I think we’ve got it now, that clear picture of what policing has become and how racism defines the gaseous mix that has made Swiss cheese of our justice system. People are gathering and marching around the nation, their i’s dotted and their t’s crossed by the lack of accountability in the death of Eric Garner, who was choked to death by one of several cops that landed on top of the big unarmed man, although he did not resist. Now “I can’t breathe” — Garners last words, repeated nine times — joins “Hands up, don’t shoot” as the protest meme of the twenty-teens.
By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
As the choke hold has long been outlawed in New York, and because the entire distressing affair was filmed by a canny bystander, it was assumed that the grand jury would present a different finding from the one in Ferguson. Didn’t happen. Jon Stewart gave us the appropriate WTF response, and when Stewart gets serious, you know we’ve come to an impasse in credibility. The result of this ruling makes Obama’s call for body cams on America’s police force moot.
It’s difficult not to notice that the nation has one foot in (ghettoized) reality and one in (elitist) delusion. How else to explain that the white murderer of Michael Brown has been allowed to move on from culpability while Brown’s black stepfather is being held responsible for hostile comments made in his moment of grief and rage? How else to rationalize the fact that the grand jury has granted Garner’s white killers their freedom while the man (of color) who came forward with the recording has been scrutinized and indicted on old charges.
This boomerang effect — bouncing off white authority to land back on black victims — has become so obvious that an NAACP official, aiding the family of a black man in Phoenix who was killed when an officer mistook a pill bottle in his pocket for a weapon, warned against too emotional an outburst. Angry black citizens, as has become painfully apparent, are damned if they do — and if they don’t.
Perhaps that is quite literal. As Jon Stewart reminded us, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “The point is, these shootings are clearly not a manifestation of systemic inequality and mistrust between the African-American community and the somehow always-justified Police-American community, but […] merely an unending bizarrely-similar series of unrelated incidents.” And, just for a moment let me don my tinfoil hat to post this interesting link, putting in question the identity of those who decided Ferguson must burn. As I commented that day, I had the feeling that announcing the verdict late at night gave a perfect dark backdrop for the requisite fire that makes White America clutch her pearls. File under “Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm.”
There have been a number of excellent articles written, the totality of which sums up the problem itself, if not the solution. I was impressed with Chris Rock’s take on this, some of which came from his Rolling Stone interview. When asked about his comment that “even Nostradamus couldn’t see the end of American racism,” Rock responded:
“We’re never going to see the end of racism per se. But Obama is like the polio vaccine of racism – people still get polio and die, but there is a vaccine. They don’t have to get it. And my kids, you know, it’s been 12 years now and there hasn’t been one racial incident in my mostly white neighborhood – not even a tiny one.”
Rock — who admits his income gives him special status — continued his commentary on race issues in a fascinating conversation with Frank Rich, nailing the delusional quality of the elitist thought-process within the white community:
“Here’s the thing,” Rock said. “When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.”
[…]
“To say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president,” Rock said. “That’s not black progress — that’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years.”
Despite fear of becoming a one-trick pony, writing only about these racial inequities and victimizations, I want to make sure we’re thinking big enough now to get a clearer glimpse of this problem. Easy enough to tear up — as I did reading Eric Garner’s final words — but that won’t change anything. Easier still to rage against what’s wrong without thinking outside the box, looking for a way to sway the whole of us back toward an ethical, humanistic future. Shaving this problem down to mere racism is leaving behind the larger “ism” I think we’re looking at today: classism.
Chris Rock is the only other person I’ve heard wonder about our leaving monarchies behind in this New World and then establishing a pecking order that mimics them. (You’ll find those comments early in the Rich interview.) This is the second time in our brief history that we’ve created a vastly rich upper class while dooming the lower class to slave-like working conditions, furthering class war. We can’t seem to help ourselves.
And it’s easiest to do that with communities of color, isn’t it! We’ve talked a bit about white privilege here at Planet Waves, but not enough in the nation at large, where people simply seem incapable of putting themselves in another’s place. We’re too busy voting against our own interests and hoping to win the lottery.
I remember reading/posting a dynamite article a few years back, written by a southern man, raised conservative, who had a life-changing experience when faced with shepherding a group of young black children through his church obligations. Taking them out to eat, he was shocked to discover that they’d never been in a sit-down restaurant, never ordered off a menu. He began to see life through their eyes and discovered that what he’d been taught was wrong, and their flippant and/or defiant behavior was simply ignorance of basic middle-class culture. He got to wondering what else he’d mistaken, and shortly after changed his political party. It was, he said, an ethical decision.
Yes, between these latest tragic poster children for black victimization and the egregious records of brutality in our for-profit prisons, it’s almost impossible to be anything but defensive if you still have faith in the justice system. (And I guess we can call our current conflagration progress, of a sort, since in decades gone by the majority felt absolutely NO need to defend brutal behavior toward those of a race or religion “less” than their own [sic.] We inch forward slowly — until we leap.)
The problem with being defensive, of course, is that’s exactly the way that rationale comes across, pouty and offended. That’s how it came across when nobody’s favorite congressman, Rep. Peter King of New York, blamed Eric Garner for his own demise, telling the world that Garner would probably not be dead “… if he had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese.” He forgot to add black.
I’m wondering how such a statement plays with the one-in-twelve asthma sufferers, the 24.7 million living with heart disease and the one-third of the U.S. population that is obese. Not all of those with these problems are people of color, hold different religious views, or are immigrants. A good many of them are white, living in areas of poverty that offer them no opportunity, voting against their own good and defending their “freedom” to the bitter end.
Obviously those of us out here in the “reality community” need to acknowledge that rational thinking, factual information and logic will not win the day. We are up against something quite different than the lefties, as a group, can grok in fullness — or at least haven’t been able to, up to this point. We need to begin to tell our story differently. We need to build a better mousetrap!
Take that sentence above: one-in-twelve with asthma, 24.7 million with heart disease, one-third of the US population obese. There’s a story there about cultural and environmental norms in this nation. There’s a finger pointing at the corporations that make money off these people not just by folding them into an opportunistic health care system, but by adding to the cause of their maladies on almost every level.
You may recognize the name George Lakoff. He is a renowned cognitive linguist and Berkeley professor who introduced a baffled nation to the conservatives’ convincing use of language — and the Democrats misunderstanding of it — in his book, Don’t Think of an Elephant.
Lakoff wrote the following in a recent interview, not about my sentence but about the corporate dominance that led to it:
Oil companies – our wealthiest corporations – are destroying the planet for their short-term profit. Corporations govern your life by putting hidden carcinogens and other poisons in your food, cosmetics, furniture, etc. for their profit, not your health. For details, go to ewg.org. These are facts. In isolation, one-by-one, they are just a laundry list. Isolated facts don’t help. Together they tell a truth: Corporations govern your life for their profit not yours, in all those ways. Name it. Repeat it. We need reform at the deepest level.
The political world is spinning itself into knots based on basic ethical considerations, and — although the progressive wing of the Democratic party has lately begun to reinvent itself — politics to the left of the spectrum has lost its moral authority. Lakoff urges the left to reclaim its dedication to the public good, to speak from the heart, communicating values instead of pointing out evidence of the hypocrisy on the other side of the political spectrum. The result of years of that has had as much effect as spitting into the wind. If we are to foster change, we have to make an effort to engage these people in a genuine dialogue.
Looking at brain science, Lakoff suggests that democracy means vastly different things on each side of the aisle. Conservatives frighten more easily, are more aggressive in self-protection. They do not stray from what Lakoff calls “strict father morality,” which is what we see at work in almost all of the punitive laws we’ve established in the last few decades, enjoying a renaissance now in this hateful business of blaming the poor for their poverty, the uneducated and unassisted for their inability to break through the barriers that hold them. Says Lakoff:
“In a strict father family, the father is in charge and is assumed to know right from wrong, to have moral as well as physical authority. He is supposed to protect the family, support the family, set the rules, enforce the rules, maintain respect, govern sexuality and reproduction, and teach his kids right from wrong, that is, to grow up with the same moral system. His word defines what is right and is law; no backtalk. Disobedience is punished, painfully, so that children learn not to disobey. Via physical discipline, they learn internal discipline, which is how they become moral beings. With discipline they can become prosperous.
If you are not prosperous, you are not disciplined enough, not taking enough personal responsibility and deserve your poverty. At the center is the principle of personal responsibility and moral hierarchy: those who are more moral (in this sense of morality) should rule: God over man, man over nature, parents over children, the rich over the poor, Western culture over non-Western culture, America over other countries, men over women, straights over gays, Christians over non-Christians, etc.”
Conservatives are absolutely assured by their faith that they hold the moral high ground, which gives them liberty to keep women in their place and treat children as property, while infantilizing the patriotism that fuels the NRA on the homefront as devotedly as it does the machinery of war around the globe. Like the Federalism that keeps states rights in place, conservatism is a close-knit, private affair.
This unquestioning belief in the patriarchy as defined by their godhead, which favors the stern father prototype out of the Old Testament, wounds us all. Notions of god-space have no ability to evolve when defined not as love, but conditional love. Clearly, the progressive empathy and nurture that drive moral convictions on governance serving the totality of the public good fly in the face of the limited conservative “tough love” mentality.
I have a hard time understanding how compassion can be argued against, personally, but we have to find the right tone to begin that conversation. Paul Krugman, for instance, tells us, “Today’s immigrant children are tomorrow’s workers, taxpayers and neighbors. Condemning them to life in the shadows means that they will have less stable home lives than they should, be denied the opportunity to acquire skills and education, contribute less to the economy, and play a less positive role in society. Failure to act is just self-destructive. But more importantly, it’s (Obama’s immigration proposal) the humane thing to do.”
That’s a progressive argument. It isn’t just an idea, it’s actual human children who need something from the society in which they find themselves. If we can begin a conversation about what to do with the undocumented who are already here — many of whom work for the people who would vote them out of the country — insisting that there must be some ethical solution we can develop between the two political camps, then we can begin to close the class-gap between both the immigrants and the population, as well as those on each side of the aisle.
Yelling at one another over the divide will not work; trying to sooth ancient and ignorant fears won’t, either. But engaging a conversation in what we should MUTUALLY do to solve problems, side-stepping the obvious traps of partisanship while inviting real solutions to the ethical challenges we face, just might. It would take real discipline, but it’s do-able. Getting to the table is the first step, one that will require not just willingness but dedication to civility.
Read Lakoff. Get a sense of how to use progressive language without reinforcing conservative jargon. Find some moderate talking points in which to begin a conversation with those who refuse to hear you, anticipate how to respond to hostility in a way to defuse it. If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, my dears, the mountain must come to Mohammed. Once upon a time we could say that this was the work of government. Now? It’s ours to do, person to person: aware, awake, purposeful.
There is no stopping a good idea once it has legs. We need to build that better mousetrap of an argument, one that engages the emotions of those who hear it, that appeals to the higher angels of anyone in shouting distance, the one that fosters a change of mind as an ethical decision. We need to create a story that points to peace, that soothes the anxiety of those who fear the progress that must come — inevitably — and when we do that, the world will find the heart-space to hear it.
Good stuff from Chris Rock, thanks for including it Judith. Show biz folk are playing an important role in this alchemy (and initiation) process, witness Jupiter in Leo now stationing, trine Eris and Pholus. Stephen Arroyo in his book Exploring Jupiter says about Jupiter in Leo “Need to act impressively and be recognized by others leads to confidence in self; has a well-developed sense of showmanship and flair”. The U.S. now has transiting Jupiter in the 8th house of the Sibly chart.
That 8th house platform is about shared (as in equally) resources and as well, transformation. With transiting Eris (conflict) in Aries in the U.S. 4th house of our roots and heritage and transiting Pholus (oops, didn’t think it would cause such a stir) in Sagittarius now occupying the 1st house of identity in the U.S. chart, we are in the thick of the Nigredo or first stage of alchemy, which is dissolution. That leads to the Albedo stage of purification and it too is painful but vital to reach the 3rd stage called Citrinitas, spiritualization and enlightenment.
“Yes and how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”
by Bob Dylan
The wind (air) is Uranus and Uranus in his Aries incarnation supplies us with the Venus element in air sign Aquarius at 11+ degrees. Transiting Venus will reach that degree on January 12-13th at the 1st quarter Moon at 22+ Libra, another air sign. Look for sudden change or even a breakthrough in values recognition then.
Transiting Mercury will be there as well, at 11+ Aquarius on January 13th as he slows his pace in preparation to station retrograde. Mercury is the gift of Neptune’s ingress into Pisces, also at 11+ Aquarius and further contributes to the dissolution phase in the alchemization of the U.S.A.
Transiting Mercury will be at 11+ Aquarius 3 times total with his last pass near the end of February when transiting retro Jupiter will be trine transiting Uranus, who will still be square transiting Pluto. It would seem then that a certain level of completion (maybe even a “leap”!) might be reached, based on the Mars Neptune conjunction in the chart for the New Moon at 0+ Aquarius on January 20.
Several years ago I decided that in the U.S Sibly chart, Saturn should stand for the Republican Party and Jupiter must stand for the Democratic Party. After reading your quote from George Lakoff, I think it better to assign the U.S Saturn to the “conservatives” and the U.S. Jupiter to the “progressives”. Thanks for that too Jude. It is the basic Saturnian fear and need to preserve (at all cost) the Structure that drives the Conservatives to close their eyes to what compassion would leak out, and cover their ears to any cries or calls for negotiation.
“Yes and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind”
The U.S. Sibly Saturn return on August 28, 2011 (the 3rd of 3 conjunctions of the transiting Saturn to the natal Saturn) had the Moon (The People) at 23+ Leo trine the MC at 20+ Aries. Transiting Jupiter is stationing now at 22+ Leo and will finally arrive at 23+ Leo on July 8th, 2015. Trans. Uranus will be at 20+ Aries on July 8th, conjunct the U.S. Sibly Chiron. Transiting Saturn, after entering Sagittarius then backtracking into Scorpio, will be exactly where he is right now, Scorpio 28+ degrees on July 8, 2015. I’m not making this shit up Jude, so we must all keep the faith. I will if you will.
be
I remember my work as a blog moderator for the Kerry presidential campaign in 2004, engaging supporters and trolls who came to attack. it was clear they were itching for a fight, using incendiary language to disrupt the conversation flow. I found myself learning to engage them in a civil discourse, since any comment you made to further the name calling would only invite more trolls to come in as reinforcements.
Even though many of the arguments made had no basis in fact, our job was to fully engage and keep the conversation on topic. Many couldn’t hang, but the few who stayed on to discuss fully found we could still disagree, amiably. it was never easy, but what it did was stop the perpetuation that calling us “libtards” as they were fond of calling us, was losing its appeal. We were talking, agreeing to disagree, and there, right there was the moment one can begin to infiltrate their thinking or reactivism into a solid argument that was cool-headed, ending in a momentary sense of mutual respect on the thread. Waste of time? Maybe, but it made alot more people begin to react with a thinking response, not a knee-jerk eaction or epithet. We were in the 2004 election and the height of the Bush Administration’s power.
It takes work, but it was, in the long run, the right way to engage.
Jude: You cleanse the doors and windows of my perception like nobody else, and i’m grateful for your weekly reminder that i need the benefit of that cleansing so as to participate in the building of a better way for our time. Thank you for helping me to be and do better every day.
Barbara: i can vouch for the fact that you are not making up your cogent observations and astute correlations of both current astrology and transits to the Sibly nativity. And grateful i am to receive your insights.
Judith, I’ve come to rely on your cogent viewpoint to re-arrange my brain cells in an orderly fashion. Thanks!
Judith,
Once again you’ve made Saturday a day for new insight, clarification and logical thinking. After watching the video of the suspicious Ferguson burnings, it’s clear that the KKK has just replaced their white hoods with sturdier gear. I’d been wondering why they’ve been so silent in the aftermath.
Thanks to Barbara, Fe, dear Len, and all at PW for sharing your many gifts…”You make me feel brand new…”
The numerological essence of the 11 is worth looking at in this discussion, be — you’ve been a treasure chest of information regarding the recurrence of that 11th degree; as well as the 22nd degree, which seems to show up in this pattern, often pinging off my natal Merc. That’s of interest to me because the 11 and the 22 (as well as the 33, moot in this conversation) are Master Numbers.
Master Numbers don’t “break down” … added to one another to make a single digit … as do the others, although that single digit colors the totality of their energy. I’ll borrow from numerology.com for a brief explanation although I’m leaving in the male/female energy portion because it speaks to the balance we need so desperately, and continue to pull toward:
“However, with the three true Master numbers, their power is not just based on the simple fact that they consist of identical digits, but because those digits are the 1, the 2, and the 3, respectively. In the case of the 11 (a double 1), it has the traits and personality of the 1 twice, and when added (11 = 1+1 = 2) becomes a 2, thereby combining the most powerful male energy (the 1, Zeus) with the equally potent female energy (the 2, Hera). Considering that the 1 and the 2 are on opposite ends of the spectrum and the sum of their combined attributes pretty much overshadows all other attributes assigned to the numbers 3 through 9 you can perhaps imagine a merging of the strongest, most driven and aggressive warrior, an unstoppable masculine energy, with the supremacy of the most intuitive, feminine, and cunning goddess. And even that does not reveal the true essence of the 11 Master number: The 11 symbolizes the potential to push the limitations of the human experience into the stratosphere of the highest spiritual perception; the link between the mortal and the immortal; between man and spirit; between darkness and light; ignorance and enlightenment. This is the ultimate symbolic power of the 11.
“Similarly, the Master number 22 combines a double dose of feminine intuitive power as represented by the 2, with the ultimate capacity to make dreams into reality; the domain of the 4. And again, the result is not just a range of attributes stacked to impressive potential, but the true essence of the 22: The ability to experience all that the 11 has to offer and apply it to the material world.”
So, be, with each of the powerful aspects you lay out for us, I also see a level of mastery flirting with each of our psyche’s, pushing us forward on the evolutionary scale! If you ask me, that’s just Divine!
And I had to laugh when you wrote, “That leads to the Albedo stage of purification and it too is painful but vital to reach the 3rd stage called Citrinitas, spiritualization and enlightenment.” Albedo is the “white” stage … the one we’re neck-deep in, currently — ha! Punnery, for the day.
This IS a stage of purification — the purge, if you will, that was warned about in the last half of the last century by the spiritual community. It coincides with the Apocalyptic mythologies, which … IMHO … are responsible for much of the nihilism we see around us. To black/white thinking, there is only life and death. To nuanced thinking, death has many meanings. Change, transformation, is one of them. When the whole of your spiritual understanding depends on black/white rhetoric, when your Soul level has not widened enough to allow you to trust your own instincts, then death must be a terrifying thought. That’s made the Christocrat’s the MOST fearful group of people imaginable, in this century. (And, because I am devoted to the Christ Consciousness, it irks me no end how many of us are trapped in “the letter, rather than the spirit, of the law.”)
Anyhow, I think you’re on target with the energy mix that’s to come — and … oh, my yes! I’ll keep the faith if you will too, although I’m NOT looking forward to the political energy coming at us after the New Year, any more than the presidential election of ’16.
We ARE in a purging curve; we ARE taking baby steps into the necessity of letting the old die and fall of its own weight, and not only is that difficult, there are too many desperate folk out there making every stupid attempt possible to stop progress … as if.
But very few of us* can miss the fact that the nation has established the most heinous mix of selfish, power-hungry, kiss-ass wannabe plutocrats we’ve seen since the Roaring Twenties in the halls of Congress … and all the public good we’ve accomplished since, is now on the line, plus some. That’s no random happening. We’re back in this tight spot to get it right — not easy to live through, but necessary if we’re to come out of this learning curve whole.
* those who voted these maniacs in will feel the result of their mistake VERY quickly, I think.
Thanks, Fe, for a first-person look at how to deal with people who have the word ‘libtard’ on the tip of their tongue. Again, none of this is easy. When we face off as political creatures — as happens in the blogosphere or any partisan discourse — it’s harder to find our commonalities, but come together as a group for some other interest, and there is an easy flow of conversation. Perhaps that’s where we can … if we teach ourselves how to speak a more emotionally compelling language … make some inroads.
Shift IS happening, day by day, individually. I think that’s where most us us can do our bit to bring others along, adding glimmers of awareness while sidestepping the attack/defend posture, building toward the tipping point. And, as be points out, keeping the faith doesn’t HAVE to mean working toward that point for generations; things have sped up, and will continue to.
Thank you, Len, for your (always) kind words — I’m happy I can add to your understanding, and be part of your internal process. You do the same for me. We get by with a little help from our friends!
And thank you both, Mary and Deborah, for adding to the conversation this week, assuring me that somebody’s listening! Very encouraging to know, wafting out here alone in Cyberspace.
And Deborah, I think you nailed it about the KKK. I suppose some of you saw the fried chicken, watermelon and 40 non-sense? I have NO doubt that some of the KKK had access to military garb, even lent them by some of the very cops that insist they aren’t racist. If you didn’t hear about that sad business, watch this … maybe even subscribe to the Young Turk’s posts, they’re excellent and timely.
Finally, of note: Mary Landrieu lost her bid to keep her job in Louisiana, ending a 34-year history in office. She was much like many of the Midwestern Dems, moderate to a fault, which makes me grind my teeth, you betcha, but allows them to go soft on the cultural issues and stay in office. Anyhow, the latest poll result shows a swath of Red states that are now TOTALLY red – Governor, House and Senate. It appears that Landrieu got 94% of the black vote and still lost soundly — which illustrates how little representation people of color will have in the New South. This does NOT bode well, my dears.
End of era, purging time, burning Karmic ribbons, etc. All part of the evolutionary process of breakdown, heading toward breakthrough. Still, knowing that isn’t very comforting, especially facing a good deal of political pain, quickly coming on. Understanding that it’s “not real” in 5D doesn’t make 3D any more comfortable, day by day, so all I can tell you is what I tell myself: take a deep breath, count your blessings and keep on keeping on!
Blessed be, every one of us!
Rubber Stamps
That man, maybe as tall as
my brother, the only difference
between them, color of skin
brought down by Lilliputian
po-lice for nothing but
tax pennies on the dollar,
his size, a challenge,
his color, a rubber stamp
on grand jury paperwork.
My brother, six feet
six inches tall tells me
about the apparent
obligation felt by
Lilliputians of all stripes
to attack him for his size.
He’s still alive
because he’s white.
Yes, it really is
as bad as all that.
Susy Crandall
Thank you, Susy — most moving. As I read it, I kept thinking of the faces at the following link … newly posted, since totals have been in question for some time. And, counting the number of youngsters that “killed themselves” while locked up in the back of police cars, I have to agree: it really is as bad as all that. We have our work cut out for us.
http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-1666672349