We re Not In Kansas Anymore Toto
by Steve Bhaerman
http://www.opednews.com
Have you ever had a dream like this? You’re cruising on the freeway, and you hit the brakes to slow down -- and nothing happens. Then you go to turn the steering wheel, and once again you have no control. You try the gas. Same thing. None of the control mechanisms are working, and you are helplessly careening down the freeway in an out-of-control vehicle. At that point, you usually wake up.
Well it’s time to wake up, America. Welcome to the new American “dream.” Over the past five years, the steering and driving mechanisms our country’s founders designed for our ship of state have been progressively (or rather, regressively) taken out of our hands. Our elected representatives ... our courts ... the “loyal opposition” ... the press ... the electoral process itself, have all come under the influence of some dark force. We find ourselves in an intractable, costly perpetual war. Civil liberties are being taken away, and those who have taken an oath to protect us are inexplicably going along with the program. Gold collar criminals and high-ranking officials are looting the commonwealth, as the middle class in our country disappears. Scientists who point out global warming or environmental distress are being silenced. The media keeps us numbed up and dumbed down by distracting us with the most divisive or trivial issues.
Aside from the real massive problems we face if we would only face them -- peak oil and global warming, and a house-of-cards economy where the Chinese hold the strongest hand -- we face the gravest political and moral crisis in our history. Yes, there was the bombardment of the Capitol during the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Great Depression, the war against fascism sixty-five years ago, and the ongoing cold war, ostensibly against totalitarian communism. But never, never in our history has the “enemy” been so starkly and obviously our own rulers.
This realization is a hard gulp to swallow. None of us have wanted to go there. But now, we must courageously wake up to the realization that “there” is already “here.” The body politic is gravely ill, and unless we open our eyes and face this condition squarely in the face, government of the people, by the people, and for the people will indeed perish from this earth, only to be replaced by neo-feudalism disguised as Big Brother totalitarianism.
This is not a time to push the panic button, but a time to push the “calm button” that activates our highest values of love, courage, imagination and curiosity. Einstein has told us that a problem can never be solved at the level of the problem. So as the “political” solutions seem to dissolve one by one, we must find the solution at the next level up.
Amazing Disgrace: How America Got Eaten By Her Own Shadow
First though, let’s see if we can get a handle on where we are and how we got here, as a nation and as a species. There is a phrase in America the Beautiful, our spiritual national anthem, asking God to “shed His grace on thee.” Indeed, grace has shone on this country, perhaps because of the radically enlightened principles and documents this country was founded on. The progressive forces of truth, freedom, and extending opportunity to all have created enough graceful momentum to counterbalance genocide against native peoples, slavery, and our own unique brand of imperialism.
But I submit we’ve finally used up our grace. We hit “peak grace” right after World War II, and we’ve been burning a dwindling supply of it for the past sixty years. Some would say that the downward turn began when we took a page from Orwell and renamed the “Department of War” the “Department of Defense,” and sold our soul to the military industrial complex. Since the end of World War II, we have sponsored over 200 wars resulting in the deaths of millions, all to protect “the free world.” Now I have a fierce practical streak in me, and an understanding that there are indeed “evil-doers” in the world, and we need to take steps to contain these toxic forces and protect ourselves. But now it’s time to face the sad fact that we’ve become the toxic force we’ve been protecting ourselves against.
Something happened back there in the late 1940s, and we took a wrong turn. We empowered a secret government, and we instructed them to do whatever they needed to do to “protect us,” as long as they didn’t tell us what they were doing. The way to beat the evil-doers was to out evil-do them, and the way to do that in a democratic republic like ours was to make sure we the people never had to directly face the moral dilemma of contradicting our highest spiritual values in a misguided effort to protect ourselves.
But when you set out to act in stealth and secrecy -- even in the service of “good” -- at some point you become the very thing you oppose. For who thrives in the darkness, but the dark forces? So it is that in the world of spyfare, we’re necessarily dealing with murderers, criminal syndicates, drug runners, and at some point we morphed into the anti-life force we claim to be fighting. Even worse, over the past two generations we have become addicted to the war economy. And thus we began our downhill slide from grace, slowly being devoured by our shadow.
The first obvious time the dark forces broke through the invisible “membrane” of decency was the Kennedy assassination. Even for those who bought the lone assassin theory, it was a perpetration that forever damaged our political psyche. Think of how the 60s began -- with hope, with the Peace Corps, with Alliance for Progress -- and how it ended -- with the assassinations of King and RFK, with angry anti-war protests, with Kent State. For those of us who grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance -- and believing in “liberty and justice for all” -- America would never be the same.
As the 60s gave way to the 70s, 80s and 90s and the hippies and yippies became yuppies, we the people “sold out” or rather “bought in” to the pervasive dominant meme that it was money, money, money that mattered. The culmination of the “me” society was the 90s, when a Democrat, Bill Clinton, raised more money than any Presidential candidate had ever done before. Under the guise of “benevolent” globalization, corporate rule and privatizing resource-rape was extended even further.
By the time 2000 rolled around, we had done run out of grace. Had we still had a little cache of grace in the bank, the scale would have tipped to Gore. 9/11 might have been thwarted or averted, and in any case not turned into “the New Pearl Harbor.” Had we had an even a little emergency stash of grace under the mattress, Congress or Colin Powell or someone would have been able to stop the Iraq War before it started. In 2004, voting fraud would have been exposed in Ohio and Florida, and Kerry would have been declared the rightful winner. And on and on it goes.
And here we are. We have seen our economy go from a “value-adding” economy to a “wealth-extracting” one. The dollar is now probably worth less than the paper it’s printed on. We’ve devolved into a debtor nation, little more than a banana republic in a super-power suit, armed to the teeth. We’ve watched the country of Martin Luther King regress back to the country of Pat Robertson. We have allowed ourselves to be dragged along into an illegal pre-emptive war for empire based on lies. Our President has been brought up on charges by an International Tribunal (with arms control expert Scott Ritter, Gen. Janis Karpinski and other respected authorities testifying) and the story isn’t even worth a paragraph in the “liberal” San Francisco Chronicle. We are flat out of grace, and have in fact disgraced our Founding Fathers. We have hit spiritual bottom -- and most Americans don’t even know it.
The Truth Shall Upset You Free
The first step in facing any grave illness -- particularly when the disease is addiction-based -- is telling the truth. This may not be pleasant or easy, but as the Swami says, “The truth shall upset you free.” The condition we face is life-threatening, not just to liberty and justice, not just to our democratic republic, but to human life on the planet itself. (We can assume that whatever happens to us, the roaches will very likely survive.)
In addition to the truths the framers of the Declaration of Independence held self-evident 230 years ago, we must now take the first step of facing some darker self-evident truths:
1. The results of the Presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 were very likely the result of fraud, and thanks to very hackable voting machines future elections are in jeopardy.
2. The official 9/11 story has more holes in it than Dick Cheney’s hunting buddy, and could very well be the most devastating and cynical scam ever imposed on the American people.
3. The media -- the fabled “fifth estate” has become the “fifth column,” betraying the truth left and right, mostly right. The one major difference between our “liberal” media and Pravda of 30 years ago is that the Russian people knew they were being lied to.
4. The Democratic Party leadership (an oxymoron very high in irony content) lacks vision, courage and integrity. You can count on them to once again trot out the slogan that has kept them safely out of power for years now: “We’re not as bad as the Republicans.” Not even this is true. In my book, the enabler bears as much responsibility as the abuser. Until they prove otherwise, the only things the Democrats are good for are taking our money and wasting our votes.
Now I hope all of that didn’t sound too cynical, because cynical is the last thing I want to be. The upside of “disillusionment” is that it disabuses us of of the “illusionment” that keeps us knocking on doors that will never open, and marching down pathways that lead to a dead end. The release of false hope is the gateway that can lead to real hope. Hopefully, that is where this is all leading.
So before we take a look at what we CAN do, let’s bump up to the macro to have a look at the big, big picture. We humans are, as a species, facing a “rendevous with destiny.” Despite Einstein’s assertion more than 100 years ago that we live in a universe where all is related, we are still acting as if we’re in a “Newtonian” universe of force opposing force. We humans are definitely slow learners. We’ve had “only” a century to integrate Einstein, and we used his theory to develop weapons of mass destruction. It’s been 2000 years since Jesus said “Love thy neighbor,” and yet we humans still seem to be marching under the “eye-for-an-eye” banner.
But now in this shrinking world that could definitely use a good shrink, push is finally coming to shove, and in the light of shrinking extractable resources and expanding intractable regimes, we are on a collision course with ourselves. The “middle” path of muddling along is about to hit a dead-end, and we stand at a crossroads in human evolution (or devolution). We must now choose one and only one of these two paths: “We’re all in this together,” or “it’s every man for himself.”
We can “play it safe” and say it’s either dominate or be dominated. We can then rally (or huddle) behind our troops and celebrate our own survival as we excuse genocide against others as a necessary by-product. It’s been done before, you know. And not just by the Third Reich. Every empire has done the same thing, and has found some creative way to cloak selfish motives in nobility. But time is running out, and more and more humans are coming to see that from the perspective of all the great spiritual teachings in the world, “survival” at this level is the booby prize.
What we humans are being called to is no less than an evolutionary step toward really giving our professed “faith” a run for its money. We are being called out from behind petty and ancient feuds, unconscious “miasmic” patterns that have thwarted us for centuries. We are being called out from behind the remote, away from reality TV, and towards reality. We are being asked to take the “red pill,” and emerge from the matrix of machine-made illusion and cultivate the “tree of life” right here in the so-called “real world.”
In this evolutionary mission, we have more going for us than we think. We have the teachings and techniques of great spiritual paths and masters, many just recently liberated from secrecy. We have technical know-how, and those most extraordinary of human resources, imagination and curiosity. We have worldwide networks of communication. And of course, we have the force of necessity, the Mother of all reasons to change and change now.
On the other side, the main weapons they have are fear and force. Although these may seem formidable in the short run, in the end they are no match for the power of life. “Life” relentlessly moves forward in greater expansion, creativity, diversity and freedom. Like the weed poking up between the cracks in the sidewalk, life has a tendency to prevail.
Of course, they want you to forget this, and sadly too many people have. As political responses to situations that are “bigger than politics” have been thwarted, and as the current Administration rains down outrageous perpetrations on a daily basis, people have allowed themselves to become disheartened. Without the spiritual compass that helped guide the likes of Martin Luther King, many modern progressives fail to see the spiritual context behind the values they are fighting for. How else could the “moral authority” in this country have been ceded over to those who rail against two men lying together as an “abomination,” but have no problem with a whole bunch of men lying together to bomb a nation?
Time To Face The Music and Dance
So how do we face these issues on a higher level, and translate all of this happy-sounding philosophizing into effective action? How do we make the shift from politics as usual to politics as unusual? What does the American Evolution look like in practice? Here are some ideas which will hopefully lead to better questions, and clearer answers:
1. Cultivate the Field. Early last summer -- at a time when I was feeling particularly frustrated and impatient -- I got an insight which proved to be prophetic: At times when the “form” isn’t fully formulated, focus on “the field.” In other words, all we had to do was to continue speaking our truth with open-hearted courage, and these thought-forms would manifest in unexpected ways. Indeed, within a few months, we had seen the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon, and the whole world had seen the Bush Administration’s response to Katrina. Later on in the year, Scooter Libby was indicted, and then Tom DeLay.
Right now, the most effective thing we can do on a daily basis is speak the truth with “calm passion.” In their heart of hearts, a majority of Americans know there is something terribly wrong. We’re not in Kansas anymore, and we may not even be in America, at least not the America we love. The media refuses to go any deeper than positional squabbling. So we must do it. The biggest obstacle we face right now is our collective unwillingness to see our own shadow. However, once a critical mass of us face this fear directly -- and act anyway -- it only becomes easier. Remember, the wall of lies is “hanging by a threat.” When we the people no longer feel threatened by that threat, the wall of lies will crumble into dust. All it takes are one or two or three or a dozen respected prominent Americans to “break through the soundless barrier,” and the media will finally have to cover the story. The stronger the “field” of courage and truth we create at the grassroots, the more inevitable the breakthrough.
2. Stop Marching, and “Stand” Instead. The new theme song for “politics as unusual” should be “I Ain’t A-Marchin’ Anymore.” What? How else are we going to protest? How else are we going to show the world our numbers? I heard Tom Hayden say something last year that struck a chord: “Marching and demonstrations are a tactic used by a besieged minority. Today, those who oppose the Iraq War are in the majority.” The whole idea of marching, shouting, protesting and being “anti” is oppositional. In a perverse way, it actually strengthens our “opponents” by reinforcing polarity.
So, I propose that we never march again, and that we “stand” instead. No more yelling, no more shouting, no more spouting anger that squanders energy better spent. Marching indicates there is someplace to get to. Standing demonstrates that we are already “here” and are quietly steadfast as a “stand” for the world we know is possible -- and necessary. “Standing” is an acknowledgment that we are not fearful or intimidated. It is an invitation to courage, and an inspiration to those who are ready to evolve beyond dueling dualities. Standing also acknowledges that darkness isn’t the “opposite” of light, it is the absence of light. So there is no need to “fight” darkness, as long as we shine the light.
What might this look like? I am envisioning something I call the 50 Million American “Stand.” 50 million Americans voted for regime change in 2004, and with the President’s approval numbers hovering just above freezing, there is the growing understanding that we have now devolved into an entirely new form of government -- an “illegitimacy”: government of the bastards, by the bastards and for the bastards. I know that sounds harsh and judgmental, but have you noticed that these people aren’t even feeling the need to cover up their crimes? Our government is cheating on us, and top officials are brazenly being seen consorting with these gold-diggers in public.
So ... what if on an appointed day -- July 4th would work -- Americans willing to be a stand for what our Founders stood for (truth, justice, liberty and transparency) gathered at every town hall, city hall, state capital, and on the mall in Washington, D.C.? What if 50 million or more Americans took that one day to stand in front of whatever symbolizes governance in America, and reminded our “leaders” that this is ultimately “our” country? Those unable to be there in person could “appoint” a representative by handing them a letter to that effect, and on the appointed day in every city, county, state and in our nation’s capital these citizens would let themselves be counted. Thus, a gathering of 10,000 people might represent 50,000. The theme would be “Stand Up ... And Be Counted.” And we would indeed count the people who show up and are represented, and in this way we would let our erstwhile leaders know that we “count.”
The prevailing mood at all of these events would be hope, inspiration, joy, and a peaceful steadfastness that perhaps hasn’t been experienced since the great civil rights march on Washington forty-something years ago. We would aim for 50 million Americans to be represented, and because of the local connection, the events would have to be covered by every local newspaper and TV station. These events would be reported worldwide, and the message to the world would be: We the people of America have made the choice to take back our country, our heritage, our legacy.
3. Pray For the Soul of America, and Invite the People of the World to Do the Same. I’m sorry if this sounds unctuous, and before you secular humanists reading this run for the hills please take a minute to sit with this idea. There are many definitions of prayer, but if we go with the most generic, it boils down to “shared intention for the good.” In his book on the subject, Dr. Larry Dossey cites studies that show people who are “prayed for” actually recover more quickly from surgery and have fewer complications. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to matter what tradition the prayer is in. As long as there’s healing intention, it works. In this sense, even a self-identified atheist could participate in this field, simply by wishing an individual, a group, or a situation well. In a similar way, practitioners of Transcendental Meditation have correlated an influx of meditators to an area with a reduction of the crime rate.
Would it help heal our afflicted body politic? Well, it would be worth finding out, and like chicken soup, it couldn’t hurt. Imagine a “tag-team” prayer vigil, 24/7 where any and all spiritual groups that want to participate can keep the “flame” burning. Imagine tens of thousands of communities across the country, unified in intention that “only love prevails.” Such a “field” would enliven and inspire the same kinds of gatherings worldwide, among those of all religions (and no religion at all) ready to affirm “we’re all in it together.”
Think of it this way. If we the people of America are able to turn things around here, imagine the inspiration for the rest of the world. Imagine the impact that real freedom -- not economic exploitation and cultural disrespect covered by a thin, artificial veneer -- would have on those who might otherwise be polarized into radical Islam. Who knows? If we birth real freedom at home and treat others with respect abroad, we might be surprised to find that millions of people who “hate” us now will step up and proclaim, “I’ll have what they’re having.”
4. Flex Your Fiscal Muscles. In a country where it’s money, money über alles, let’s begin to flex our fiscal muscles by withdrawing financial energy from what we don’t want, and investing it in what we do. 50 million voters voted for regime change in 2004. If each of those individuals shifted just $100, that’s $5 billion. Now, of course that ain’t much, but it’s a start. What if just one fiftieth of that number, a million people, pulled the plug on their cable, or stopped their daily newspaper subscription, and shifted that money to support online news services such as TruthOut, OpEd News, Common Dreams?
A recent Zogby poll indicated that 64% of the Democrats in Pennsylvania are women, and I suspect that the trend is true in other states as well. Since every piece of marketing research I could find says that women do the bulk of the shopping in this country, that would indicate a lot of under-utilized clout. What if women who instinctively understand that a “you-and-me” world is safer and more life-affirming than a “you-or-me” world, used their spending power to feed the healing forces in this country, and starve the hurting forces? For starters, folks can check out BuyBlue.org.
If all this sounds “idealistic,” remember that we are rapidly approaching the point where the ideal must become the real deal -- otherwise, when it comes to human life on the planet, it’s no deal. For a long time now, we’ve been hearing that every generation must step up to defend freedom. Now it’s our turn. In the past, we’ve been called upon to march to some foreign land, armed with a gun. In these times, being a stand for freedom looks like standing up where we are, armed only with the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the knowledge that every religion or spiritual path boils down to some variation on the Golden Rule. A critical mass of citizens standing on the brink of evolution, firmly and fearlessly, stripped of illusion. Now that is the real “naked power” that will change the world as we know it.
by Steve Bhaerman
http://www.opednews.com
Have you ever had a dream like this? You’re cruising on the freeway, and you hit the brakes to slow down -- and nothing happens. Then you go to turn the steering wheel, and once again you have no control. You try the gas. Same thing. None of the control mechanisms are working, and you are helplessly careening down the freeway in an out-of-control vehicle. At that point, you usually wake up.
Well it’s time to wake up, America. Welcome to the new American “dream.” Over the past five years, the steering and driving mechanisms our country’s founders designed for our ship of state have been progressively (or rather, regressively) taken out of our hands. Our elected representatives ... our courts ... the “loyal opposition” ... the press ... the electoral process itself, have all come under the influence of some dark force. We find ourselves in an intractable, costly perpetual war. Civil liberties are being taken away, and those who have taken an oath to protect us are inexplicably going along with the program. Gold collar criminals and high-ranking officials are looting the commonwealth, as the middle class in our country disappears. Scientists who point out global warming or environmental distress are being silenced. The media keeps us numbed up and dumbed down by distracting us with the most divisive or trivial issues.
Aside from the real massive problems we face if we would only face them -- peak oil and global warming, and a house-of-cards economy where the Chinese hold the strongest hand -- we face the gravest political and moral crisis in our history. Yes, there was the bombardment of the Capitol during the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Great Depression, the war against fascism sixty-five years ago, and the ongoing cold war, ostensibly against totalitarian communism. But never, never in our history has the “enemy” been so starkly and obviously our own rulers.
This realization is a hard gulp to swallow. None of us have wanted to go there. But now, we must courageously wake up to the realization that “there” is already “here.” The body politic is gravely ill, and unless we open our eyes and face this condition squarely in the face, government of the people, by the people, and for the people will indeed perish from this earth, only to be replaced by neo-feudalism disguised as Big Brother totalitarianism.
This is not a time to push the panic button, but a time to push the “calm button” that activates our highest values of love, courage, imagination and curiosity. Einstein has told us that a problem can never be solved at the level of the problem. So as the “political” solutions seem to dissolve one by one, we must find the solution at the next level up.
Amazing Disgrace: How America Got Eaten By Her Own Shadow
First though, let’s see if we can get a handle on where we are and how we got here, as a nation and as a species. There is a phrase in America the Beautiful, our spiritual national anthem, asking God to “shed His grace on thee.” Indeed, grace has shone on this country, perhaps because of the radically enlightened principles and documents this country was founded on. The progressive forces of truth, freedom, and extending opportunity to all have created enough graceful momentum to counterbalance genocide against native peoples, slavery, and our own unique brand of imperialism.
But I submit we’ve finally used up our grace. We hit “peak grace” right after World War II, and we’ve been burning a dwindling supply of it for the past sixty years. Some would say that the downward turn began when we took a page from Orwell and renamed the “Department of War” the “Department of Defense,” and sold our soul to the military industrial complex. Since the end of World War II, we have sponsored over 200 wars resulting in the deaths of millions, all to protect “the free world.” Now I have a fierce practical streak in me, and an understanding that there are indeed “evil-doers” in the world, and we need to take steps to contain these toxic forces and protect ourselves. But now it’s time to face the sad fact that we’ve become the toxic force we’ve been protecting ourselves against.
Something happened back there in the late 1940s, and we took a wrong turn. We empowered a secret government, and we instructed them to do whatever they needed to do to “protect us,” as long as they didn’t tell us what they were doing. The way to beat the evil-doers was to out evil-do them, and the way to do that in a democratic republic like ours was to make sure we the people never had to directly face the moral dilemma of contradicting our highest spiritual values in a misguided effort to protect ourselves.
But when you set out to act in stealth and secrecy -- even in the service of “good” -- at some point you become the very thing you oppose. For who thrives in the darkness, but the dark forces? So it is that in the world of spyfare, we’re necessarily dealing with murderers, criminal syndicates, drug runners, and at some point we morphed into the anti-life force we claim to be fighting. Even worse, over the past two generations we have become addicted to the war economy. And thus we began our downhill slide from grace, slowly being devoured by our shadow.
The first obvious time the dark forces broke through the invisible “membrane” of decency was the Kennedy assassination. Even for those who bought the lone assassin theory, it was a perpetration that forever damaged our political psyche. Think of how the 60s began -- with hope, with the Peace Corps, with Alliance for Progress -- and how it ended -- with the assassinations of King and RFK, with angry anti-war protests, with Kent State. For those of us who grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance -- and believing in “liberty and justice for all” -- America would never be the same.
As the 60s gave way to the 70s, 80s and 90s and the hippies and yippies became yuppies, we the people “sold out” or rather “bought in” to the pervasive dominant meme that it was money, money, money that mattered. The culmination of the “me” society was the 90s, when a Democrat, Bill Clinton, raised more money than any Presidential candidate had ever done before. Under the guise of “benevolent” globalization, corporate rule and privatizing resource-rape was extended even further.
By the time 2000 rolled around, we had done run out of grace. Had we still had a little cache of grace in the bank, the scale would have tipped to Gore. 9/11 might have been thwarted or averted, and in any case not turned into “the New Pearl Harbor.” Had we had an even a little emergency stash of grace under the mattress, Congress or Colin Powell or someone would have been able to stop the Iraq War before it started. In 2004, voting fraud would have been exposed in Ohio and Florida, and Kerry would have been declared the rightful winner. And on and on it goes.
And here we are. We have seen our economy go from a “value-adding” economy to a “wealth-extracting” one. The dollar is now probably worth less than the paper it’s printed on. We’ve devolved into a debtor nation, little more than a banana republic in a super-power suit, armed to the teeth. We’ve watched the country of Martin Luther King regress back to the country of Pat Robertson. We have allowed ourselves to be dragged along into an illegal pre-emptive war for empire based on lies. Our President has been brought up on charges by an International Tribunal (with arms control expert Scott Ritter, Gen. Janis Karpinski and other respected authorities testifying) and the story isn’t even worth a paragraph in the “liberal” San Francisco Chronicle. We are flat out of grace, and have in fact disgraced our Founding Fathers. We have hit spiritual bottom -- and most Americans don’t even know it.
The Truth Shall Upset You Free
The first step in facing any grave illness -- particularly when the disease is addiction-based -- is telling the truth. This may not be pleasant or easy, but as the Swami says, “The truth shall upset you free.” The condition we face is life-threatening, not just to liberty and justice, not just to our democratic republic, but to human life on the planet itself. (We can assume that whatever happens to us, the roaches will very likely survive.)
In addition to the truths the framers of the Declaration of Independence held self-evident 230 years ago, we must now take the first step of facing some darker self-evident truths:
1. The results of the Presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 were very likely the result of fraud, and thanks to very hackable voting machines future elections are in jeopardy.
2. The official 9/11 story has more holes in it than Dick Cheney’s hunting buddy, and could very well be the most devastating and cynical scam ever imposed on the American people.
3. The media -- the fabled “fifth estate” has become the “fifth column,” betraying the truth left and right, mostly right. The one major difference between our “liberal” media and Pravda of 30 years ago is that the Russian people knew they were being lied to.
4. The Democratic Party leadership (an oxymoron very high in irony content) lacks vision, courage and integrity. You can count on them to once again trot out the slogan that has kept them safely out of power for years now: “We’re not as bad as the Republicans.” Not even this is true. In my book, the enabler bears as much responsibility as the abuser. Until they prove otherwise, the only things the Democrats are good for are taking our money and wasting our votes.
Now I hope all of that didn’t sound too cynical, because cynical is the last thing I want to be. The upside of “disillusionment” is that it disabuses us of of the “illusionment” that keeps us knocking on doors that will never open, and marching down pathways that lead to a dead end. The release of false hope is the gateway that can lead to real hope. Hopefully, that is where this is all leading.
So before we take a look at what we CAN do, let’s bump up to the macro to have a look at the big, big picture. We humans are, as a species, facing a “rendevous with destiny.” Despite Einstein’s assertion more than 100 years ago that we live in a universe where all is related, we are still acting as if we’re in a “Newtonian” universe of force opposing force. We humans are definitely slow learners. We’ve had “only” a century to integrate Einstein, and we used his theory to develop weapons of mass destruction. It’s been 2000 years since Jesus said “Love thy neighbor,” and yet we humans still seem to be marching under the “eye-for-an-eye” banner.
But now in this shrinking world that could definitely use a good shrink, push is finally coming to shove, and in the light of shrinking extractable resources and expanding intractable regimes, we are on a collision course with ourselves. The “middle” path of muddling along is about to hit a dead-end, and we stand at a crossroads in human evolution (or devolution). We must now choose one and only one of these two paths: “We’re all in this together,” or “it’s every man for himself.”
We can “play it safe” and say it’s either dominate or be dominated. We can then rally (or huddle) behind our troops and celebrate our own survival as we excuse genocide against others as a necessary by-product. It’s been done before, you know. And not just by the Third Reich. Every empire has done the same thing, and has found some creative way to cloak selfish motives in nobility. But time is running out, and more and more humans are coming to see that from the perspective of all the great spiritual teachings in the world, “survival” at this level is the booby prize.
What we humans are being called to is no less than an evolutionary step toward really giving our professed “faith” a run for its money. We are being called out from behind petty and ancient feuds, unconscious “miasmic” patterns that have thwarted us for centuries. We are being called out from behind the remote, away from reality TV, and towards reality. We are being asked to take the “red pill,” and emerge from the matrix of machine-made illusion and cultivate the “tree of life” right here in the so-called “real world.”
In this evolutionary mission, we have more going for us than we think. We have the teachings and techniques of great spiritual paths and masters, many just recently liberated from secrecy. We have technical know-how, and those most extraordinary of human resources, imagination and curiosity. We have worldwide networks of communication. And of course, we have the force of necessity, the Mother of all reasons to change and change now.
On the other side, the main weapons they have are fear and force. Although these may seem formidable in the short run, in the end they are no match for the power of life. “Life” relentlessly moves forward in greater expansion, creativity, diversity and freedom. Like the weed poking up between the cracks in the sidewalk, life has a tendency to prevail.
Of course, they want you to forget this, and sadly too many people have. As political responses to situations that are “bigger than politics” have been thwarted, and as the current Administration rains down outrageous perpetrations on a daily basis, people have allowed themselves to become disheartened. Without the spiritual compass that helped guide the likes of Martin Luther King, many modern progressives fail to see the spiritual context behind the values they are fighting for. How else could the “moral authority” in this country have been ceded over to those who rail against two men lying together as an “abomination,” but have no problem with a whole bunch of men lying together to bomb a nation?
Time To Face The Music and Dance
So how do we face these issues on a higher level, and translate all of this happy-sounding philosophizing into effective action? How do we make the shift from politics as usual to politics as unusual? What does the American Evolution look like in practice? Here are some ideas which will hopefully lead to better questions, and clearer answers:
1. Cultivate the Field. Early last summer -- at a time when I was feeling particularly frustrated and impatient -- I got an insight which proved to be prophetic: At times when the “form” isn’t fully formulated, focus on “the field.” In other words, all we had to do was to continue speaking our truth with open-hearted courage, and these thought-forms would manifest in unexpected ways. Indeed, within a few months, we had seen the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon, and the whole world had seen the Bush Administration’s response to Katrina. Later on in the year, Scooter Libby was indicted, and then Tom DeLay.
Right now, the most effective thing we can do on a daily basis is speak the truth with “calm passion.” In their heart of hearts, a majority of Americans know there is something terribly wrong. We’re not in Kansas anymore, and we may not even be in America, at least not the America we love. The media refuses to go any deeper than positional squabbling. So we must do it. The biggest obstacle we face right now is our collective unwillingness to see our own shadow. However, once a critical mass of us face this fear directly -- and act anyway -- it only becomes easier. Remember, the wall of lies is “hanging by a threat.” When we the people no longer feel threatened by that threat, the wall of lies will crumble into dust. All it takes are one or two or three or a dozen respected prominent Americans to “break through the soundless barrier,” and the media will finally have to cover the story. The stronger the “field” of courage and truth we create at the grassroots, the more inevitable the breakthrough.
2. Stop Marching, and “Stand” Instead. The new theme song for “politics as unusual” should be “I Ain’t A-Marchin’ Anymore.” What? How else are we going to protest? How else are we going to show the world our numbers? I heard Tom Hayden say something last year that struck a chord: “Marching and demonstrations are a tactic used by a besieged minority. Today, those who oppose the Iraq War are in the majority.” The whole idea of marching, shouting, protesting and being “anti” is oppositional. In a perverse way, it actually strengthens our “opponents” by reinforcing polarity.
So, I propose that we never march again, and that we “stand” instead. No more yelling, no more shouting, no more spouting anger that squanders energy better spent. Marching indicates there is someplace to get to. Standing demonstrates that we are already “here” and are quietly steadfast as a “stand” for the world we know is possible -- and necessary. “Standing” is an acknowledgment that we are not fearful or intimidated. It is an invitation to courage, and an inspiration to those who are ready to evolve beyond dueling dualities. Standing also acknowledges that darkness isn’t the “opposite” of light, it is the absence of light. So there is no need to “fight” darkness, as long as we shine the light.
What might this look like? I am envisioning something I call the 50 Million American “Stand.” 50 million Americans voted for regime change in 2004, and with the President’s approval numbers hovering just above freezing, there is the growing understanding that we have now devolved into an entirely new form of government -- an “illegitimacy”: government of the bastards, by the bastards and for the bastards. I know that sounds harsh and judgmental, but have you noticed that these people aren’t even feeling the need to cover up their crimes? Our government is cheating on us, and top officials are brazenly being seen consorting with these gold-diggers in public.
So ... what if on an appointed day -- July 4th would work -- Americans willing to be a stand for what our Founders stood for (truth, justice, liberty and transparency) gathered at every town hall, city hall, state capital, and on the mall in Washington, D.C.? What if 50 million or more Americans took that one day to stand in front of whatever symbolizes governance in America, and reminded our “leaders” that this is ultimately “our” country? Those unable to be there in person could “appoint” a representative by handing them a letter to that effect, and on the appointed day in every city, county, state and in our nation’s capital these citizens would let themselves be counted. Thus, a gathering of 10,000 people might represent 50,000. The theme would be “Stand Up ... And Be Counted.” And we would indeed count the people who show up and are represented, and in this way we would let our erstwhile leaders know that we “count.”
The prevailing mood at all of these events would be hope, inspiration, joy, and a peaceful steadfastness that perhaps hasn’t been experienced since the great civil rights march on Washington forty-something years ago. We would aim for 50 million Americans to be represented, and because of the local connection, the events would have to be covered by every local newspaper and TV station. These events would be reported worldwide, and the message to the world would be: We the people of America have made the choice to take back our country, our heritage, our legacy.
3. Pray For the Soul of America, and Invite the People of the World to Do the Same. I’m sorry if this sounds unctuous, and before you secular humanists reading this run for the hills please take a minute to sit with this idea. There are many definitions of prayer, but if we go with the most generic, it boils down to “shared intention for the good.” In his book on the subject, Dr. Larry Dossey cites studies that show people who are “prayed for” actually recover more quickly from surgery and have fewer complications. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to matter what tradition the prayer is in. As long as there’s healing intention, it works. In this sense, even a self-identified atheist could participate in this field, simply by wishing an individual, a group, or a situation well. In a similar way, practitioners of Transcendental Meditation have correlated an influx of meditators to an area with a reduction of the crime rate.
Would it help heal our afflicted body politic? Well, it would be worth finding out, and like chicken soup, it couldn’t hurt. Imagine a “tag-team” prayer vigil, 24/7 where any and all spiritual groups that want to participate can keep the “flame” burning. Imagine tens of thousands of communities across the country, unified in intention that “only love prevails.” Such a “field” would enliven and inspire the same kinds of gatherings worldwide, among those of all religions (and no religion at all) ready to affirm “we’re all in it together.”
Think of it this way. If we the people of America are able to turn things around here, imagine the inspiration for the rest of the world. Imagine the impact that real freedom -- not economic exploitation and cultural disrespect covered by a thin, artificial veneer -- would have on those who might otherwise be polarized into radical Islam. Who knows? If we birth real freedom at home and treat others with respect abroad, we might be surprised to find that millions of people who “hate” us now will step up and proclaim, “I’ll have what they’re having.”
4. Flex Your Fiscal Muscles. In a country where it’s money, money über alles, let’s begin to flex our fiscal muscles by withdrawing financial energy from what we don’t want, and investing it in what we do. 50 million voters voted for regime change in 2004. If each of those individuals shifted just $100, that’s $5 billion. Now, of course that ain’t much, but it’s a start. What if just one fiftieth of that number, a million people, pulled the plug on their cable, or stopped their daily newspaper subscription, and shifted that money to support online news services such as TruthOut, OpEd News, Common Dreams?
A recent Zogby poll indicated that 64% of the Democrats in Pennsylvania are women, and I suspect that the trend is true in other states as well. Since every piece of marketing research I could find says that women do the bulk of the shopping in this country, that would indicate a lot of under-utilized clout. What if women who instinctively understand that a “you-and-me” world is safer and more life-affirming than a “you-or-me” world, used their spending power to feed the healing forces in this country, and starve the hurting forces? For starters, folks can check out BuyBlue.org.
If all this sounds “idealistic,” remember that we are rapidly approaching the point where the ideal must become the real deal -- otherwise, when it comes to human life on the planet, it’s no deal. For a long time now, we’ve been hearing that every generation must step up to defend freedom. Now it’s our turn. In the past, we’ve been called upon to march to some foreign land, armed with a gun. In these times, being a stand for freedom looks like standing up where we are, armed only with the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the knowledge that every religion or spiritual path boils down to some variation on the Golden Rule. A critical mass of citizens standing on the brink of evolution, firmly and fearlessly, stripped of illusion. Now that is the real “naked power” that will change the world as we know it.
