I have never been able to fathom the world ending in fire and carnage. Perhaps that is because my Goddess is not in the world or of the world, She is the world. She is every spring leaf on every branch of every tree; every mother robin feeding her young; every snow-dressed mountain stream chasing itself through lacey whitewater; every sunset and sunrise. She is the moon and the oceans; the wind and the Earth itself. She is all seasons, all times and all of us. It is incomprehensible that my Goddess would commit suicide.
That is not to say that I don’t believe worlds end. Eras slip gradually into Jung’s collective unconscious never to be seen in the material world again. In great leaps of consciousness new worlds take their place. The Feudalism, church authority and despotism, religious persecution, Crusades and enforced ignorance of the common people that defined the Middle Ages commenced to wear away in the birth of the Renaissance – one driving force of which was the concept of Humanism.
An intellectual, secular and cultural movement based upon the values, behavior and characteristics believed to be the best part of the nature of human beings, independent of supernatural authority, Humanism was to form the bedrock of nearly two centuries worth of leaping achievements in art, science, politics and philosophy. If genius can be said to be fire, than this period burned with the heat of a thousand volcanoes.
By the time that the Renaissance slipped into Jung’s collective unconscious to be replaced by the Enlightenment, the Italian Masters – Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael to name but a few – had taught the world the beauty of chiaroscuro and form in dimension. The printing press had been invented by Gutenberg. Henry VIII, of lascivious and murderous memory, hard on the heels of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, had kicked the first giant hole in the Papacy’s iron wall of control over monarchs with his Act of Supremacy separating the Church of England from Rome. Galileo, father of modern astronomy, had discovered new worlds among the stars and was condemned by a nervous Catholic Church for his trouble. Dr. William Harvey had described the circulation of the blood. Shakespeare had written his “Hamlet” and Cervantes his “Don Quixote.”
Politically in 1558 a girl came to the throne of England, signaling the beginning of the Golden Age of the Renaissance. A heretical girl, the Pope called her, even as his successors would grudgingly call her the greatest monarch in Christendom. Elizabeth I would teach the world something about religious tolerance. She had both Catholics and Protestants among her subjects. A Protestant Queen, she did not object to the Catholics practicing in her England, saying that she had no desire to make windows into men’s souls. However, any attempt to come after her throne would bring swift and merciless retribution – as the Catholic Queen of Scotland learned. Further, if the fanatics on either side brought Holy War to her people she would destroy them all. Her thinking was that there was one God in England, the method of worship was trivial. Such is the wisdom of a great queen.
It is easy to imagine that a poor, oppressed serf from the Middle Ages dropped into the milieu of the Renaissance would have thought that their world had been destroyed as if by fire. However, the power of the monarchy, of Elizabeth, would have been familiar to them. For all her tolerance, distaste for war, love of peace and refusal to marry because she considered herself married to England and mother to her people, Elizabeth I was an absolute ruler. She had a parliament which she could have disbanded and beheaded at any time. She didn’t. Nonetheless, her word was unquestioned law for the 40 odd years that she reigned.
As the Renaissance in its turn gave birth to the Enlightenment the Catholic Church’s authoritarian power over the crowned heads was withering. Yet, religion still played an inordinate and deleterious role in the affairs of state. The absolutist reign of monarchy in England – then the richest, most powerful nation in the world – would end with James I, Elizabeth’s successor. However, the institution itself would limp along in Europe until the Czars fell in 1917.
The crumbling of the old guard – religious intrusion, absolute power vested in the hands of a very few – was a function, in many ways, of the deepening appreciation and understanding of Humanist ideals. If people were moral, reasonable, cogent and intelligent, independent of any higher power, then why were they not capable of self governance?
By the end of the Enlightenment, Adam Smith had published “The Wealth of Nations.” Voltaire had published “Candide,” and Kant his “Critique of Pure Reason.” Thanks to the printing press anyone with the price of a book, the ability and/or desire to read could open their mind. Mozart had composed Don Giovanni and the Requiem. The first volume of the Encyclopedia had been produced, and the American Revolution had been fought and won.
Politically, Jefferson and his contemporaries had given the world the Declaration of Independency – from England and monarchy. The Constitution, wonder of wonders, had synthesized a way to rid ourselves of meddlesome clergy. Freedom of religion was to prevent religious wars, many of which still raged during the Enlightenment. Separation of church and state was to mean no more sticky fingered clerics torturing nations and draining national treasuries, in the name of God of course. One must imagine that Elizabeth’s courtiers transported to Philadelphia in 1776 would have thought that their world had ended as if by fire.
It seems to me that we have, over the last three decades or so, walked back in time through the Enlightenment and past the Renaissance to a time when science is ignored if not hated; to a time when religion is not a matter of personal solace so much as an instrument of general aggravation, subjugation and torment; to a time when education of the people is regarded as an extravagant luxury, and the working person is valued lower than the work they render.
Corporations are our new found and supreme sovereigns. Their word is unquestioned law and written for them by their serfs and courtiers in our government. The ultra rich, rich and greedy politicos, who have long since forgotten who elected them, are the ruling aristocracy. It is the purpose of the working person to honor and support their divine right to rule. To paraphrase Elizabeth there is only one God in America, money, everything else is trivial. We don’t want to cut windows into people’s souls, we want to strip them bare and hold them for ransom.
I believe that we are racing toward the end of one world and the beginning of another. There are others who must believe it too, for their desperation to stop it grows daily. The people gathered out on the street under the Occupy banners seem to be prophets of that new world. With no violence and no chain of command they embody mission without malice, expression without ego, determination without destruction. They have reached back in time to grab the principles of Humanism by the hair and drag them into the second millennium. Perhaps their cooperation and cohesion is a prognostication of a way of living that takes those ideals to the next step in the evolutionary process.
I hear the criticism that the people of Occupy have no leaders and no clearly defined demands. What they have is a new way of thinking. No hierarchy means no monarchy of any kind. No prescribed agenda means the freedom to think, believe and create. Just as Michelangelo, Galileo, Shakespeare, Kant, Mozart and Jefferson thought, believed and created in their eras. This innovation in thought should not be held against them. We must not allow that. Particularly, considering the mess the old way of thinking has made of the only world we have to stand in.
The American people are, in many ways, living in a drug induced coma. The drug is consumerism. The dealers in and pushers of the drug are predatory lenders, predatory banks, predatory credit card companies, predators on Wall Street and most despicable of all the predatory colleges and universities that pray on our children. We have been completely commercialized; deeply and digitally desensitized; persistently pimped and spiritually vandalized.
We are so far in debt as a people that we can’t tell our ass from our elbow. It is not because we feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the sick, or even because we condescendingly and graciously allow retirees to collect the Social Security they own. No, it is because the narcotic poisoning from which we suffer is one of the great driving engines of the unfettered, unrestrained, unregulated Free Market – which is getting freer every day. Laissez-faire Capitalism, in all its glory, elevates the liberty of the Market above the liberty of the individual.
While under the influence of a raging consumerism stupor, acquisition becomes a survival imperative and greed a catalytic mechanism. Thus, the Free Market enjoys its liberty while the individual stumbles blindly into the captivity of addiction.
One purely Liberal principle: our materialism is not going to save us. Only our humanity can save us, and that is not to be found on any market – free or otherwise.
In the plant world, “Them that works, eats.” Their work is done in the light; when their light is obstructed they starve and die. A beautiful garden is predicated on the knowledge that every plant must have an equal opportunity to stand in the light they need. This is a perfect economic system. Somewhere between the shadows of greed-twisted Capitalism and the dark tyranny of power-distorted Communism, there is a place in the light for each of us to stand and work.
I am not a fan of Mr. Obama’s policies. I voted for a Liberal president and got a Centrist. It’s my belief that people who spend too much time in the middle of the road get hit by trucks. He has been hit by several, some driven by advisors.
Nonetheless, I want to meet the person who can clarify how the head of Godfather’s Pizza is any more qualified to sit in the Oval Office than President Obama. I would like to know how anyone can think that the slippery Mr. Romney, sliding between positions like a whore between parked cars on Saturday night, demonstrates a level of integrity superior to Mr. Obama’s.
I need to understand why 234 gleeful executions and the creation of many hundreds of minimum wage jobs qualifies Governor Perry to be the Chief Executive. I am sure that the Governor and the employers in Texas think, or would like us to think, that they are doing the workers a great favor. However, you don’t raise a family very well on minimum wage. Hell, you don’t take care of yourself very well.
Even though Congressman Paul is the darling of the Libertarian rant, I don’t see how he is a greater champion of freedom than our sitting president. He wants government to die a quick and painless death, yet remain viable enough to invade every uterus, GYN office and OB/GYN surgical suite in America. I find Paul particularly irritating because it sounds to me like what he is saying is simply this, “The full rights and enfranchisements of Libertarianism are the exclusive privileges of men.” Well, good luck with all that dumpy.
The Republican field is like a day in the Denver Zoo, except that the animals there are usually beautiful and almost always endearing. You have to wonder if the Right isn’t suicidal relying as they appear to be on the same old slanders, misrepresentations, obfuscations and distortions. Flying in the face of public opinion on most major issues of the day, they just keep jacking their jaws. Hopefully next year will be the year that they learn the limits of propaganda. After all, when you have nothing to offer but blame the party line gets damned old.
When Ronald Reagan sent his assault on the Middle Class “trickling down,” Mr. Obama was in his twenties. When Clinton shoved NAFTA up the Working Class’ ass, Mr. Obama wasn’t in government. When Wyatt Earp and Darth Vader stormed the White House under the banner of the Neo-Conservatives and other assorted nut jobs, then bent the American people over a table, Senator Obama did not enter office until their second term. He was a Junior Senator, mark me, Junior – that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee. After three years in the White House, obstructionist Congress and Blue Dog, Fun House Democrats notwithstanding, he is being held responsible for every rape ever perpetrated against the American people and all the resulting social diseases.
I don’t know why any intelligent person wants that filthy Presidential gig – if you don’t think Obama is intelligent you’ve spent too much time on the pipe. We lay-out millions and millions and millions of dollars electing a guy president, only to lay-out millions and millions and millions more trying to drive him out of his bloody mind. I think that we should just announce to the world that Baseball is no longer our National Sport; Ceremonial Human Sacrifice has taken its place. The persistent, mind numbing sacrifice of the extraordinary for the mediocre, the luminous for the lackluster and the profound for the trivial.
“Christie for President,” only the Republican Right could think of such a thing. Gov. Christie’s approval rating has been falling steadily, particularly with women voters who he doesn’t seem to understand have the franchise, since he began to gut education. His disapproval rating is neck and neck with Obama’s. He got a bump from his handling of “Irene.” However, as we learned from Rudy “a subject, a verb and 9/11” Giuliani, that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee. Oh happy days, compared to the sleek, smooth, smart Mr. Obama, Christie will look like just what he is – a thug with all the sophistication and charm of a cop beating up a drunk, as Raymond Chandler once said.
I hate politics and most politicians. I follow them out of a sense of self preservation. Yet, I hate them because they ruin people’s lives, twist and distort reality to promote a world view that serves the few over the many.
Millions are out of work in this country through no fault of their own. They are treated like leaches when they need unemployment, while politicians inveigh for deregulation of the institutions where the fault lies – pleading job creation.
Home ownership has gone up in smoke – granted some people took out mortgages they couldn’t afford – that does not take the peddlers and frauds off the hook. Although, we hear very little about them these days.
Republicans, who can’t win a fair fight, go about gerrymandering districts, shutting poor people out of the voting booth, and changing the rules of the Electoral College. That is when they aren’t destroying unions.
Tea Party trolls sit in audiences applauding the death penalty and squealing, "let him die.” Just before they trot off to church and bath themselves in the salvation of a poor working man they would spit on today.
Children are slipping below the poverty line at a dreadful rate. Their health care is dissolving. Their education is evaporating into the old political payback system. Replace public education with a fee-for-service-free-market-fiasco, add a healthy dose of religion, and call it, “school choice.” Good for the kids, hell no. Good for wealthy, contributing special interests, you bet; much like privatizing the military and the prisons.
While all this misery boils up from the American People like poisonous fumes the politicians stand around on the Hill and in the White House pissing on each other’s shoes, or supporting lamp posts on the corners of Pennsylvania Avenue with their partisan slip showing, soliciting any lobbyist that will toss them a dime.
This is the state of American politics. These are our political leaders up to their tits in legalized corruption.
You are on the other side of the looking glass now, Alice. What are you going to do about it? What are any of us going to do about it?
Brad and I were in Washington D.C. ten years ago on this day. He had a training in Falls Church, and I decided to go sightseeing in the District. I had an appointment to tour the Capitol and was hoping to see Tom DeLay. They hadn’t arrested him yet, and I wanted to thumb my nose at him. Half way down the Mall I heard a sound. It was loud, everywhere and nowhere, an explosion but not an explosion. A minute or so later a guy came out of a building to my left.
“Someone flew a plane into the Pentagon,” he whispered.
“You're nuts? The Pentagon is the most secure building in the world. That is like pissing on Zeus’ shoes.” I was a little harsher than I intended.
In exactly the same tone and exactly the same words he repeated, “Someone flew a plane into the Pentagon.” He walked away.
I knew I had better get back to Falls Church – Papa would be worried. I went to several Metro Stations that were closed before I boarded a train that let me off about 10 miles from my destination. Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, as Tennessee Williams said, I got a lift.
My dear husband was standing on the portico in front of our hotel. He was smoking. Brad is cardiac and has no business smoking. In my befuddlement I start toward him to raise hell. As I reached him, he took hold of my hand and said with tears in his eyes, “I thought I had lost you. We heard the Capitol was hit.”
“No,” I said. “Just the Pentagon.”
“Barbara, the Trade Towers are down in New York.”
“What, they just laid down?”
He turned and led me into the bar where a number of people gathered around a big screen T.V. looking at the ash and rubble which had once been one of the jewels in New York’s crown. I ordered a double bourbon - neat. I don’t drink, so I gave it to the guy next to me and told him to drink it for me. He did. He’d had several.
I bought a package of smokes and went outside to sit on a bench near the door. The color of the sky, of the trees and flowers had muted, gone flat and surreal like the world of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone or an Ingmar Bergman film. Now and then, and particularly on this day, those colors return like the lingering heartache for a lost loved one.
