Thursday, December 27, 2012

In the Wake of December 21, 2012


 
The 21st 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.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

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.”

Saturday, December 15, 2012

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.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

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)