The Garden

I am just finishing a prolonged study of entomology. Not only is it a dense study, spoken largely in Latin - thank the Goddess I am studying Italian, but it is creepy in the extreme. Never being a fan of insects, particularly spiders, I have found my skin crawling a good deal of the time. Still in all, it has been a great respite from the stink of American politics where the insects walk upright, chew holes in their opponents, fill those holes with slime and call it patriotism.  All the while the corporate media nurtures their larvae.

Insects in the garden serve a purpose.  Many are predators who feed on other insects that are harmful to plants and make it possible for gardeners to manage pests without the use of chemicals.  Insects in politics serve only themselves; myopically they feed on anything that can promote their short-term interests. That makes them opportunistic parasites. 

In the garden plants can succumb to neglect in a very short period of time.  That is to say that a season of ignoring deleterious insects can permanently devastate a garden.  The same is true for the body politic.  It has taken a very long time for the flower of Democracy to be totally devastated by the insects in our political system.  Citizens United was the final blow.  It amounted to spraying insecticides to destroy beneficial insects and pollinators, then introducing the plant predators and walking away. 

The American people, absentee gardeners on a good day, have suddenly realized what has happened to their best of all Liberty gardens.  They are angry.  They are on the move.  The revolution is coming; maybe not this election season, maybe not the next, but it is coming.  It will be a tilling of America’s spiritual soil, a replanting of the seeds and a sensible plan for pest management.  The proper care of a new garden will require an end to the root rot of establishment politics; control of the leaf mold of party/machine politics; prevention of the blight of influence peddling, dirty tricks, and what one good Christian called blood sport politics.  It has to happen if the garden is to survive.

The first thing a good gardener learns is that nature distills the purest form of Karma. One must be very careful about what is done today because it will return a hundred fold in a not too distant tomorrow.  Therefore, my advice to some in the political arena, whose existence means nothing to me save the effect they are having on the garden, is simply to be careful what you do now that you may not want to live with later.  Accordingly, pouring the herbicide of vitriol and the concrete of rigid, elitist ideologies on one half of the garden means that you in all likelihood will never make it whole again.