the damned place.  Today the AP is reporting that Romney has "erased" Obama's lead with women.  How can this be true? 

Let me be real clear here, any woman that stands with this lying, pandering, vote whoring hump deserves what she gets.  Any woman who thinks there is nothing to the reports of misogyny and disregard for the rights and health of women in the Romney/Ryan position had best read Mr. Ryan’s record and the Republican platform – realizing that Romney hasn’t the backbone or moral fiber to go against the fanatics in his party if he is elected.  Any woman who doesn’t comprehend that a Romney Administration will appoint one or two anti-choice Supreme Court Justices needs to pull her head out of  her shoe closet and grow the hell up.  Any woman who doesn’t understand that the tenets of the Religious Right’s psychotic world view will subsequently become part and parcel of a state sponsor religion by fiat needs to spend less time applying cosmetics to the outside of her head and more time introducing knowledge to the inside. 

Bible thumping, politically deaf, dumb and blind sheeple aside, these vile men, these rotten politicians care less for the God to whom they pay nothing more than lip service then they care for women.  They will be relegating all women, their daughters and granddaughters to the status of an incubator.  A fertilized ovum will have more rights than the mother.  The hollow religion these monsters proclaim is but the corner stone of an economic trap.  Once caught in this filth what is left of the Middle Class will be starved and beaten into poverty.  There it will stay with more children then can reasonably be feed, more debt than can possibly be paid and less economic advantage then can ever be imagined today.  Any woman who doesn’t realize or care that as a practical matter all this means that we go back to the alleys, coat hangers and criminals with dirty hands and dull knives should find herself in such a position and welcome.

Today I am angry.  Women of my generation did not take to the streets forty-odd years ago, get hit in the head with riot batons and thrown in jail to set women free so that the most important election of our collective reality, the most important vote since the ratification of the 19th Amendment can be ceded to the barbarians by a gaggle of blundering, ill informed Stepford Wives in a handful of states.

My husband tells me that the polls are a joke as are the pundits, most of the commentators and all talking heads grinding a partisan axe.  However, he follows Nat Silver’s political and statistical blog compulsively.  Below is a link.  Some of this stuff is pretty dense; however take a look at the right hand column.  Mr. Silver has been projecting President Obama’s victory by electoral vote since the race began.  It has gone up and down, but never put the Republicans in the lead.  If Mr. Silver is right, and he was only off by a small percentage of a point in ’08 and ‘10, then perhaps for the first time in four years the lowest common denominator, the bullies and the fools among us will not be calling the shots.

538

Richard III and American Politics

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy.
With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."
. . . William Shakespeare’s Richard III, Act 1, Scene III

Richard III is one of the greatest villains in history.  He sabotaged or murdered every member of his family who stood between him and the English Throne, including his two nephews who were both children. The above quote is a statement of his method of advancement.  When did this level of dissembling, deceit and play acting become the preferred method of running for the Office of the President – admired by the pundits, extolled as brilliant strategy by surrogates and winked at by the whores in the Beltway and network media? 

King Richard was a tool of his own malignant ambition.   The man who would be king, Mitt Romney, will be a tool of every Rightwing extremist group in this country.  Like George W. Bush, also a much touted businessman, he will deal devastating blows to our military, our economy and our institutions.  Two questions remain.  First, how many more wallops can the Great Experiment – our America – sustain before it collapses into chaos? Second, what kind of naiveté, greed, blind self-interest or just plain stupidity would promote another Richard III to the Oval Office by popular vote?

The Rockies

Colorado is both High Planes and High Desert.  Between the two stretches the Rocky Mountains and at the highest point the Continental Divide.  I traveled last week by train from Denver on the Planes to Grand Junction in the Desert.  I rode through numerous canyons and valleys of inestimable beauty.  The Colorado River sailed along beside me flowing east on the Planes side of the slope and west on the Desert side as gravity shifted – and in some ways reality.  I crested the Divide in the center of Moffat Tunnel which is over six miles long.  In the darkness of that structure if you listen very carefully past the rhythm and hum of the wheels you will hear the Goddess’ heart beating deep in the Earth.  There She whispers words of comfort, wisdom and sanity to be taken out into the light of what is often an idiotic world. 

The pictures in this album are some of the best photos taken on my journey.  I post them here as a testament to the nobility and supremacy of nature and to the grand splendor which the Goddess has given us.  We take it for granted, overlook it and sometimes disregard it, but it exists in spite of us and always will because while we strive to create, She is creation itself.  While we strive for beauty, She is the very essence and inspiration of the beautiful, the profound and the poetic.  The puny and pathetic manipulations, the infantile and insidious acts of hubris that we imagine to be power are as nothing to the One who with and through Her immortal being fashioned the canyons and valleys where the Colorado River runs.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just a Thought

In reviewing the performance of Mr. Romney and his apologists over the past days I am reminded of the words of National Lampoon, “A walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet.”  The man, his advocates, party and platform are proudly vacuous, smugly superficial, insipidly insensate and intolerably impertinent.   The brilliant E.J. Dionne reminded us on Monday night on Shultz’s show that our government puts greater value on capital then it does on labor.  Mr. Romney is the poster child for this mentality.  He goes through life glibly looking down his patrician nose at the laborers who made it possible for him to amass his capital.  Like an 18-wheeler crashing through a school yard he leaves our broken national values and the damaged reputations of many of his fellow citizens on the ground behind him, some of them still twitching. 

Wings

I am going to tell you a story; this is not an X-file.  Last night I was standing out on my front porch to decompress as I often do after Ms. Maddow has ended her broadcast.  I felt something fly past my ear, then into it.  Suddenly there was a pounding against my tympanic membrane with the rhythm of fluttering wings and the amplified concussions of several drummers on speed. 

The sensation was paralyzing.  Predictably, I quickly became dizzy then nauseous.  Unable to stand or to hold my head up because any movement caused the trapped winged creature to panic and pound against my ear drum with increased speed and force, I called my husband. 

He came to my aid and promptly realized that there was very little he could do to help, having neither the light source to penetrate the auditory canal nor the willingness to probe blindly into that narrow and heavily vascular space.  So, we called an ambulance. 

I expected to see two, perhaps three, paramedics respond.  Instead, Fire Rescue came.  Within minutes five firemen/first responders were standing in my living room totally focused on what by the standards of their profession was a very minor complaint. 

Realizing that none of them had a pair of tweezers in their kit – I understand that will be corrected today – and after dispatching my Bradley to fetch mine from the medicine cabinet the senior responder began to patiently and gently probe my auditory canal within a breath of the easily ruptured tympanic membrane.  After what seemed a day or more he retrieved a tiny moth which he passed to a colleague who carefully carried it to the front door and released it back into the night.

I would remind you that these five men are representative of the people who ran into the crumbling Trade Towers and charged the Pentagon on 9/11.  At the same time our esteemed leaders in Washington and elsewhere were looking for someplace to hide.  Ironically, it is some of the same political hacks who today advocate relegating these people to the dustbin in the name of fiscal responsibility.  Realizing that the firemen in my home last night brought the same focus, care and concern to what was merely an interesting call as they would bring to a ten car pileup on the interstate or to a mass shooting it is time that we took a page out of the Conservative playbook and examined the value we are getting for our taxpayer dollars.  Wouldn’t it be wiser to insist that before a single firefighter/first responder is rendered unemployed that those who have spent most of their tenure doing nothing but helping their coconspirators at the federal level undermine a president and interfering with the rights of women be paid nothing for their trouble?

Pagans believe that the dust on the wings of a moth is wisdom.  I believe therefore that the uncomfortable and irritating experience of last night served to grace my thinking with a little insight.  This morning it came to me in a flash that amid the terror of world events this week, Romney’s insistence upon returning to the blustering and bullying policies of the Bush administration is once again a display of that fastest-gun-in-the-West, cowboy diplomacy and tone deafness with regard to the message he is sending to the rest of the world.  It is worth noting that from Wes Hardin to Doctor John Holliday no gunman of the Old West ever rode into a town, walked down a dusty street or passed through the swinging doors of a saloon without the certain knowledge that within arm’s reach one or more people would gladly kill them for the dubious privilege of being the fastest of fast guns.  They had no peace.  They were not peace makers; they were killers.  To the extent that we embrace their blood soaked legacy of fear and death we too will have no peace.  Thus, from the Soul of the Goddess to my ear came a bit of wisdom on the wings of a tiny moth.

Two Women:Two Worlds

“To get Bill Clinton to speak at the convention, Obama had to agree to carry his bags.”  Ann Coulter September 5, 20012

Ann Coulter is an example of what is ailing our body politic and of the cancer that has invaded every cell of our political discourse.  I have long believed that in an attic somewhere Coulter keeps a picture of herself, scared and twisted by all the cruelty and fatalist fantasy she has propagated, desiccated and decaying under the burden of the harm she has done. 

In the tradition of Oscar Wilde’s malevolent Doran Gray, her poison seeps into the world around her like mercury into groundwater.   Words have consequences, and hers are often devastating if by nothing other than the malicious ideas she and others like her continue to breed in the manner of maggots on a rotting corpse.  She is never to be taken lightly.  

Ms. Coulter is a disgrace, even to the Rightwing.  She rose to prominence during the Clinton impeachment era.  For anyone who doesn’t remember this fiasco it was a $42,000,000, taxpayer funded, small government proponent’s panty raid.  She was the most acidic and over the top critic of the president.  Her vehemence against Bubba and her obsession with his sexual conduct reminded me of Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, who did protest too much.  Then as now I couldn’t help but wonder if the real source of her fury was the knowledge that at the height of his lascivious behavior Bill Clinton wouldn’t have touched her had she been the only female on earth – for the same reason he wouldn’t have put his hand in a canister of liquid nitrogen. 

By contrast the Left has Rachel Maddow who wouldn’t for love or money consider abusing the much abused convention of protected political speech with slander, venomous attacks or pitiless vilification.  She resembles no one so much as Edward R. Murrow who made it a habit of showing up, paying attention, telling the truth and not being vested in outcome.  This is the sage’s road to enlightenment and the path by which they lead others.

Today, MSNBC enjoys some of its highest ratings owing to Rachel’s extraordinary work as anchor of both conventions.  While Ann Coulter states that women should not have the vote and we struggle with people attempting to roll back the rights of women, can there be any greater testament to what a strong, brilliant and empower woman can achieve then Rachel Maddow.  She is a credit to her sex, her profession and to women like me who stood up for women’s rights in the days when the motto of feminine success was, “tits up girls, public relations.”  She is a credit to women like my grandmother who were beaten and jailed for the right to participate in the political process.

In a very real world way Ms. Maddow is representative of the stark contrast that President Obama elucidated in his speech last night.  It isn’t just the difference between a gifted and socially conscious president and an inane elitist who thinks the world stops at the tip of his dick.  It is also the difference between a decent and illuminated society where people like Maddow set the tone of political discourse and the fetid cesspool where filth purveyors like Coulter swim.  It is the difference between the world being offered to us by the Radical Right’s bigotry and fear mongering and a world where greatness is admired rather than maligned by mediocrity; where honesty is a fixed value and thoughtfulness not ignorance informs the conscience of a nation. 

 

Myopia

Myopia is a defect in vision that results in the inability to see objects at a distance.  In a pragmatic and nonclinical sense it has reached epidemic proportion in this country.  Consider the Republican Governors who are doing their best to block mostly democratic voters of color, poor men and women, the elderly and the young from voting in 2012 by demanding birth certificates, car registrations, medical records, a grandfather’s naturalization papers or whatever else they have pulled out of their ass.  Has it not occurred to them that these voters will have time to register by 2014 when they come up for reelection, will vote and put them out of work?  They can’t see that far. 

Think about Romney and Ryan who are peddling enough bullshit to fertilize the Gobi Desert all the while smiling as if a growing number of media outlets, not to mention Ms. Rachel Maddow, hasn’t exposed their lies.  Does it not enter their tiny minds that the electorate will view them as frauds by November?  They can’t see that far.

What of the good citizens who have elected people like Christie, Walker, Kasich, Snyder, Scott and the idiot with the ultrasound probe in Virginia, and still support them.  Is it not within the realm of these taxpayer’s considered possibilities that too few teachers means too many of their children will never become college eligible adults; that the only people too few cops serve is the criminal element; that the firefighters and first responders were the people who saved lives on 9/11 running into burning and unstable builds while politicians all over the country ran like rats from their Capitols?  In another national emergency those valiant public servants would do the same, as would the politicians. They can’t see that far.

Clinically speaking an elongation of the eyeball or excessive curvature of the cornea causes nearsightedness.  Accordingly parallel light rays come to focus in front of the retina rather than on it and vision is shortened.  If we consider a world view to be the eyeball or the cornea, the various ideologies and partisan agendas to be the light rays and the retina to be the common good – we as a people have been shortsighted for a long time.   

There are many treatments for myopia today.  The oldest, some say the most tried and true, is corrective lenses.  The corrective lens for the body politic is compromise; that is to say, bringing as many ideas, beliefs and orientations as possible to bear on the problems pertaining to the common good, and reaching a synthesis of resolutions converging like light rays on the appropriate part of the retina.

It pains this old Lefty radical more than you can know to say this, but only those who can come to the center, or who are temperamentally and ideologically moderate, as I believe President Obama is, can save us.  The Republican Party has driven most of their Moderates out of office, preferring it seems to elect those who will not wear the corrective lens of compromise either out of vanity, greed, avarice or flat out stupidity.  The Democratic Moderates have been stained with the Blue Dog’s obsequious tribute to big money and big religion.  It is down to the electorate to demand that our candidates are capable of understanding common cause.  The first question asked of any of them should be, WILL YOU COMPROMISE on behalf of the good of the nation.

A myopic driver who refuses to wear their glasses will sooner or later have a crash.  The size of the vehicle, the speed and momentum will determine in large part the severity of that crash.  Politicians who refuse to compromise will sooner or later smash this nation on the rocks of foolhardy stubbornness and pigheaded spitefulness.  The size of their egos, the speed with which their partisan lies travel through the population and the momentum with which their self serving schemes engender fear, racism, envy and selfishness will determine the severity of the damage done to the Republic – will it be maimed or destroyed.  As Sherlock Holmes said, “. . . the parallel is exact.”

Humbugs

 

I have recently been chastised, if you will, by someone for lacking compassion and caring with regard to my outspoken and brutally declared disgust with certain members of the Rightwing political establishment.  I went on the record and with as little compassion and caring as possible stated my position thus, I am not a Christian it is best not to come at me with those old canards and empty sentiments supposedly shared by all the God- fearing men and women in Congress who would take health care away from millions, many of whom are children; who begrudge a few dollars in food stamps for the hungry – lately a large number of which have been economically disenfranchised for the sake of the traditions of vulture capitalism and the culture of greed; who would ask a woman violated and terrorized to carry some psychopath’s baby to term.  

I grow bored with the proselytizing and sermonizing of hacks who behave as if they have been elected to the pulpit while engaging in legalized corruption and the rape of the public trust.  I grow bored with their followers who aide and abet them in disrespecting, obstructing, falsely accusing and vilifying the lawfully elected president.  I grow sick of treason masquerading as patriotism – what else is it when the will of the people who elected that president by a clear majority is deliberately flouted and undermined by churlish, soulless men squealing about God to justify their misguided belief that they enjoy the divine right of kings to govern this nation?

Bored, sick that is what I feel, not compassion or caring.   In my religious practice no one has the right to critique, define or mandate another’s feelings.  In other words, those hasty of judgment, loud of mouth and weak of nerve on the Right should keep their god-damn humbugs to themselves.

The Quality of Friendship

Within this past week I have had the unpleasant task of unfriending someone on Facebook that I thought was a good friend.  We have all been through this, and it seems to be happening a little more often these days.  As I suppose is the way of friendships that end badly, it made me furious.  Hours afterward when I had settled down I was aware of a cold constricting hand around my heart.  The sensation was fear.

The situation was briefly this.  He had posted a list of Mitt Romney’s good works, I suppose you could say.  For instance, volunteering to work in his father’s gubernatorial campaign, to work for the Olympics and as a missionary in Paris for the Mormon Church.  I understand that this is a requirement of the Mormon Church.   It was also noted that Mr. Romney had not taken a salary as Governor of Massachusetts nor as head of the Olympic Committee.   I am sure he hardly missed the money.

 When I suggested that it was easier for Mr. Romney to volunteer large portions of his time then it was for me to volunteer in a rape crisis center, not to mention a number of free clinics, 20 years out of 41 years working 40 to 60 hours per week on the trauma deck, in the ICU or ER my friend became abusive.  He scolded me as a partisan whose opinion was of no value to him.

I began to think about the fact that Mr. Obama’s service as a community organizer working on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised of Chicago far from being respected was ridiculed during the 2008 election.  I realized that Mr. Romney’s Cadillac charitable work on behalf of his father and the Mormon Church in Paris, not Bangladesh, Africa or South America where many of my friends in the Peace Corp had served, was hardly equivalent to Mr. Obama’s work.  Our president came out of law school with a mountain of debt and no silver spoon in his mouth.  I believe it was a sacrifice for him to give of his time – his Harvard Law School graduate time – to people who had little or nothing to give back.  He could have gone anywhere and began to make a great deal of money if he had chosen to do so.  If he was paid serving the community it wasn’t much.  However, like the docs I worked with in the crisis center and the free clinics he probably volunteered much of his time and skill. 

That’s when I got it, and that’s when I got frightened.  It is not about volunteering or charity.  It is about who is being served.  Governors, the Olympic Committee and the Mormon Church matter.  The poor people President Obama served do not matter. 

By the Living Goddess can it be any clearer?  It was like looking through a magnifying glass at the platform of Romney and his prolife-antihuman mascot Ryan.  When some people matter and some people don’t, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” becomes nothing more than an empty campaign slogan.  Liberty, equality and freedom become the property of the privileged and are lost to the common, work-a-day world.

Is it possible that people like the person to whom I was speaking this past week are so deluded as not to realize that unless they become instantly as rich as Romney and his friends at the time of his election they will become instantly part of the common work-a-day world that does not matter?  I suppose they must be since they are confused enough to judge President Obama a failed leader never taking into account the record number of filibusters orchestrated by the amoeboid Republican Senate leadership and the obsession with other people’s wombs in the House that has effectively stopped the president’s efforts to do anything on behalf of the American people.  Apparently, they also missed the information that a cabal of Republican leaders met under cover of darkness on the night of Mr. Obama’s inauguration and vowed to make him a one term president at any cost.  The power was to be theirs.  The cost fell to the American People.

I paraphrase Chris Carter and the final episode of his “X-files” when I say; the devil is just a person with a plan.  Evil, true evil, is a collaboration of people.  We are staring it in the face.