by Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Hard to believe it’s only a handful of days until Christmas, Solstice traditionally setting the mood for a mindful — some might even say sacred — spiritual event. And although there are rampant examples of cutthroat consumption and humbug out there, this is one of the rare times in the year when the spotlight lingers on kindness, generosity and giving.

While that has the capacity to create a year-end more peaceful than the other eleven months have produced, we could heal much of what ails us by celebrating these attributes weekly, hourly, daily and without fail, year-round.

We weren’t all that mindful this year, I’m afraid. This year the winter celebration comes at a time when international news is spiking — perhaps anticipating Saturn’s coming slide into Sagittarius — and anxiety over the Republican takeover looms, though some of us are too entrenched in personal holiday angst to notice. And while it sounds counter-intuitive, let’s take some comfort in having reached enough maturity to understand that if we’re staring down our personal demons this holiday, that may be a very productive thing.

It’s all part and parcel of our project to become authentic. Time to observe not just the world around us, but ourselves. Time to give up the pretense that we don’t know when things are coming when we so obviously do. Despite blanket protestations about how shocked we are when pivotal happenings suddenly appear in our headlights — summoning our internal Drama Queens and a long list of ain’t-it-awful’s — humans really have to work at being oblivious to all that’s going on around them.

If a stranger gets in our personal space, for instance — violates our auric field — we can instantly feel the energy shift, sometimes strongly enough to raise our hackles and send us running for an exit, intent on hunting down a smudge stick. In short, our instincts are working even when we fail to hit the ‘on’ switch. Training ourselves to notice our feelings rather than stuff them down is critical to responding to circumstances, rather than reacting to them.

On a less personal level, when we hear about things being done by our government that rub us wrong, or injustices occurring in our community or neighborhood that shame or disturb us, we have a choice to respond or do nothing, but pretending these happenings don’t have ramifications on our daily lives is sheer nonsense. This kind of behavior not only invalidates any surprise on the horizon when similar events repeat later, but creates a platform for alternative realities that have no basis in truth or integrity. They’re illustrative of Stephen Colbert’s (how I’ll miss him!) ‘truthiness’.

There have been such amazing examples of that this week that it’s worth appreciation for the sheer chutzpah of it all. For example, it’s pretty difficult to turn away from unwanted truth when we hear that the President has signed legislation ending Social Security benefit checks for Nazis.

“Nazis?” you ask? To be sure, and only a handful were ever denaturalized (read: deported, but still receiving government payments), although we took in plenty of them after the war. Look up Operation Paperclip and think of it as the tip of the iceberg. This nation is no stranger to the truthiness concept. So much for our abhorrence of tyranny and torture.

And then there’s the Cuban situation, covered so expertly by Eric in the subscription offering this week. Marco Rubio, Floridian, son of Cuban immigrants and probable presidential candidate, says that the President’s deal with the Castros to launch an end to fifty years of punitive ideological blockade is yet another example of Obama’s “tyranny,” and that he is “… willfully ignorant of the way the world truly works.” Rubio insists that he knows “… the Cuban regime and its true nature better than this president does or anybody in his administration does,” speaking to his hatred of Castro’s political oppression, civil rights violations and continuing allegations of torture.

This is the kind of commentary that makes me throw things at the television screen (happily, my household is littered with soft squeaky pet toys that bounce harmlessly.) Turning to Comedy Central for validation of my insights, I almost always get them.

Jon Stewart, carrying the flag for the daily exposé of hypocrisy alone now, jumped on Rubio’s outrage like a duck on a bug, waving a thick copy of the recently released Torture Report in his hand. Fidel Castro may be all that Rubio imagines him to be but I think it’s safe to say that we can put our homegrown team of Bush/Cheney in his league without a moment’s hesitation — with Marco a foot soldier of their ideology.

And of course there’s the e-mail hack of Sony Pictures that has Hollywood peeking behind its trash bins hoping to spot North Korean assassins. Seth Rogan’s most recent movie, The Interview, is a farce that’s annoyed third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un. This L’il Kim (to me, each of them is a L’il Kim) has carried on the work his forbearers began by systemically terrorizing his people to the point of semi-consciousness. This most recent tantrum over a movie he calls a “declaration of war” belies the fact that the majority of his cowed followers will never see it. In Kim’s kingdom, it’s worth one’s life to try — seriously.

And now that the entertainment industry has had a fit and fallen in it, we may never see The Interview either. Sony — red-faced from leaked e-mails that show some of their executives to be as petty as the rags that cover their news bites — cancelled premiers and pulled the picture entirely when hackers mentioned the dreaded “9/11.”

Scrambling for a replacement in lieu of this anticipated holiday offering, some theatres announced they would show Team America: World Police, a biting, satirical puppet-show movie presentation, North Korea pivotal in its plot, released some years ago by the South Park writing team, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. That idea was quickly nixed by a spooked Paramount Pictures, who want no truck with L’il Kim’s gulags, beheadings and — now — hacking.

While this successfully calls cyber terrorism to our attention, it has reportedly set national security scrambling to find some link to Iran, reported to have hacked into an extensive casino system earlier this year. Clearly, cyber-war is being declared by rogue nation-states as a way to impact powers stronger than themselves, and — like guerilla warfare — this allows a handful of techies to potentially wreak havoc on banking systems, the electrical grid or even nuclear installations. But, knotty as is this challenge, Obama has to handle it carefully, quickly, quietly — and we may never know the totality of his response.

Today the FBI formally accused North Korea of the cyber-crime, with speculation that China’s hands may be dirty as well. No news on Iran, although I’m sure Homeland is digging furiously to make the Neocons happy. And I am extremely pleased to post this strongly-worded commentary from the President, in which he suggests that Sony made a mistake in reacting so quickly:

We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” Obama said. “If somebody’s able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary they don’t like, or news reports they don’t like. Or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of someone whose sensibilities probably need to be offended.

It’s interesting that George Clooney, shortly after reports of Sony’s predicament, tried to rally the studios to stand firm against this attack on free speech, but he had no takers. Now the North Korean GOP (Guardians of Peace, go figure!) has told Sony to eliminate all signs of The Interview or more of their sensitive material will be published. Apparently blackmail is working nicely here, with Sony cowering behind the rampant fears that are making it possible for as ridiculous a figure as L’il Kim to be in charge of what Americans can watch on the silver screen.

It’s a pretty sad day when we wimp out on an entertainment blockbuster in order to placate a chubby little dude with a cherub’s face, a bowl haircut, the instincts of a blood-maddened piranha and an opinion of himself to make the Gods roar with laughter. And it’s worth noting that it’s the business class that’s caving today, despite their tough-guy persona and their party line that “these colors don’t run” (ummmm — except in the case of cyber-threat.)

As painful as it is, all this talk of human rights and tyranny comes at a perfect time, doesn’t it? Our world becomes more conflicted by the day, with examples like the siege in Sidney and the Taliban attack on children in Pakistan, in some sick effort to “share the pain.” Yet, with so many examples of not just our national failings, but our own human failings, on parade, any defense of holding the moral high ground rings false facing the facts on the ground. We are not just surrounded by violence, the kind that’s turned viral and systemic, but here in our nation, we approve it:

New polls show that 54% of Americans think torture is OK “sometimes.” And that’s just the Democrats.

There have been more than a hundred school shootings since Sandy Hook, and the NRA is still pretending none of this is about them. Guns and ammo are big sellers this Christmas season.

Missouri now equals Texas in executions, Ohio and Oklahoma falling just behind. Faulty chemical compounds and lowered standards of mental awareness in prisoners notwithstanding, state-approved vengeance is celebrated by those who think killing keeps us safe.

And in one of those divine coincidences so many of us see as messengers from a higher intelligence, Oprah Winfrey’s civil rights movie, Selma, is premiering at a time when the whole world is watching the struggle between black citizens in America and a policing presence that is targeting people of color system-wide, and with prejudice.

We can’t pretend we don’t know all this is going on around us. We can’t “un-know” something, after the fact. Truthiness is still an option, but that’s not just an unwise choice, it’s become obviously neurotic, archaic behavior. So I invite you to feel around within the larger space we all inhabit, here on planet Terra, and tell me if you feel what I feel: we’re in the midst of a major game change.

While it’s hard to dig out the particulars of our current challenges to name as either good or bad, moment by moment — and while this is surely not what we envisioned when we voted for hope and change — even though all the information ain’t in yet, it feels as though we may have finally entered a positive, if painful, period of transition. Energy is moving in a big way.

Remember, we asked for change; all of us, in one way or another. It was provoked by a decade or two of mindless accumulation and nose-to-the-grindstone pursuit of the good life, seemingly gone wrong right after the century turned. Truth be told, some of us began that process of release earlier by years, so we weren’t caught, gob-smacked, when the Supreme Court opened the lid on long-awaited mayhem, a decade to follow that felt like somebody slammed the gear shift in reverse. We’d already seen the cracks in the façade. We’d already charted the astrology that stood in the corridor of our future, awaiting us.

So, as we try not to notice what’s going on in the news this holiday season, let’s at least acknowledge that this is only grist for the mill, grinding slowly; that we don’t know how it’s going to look as it plays out but we’re putting our faith in our higher angels and this process of refinement we find ourselves within.

Let that be our Christmas present to one another, as in being ‘present’ in our lives and in our national consciousness, one moment at a time and with intent to contribute our portion to the process of Shift.

The season offers its own challenges, of course. Those of us who are reduced to painful memories of difficult holidays past, or wonderful ones far behind us, must find that place of peace in which we can hold a vision for a better future while not allowing our baggage to contribute to a miserable present. If we get out of our heads — the seat of judgment — and into our hearts — the seat of the Soul — we can begin to breathe again, and find the expanding joy in these last days of 2014.

One of the stories that remind us how to accomplish that is a Taoist folktale. I’m sure you’ve heard it before:

Once upon a time a farmer let his old, but only, horse go free, deciding the beast deserved its last days of freedom. Neighbors commiserated with his poor fortune in no longer having a horse to pull his plow. His response? “We shall see.”

Several weeks later, the horse, now refreshed, returned to him bringing several wild horses with him. The neighbors were stunned by the mans good fortune, but again he said only, “We shall see.”

Not long afterward, the farmer’s son broke a leg trying to ride one of the unbroken horses. The neighbors were very distressed at this sad turn of events, asking the man how he might accomplish his work, but the farmer only said, “We shall see.”

And not long after that, the local warlord came to the village to conscript the able-bodied to fight in an epic battle. Neither the man nor his son were deemed fit, but most all of the other men and boys were taken into service. The neighbors sympathized with the farmer’s loss of face, reflecting the sad truth that his household capacity had so diminished that he was unable to participate. The farmer simply nodded. He would wait and see.

Soon it was learned that the warlord had been badly beaten, and few of the villagers had survived to return to their families. The farmer and his son were among the few capable of working the land, and as he was able to prosper, he helped all those around him in need. The town folk assumed that he must be very happy at this turn of events, and you know the rest …

We know what the farmer would say about his circumstances: he would acknowledge the same truth we must tell ourselves if we are to put pain behind, if we are to keep our peace in these conflicted times. Circumstances come and go, but the journey leads us forward to that which will refine our understanding and grow our Soul. Our ability to find our own peaceful center of gratitude and contentment does not depend on external changes but on our willingness to touch down lightly on the events of the day, never closing ourselves off from our good.

Photo by Judith Gayle

As A Course In Miracles has it, much as there is peace and war, there is love and fear: if we give the day to love, there can be no fear in it. So here, as the holy days come closer and the Shift of Ages continues to produce a kaleidoscope of changing circumstance, my wish for you this holiday is one of abiding love, of kindness extended and kindness felt.

I offer you Solstice stars and Christmas gingerbread in celebration of the Is, and I want for you the small material gifts that please you and larger ones that include courageous acts of forgiveness and radical acts of love in this splendid season of Light. You are not just loved, this holiday season, you ARE love — the very expression of the Divine Creative in a  world eager for your compassionate contribution. Whatever your traditions, old or new, may you catch a glimpse of joy this holiday, keep the spark alive in the months ahead. And lastly, I affirm bright blessings for us all, which — I’m quite sure — we shall see.

There are so many topics that might be written about today that it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole to select one; just when you smack one down, another pops up. We could discuss the amazing clash of civilization playing out in response to the Torture Report, with Dick Cheney emerging from his hidey-hole to deliver scathing remarks to spider-friendly FOX News, while most of the CIA uses the same kind of duck ‘n cover defense used by foot soldiers throughout history: “I was just doing my job.”

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

We might examine the new federal guidelines regarding racial profiling, which only applies to federal programs, not your local cop shop, or take a look at the call for further sensitivity training in the halls of law enforcement, which is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig (pun, no pun).

True, Obama is expected to issue executive orders regarding oversight of military equipment going to police, as well as requiring extensive training in its appropriate use, but that won’t impact the dark heart of racism that exists in small towns everywhere. Hopefully, it will at least put local bullies on notice that someone is watching.

If we’re worth a tinker’s dam as human beings, we’ll have found the level of state-approved sadism become visible these last weeks to be not just AWESOMELY (Colbert here and Stewart here) distracting but deeply disturbing. In the land of the free and home of the brave, cops are picking off black youth with impunity, tazing pregnant mothers and autistic kids, while Texas and Missouri feel free to execute retarded prisoners on death row despite federal guidelines that forbid it. Ohio has botched so many of these drug-induced procedures, putting the offender through Constitutionally-forbidden cruel and unusual punishment, that the ONION wrote a piece entitled, “Ohio Replaces Lethal Injection With Humane New Head-Ripping-Off Machine.” Sounds almost merciful, compared to what’s been going on recently.

We could even open the lid on some of the good things that are happening — rare as a liberal at an evangelical revival — because POTUS is using his executive power without much fanfare to try to balance the right-tilt, or we might review a recent decision by SCOTUS that makes the Supremes seem almost reasonable, given their own considerable list to the right (and, as an aside, don’t count on the continuation of either). We could look at any of those things, but today let’s try splashing our faces with the cold water of realism and tackle the big green elephant in America’s living room: unregulated capitalism complicated by an addictive level of consumerism that has led us to full-blown plutocracy.

After pre-Black Friday sales shooting an arrow through our Thanksgiving festivities, there was Black Friday itself, followed by pre-Cyber weekend and Cyber Monday, then Cyber week, which — presumably — ends on Friday. I’m not counting on it. As I live too far from amenities to forgo buying on line, I’m stuck. Unfortunately, this option carries a cost in privacy, and due to the dreaded ‘cookies’ of cyber life, I presume my in-box will immediately fill with whatever newest cyber-salesmanship comes next. Like the gutting of Thanksgiving traditions — and the appearance of Christmas paraphernalia even prior to Halloween — nobody asked me what I preferred. Money won this round.

Money is the Gawd we worship on these shores. That’s always been true to some degree, the founders having established the seriousness of America’s capitalism by dumping tea into Boston’s bay, but now the mandate of the corporate board room as the holy of holies has gone as viral as fears over Ebola. I fault the religious right for this escalation of valueless secularism. If they hadn’t re-created Christian philosophy to resemble some darkly-inspired Disney cartoon, droolingly simplistic and insultingly ignorant, many of us wouldn’t have tossed the whole of religion over the side to sink with the tea.

In the years that followed, many of us who considered ourselves spiritual-while-secular failed to realize that it takes a certain amount of education to keep a system of ethics without pinning it to habitual practice and religious philosophy. When we throw something overboard, we create a void that must be filled. Unfortunately, the nation filled its own ethical void with shallow thinking and ambition for money and power. Now, sandwiched between fear and paranoia among the elders and the lack of structured ethical values in the generations that followed, we find ourselves with only mammon to bow to.

The Christocrats — read that Republicans, although the conservative base is a good deal more Wall Street than Church Street — have developed some very interesting ideas, force-fed to the home schooled and packaged for sale to those most nervous about things that go bump in the night. Capitalizing on that movement, the Koch brothers have spent years investing in research to discover how to capture the zeitgeist and harness it to their desires. They seem finally to have perfected their mojo with a data mining project that is, as Eric proposed in his subscription piece, a “sign of the times.” Do not be surprised, then, if an outlier presidential candidate surfaces with the K brand on his/her rump.

Combined with large donations to education providers that meet their prerequisites, the result of this kind of social engineering — smacking of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its cohorts — can be seen in the latest bill to come before our lame duck Congress, the Omnibus Budget Bill. This is the trillion-dollar baby, the one that is close to passing while containing enough poison pill riders to give the average liberal a very bad case of agita.

If you’re a C-SPAN wonk, you might recognize this baby. It isn’t new, it’s been kicking around the House since 2013, closely matching, word for word, a proposal written by Citigroup. It turns back regulations and allows banks to do more high-risk trading: the same kind that all but burned down our fiscal house, which had to be bailed out by taxpayers. The already fragile Dodd-Frank financial reform act takes multiple hits in this proposal, while the five big banks that deal in derivative trading — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo — will benefit. Let Mother Jones fill in the blanks if you’re interested.

This Omnibus Bill, which will cost upwards of a trillion bucks and keep the nation from shutting down once again, contains something for everybody to bitch about. The Baggers object bitterly to the “moderation” included in this proposal, funding Obamacare and other “liberal” projects. They insist that the bill’s touted “bi-partisanship” shows that Boehner’s gone too soft by refusing to defund the dreaded “amnesty” offered by Obama’s immigration plan.

On the left, the bill is seen as a monument to triangulation, Obama giving in too quickly to the big money faction and selling progressive leadership down the river. It is, they insist, the same kind of short-sighted accommodation Clinton sought when he signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, established the Commodity Futures Trading Act and completely redesigned welfare. Indeed, the bill itself — best referenced by Charles Pierce, I think, who named it “a veritable compost heap of Republican goodies” — seems to make no one happy but that infamous one percent.

Republicans aren’t good at looking back. It seems encoded in their DNA to let themselves off the hook while trolling for someone to blame things on. They depend upon the ignorance of the American public when it comes to politics. They only tortured because they had to and they’re only giving the store away to big business and banksters because jobs, jobs, trickle down, jobs (or, as Al Franken once titled a book, “Lies and the lying liars that tell them”). Their greatest skill, like baby quail running in lockstep behind their mother (but not nearly so cute) is unity. They do “hive mind” better than any other type of citizen here in North America. They all “get the memo” and abide by it, even though the information may not serve their best interests.

Democrats aren’t as good at herding their diverse kennel of cats, but at least they have the grace to look guilty when charged. The schism that’s finally being felt in the liberal party is shaking like an earthquake, thanks to the ascendency of big money, brought to us by clueless culture voters on the right and uninformed moderates in the middle this mid-term. It shouldn’t take long for a real sense of buyer’s remorse to set in when Wall Street pops its cork in celebration and the only thing that trickles down to the rest of the country will be slim pickings.

This current government funding bill has brought out the harshest judgment on party policy heard in years — referenced in the press as “a revolt” — and led by no less than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is not a member of the Progressive Caucus but is being supported in her criticism of this bill by over 70 members of that group. They are mostly House members that include dependable lefties like Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Raúl Grijalva, Alan Grayson, and accompanied by the ONLY Senator aligned with the caucus, Bernie Sanders.

To their credit, however, there are a number of mainstream Dems complaining about this bill and very reluctant to support the White House, which seems to want to just get this over with. the Prez relieved that the Pubs are making an attempt to do ANYTHING that smacks of compromise. It’s apparently time to throw the cards in the air and pick a side. And although they wouldn’t admit it, Pubs must be silently ruing the day they fought Obama’s desire to appoint Elizabeth Warren to the newly created and continually endangered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where her duties would have been limited.

Instead, she found a job in the Senate as the progressive voice of the Democratic Party, and she’s not afraid to use it. With rare clarity on the Hill, here’s what she had to say:

“I come to the floor today to ask a fundamental question — who does Congress work for? Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Or does it work for all of us?”

“A vote for this bill is a vote for future taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street. It is time for all of us to stand up and fight.”

This arrives on the heels of Warren’s loud protestation over the nomination of Antonio Weiss, Wall Street insider, to Treasury. This is an example of the “revolving door,” Warren asserts, supported by policies of both parties, but in service to no one but the one percent. A number of senators — Durbin, Franken, Shaheen and a conservative, Joe Manchin — are also opposing the nomination and for the same reason.

The Wall Street wing of the Democratic party is beginning to look a lot smaller these last few days, even though, as Robert Reich writes, “… the reason Democrats have pulled their punches with the financial sector for years is because it’s hard to punch the hand that feeds you.” As to Warren, this is not a woman to whom political maneuvering matters.

I believe her when she says she doesn’t want to be president. This is a senator who values the truth, within her purview. I’ve heard she is not supportive of various other issues progressives favor, like vanquishing the XL pipeline for instance. But what she does understand — feels she has a personal stake in — she puts herself on the line for.

By the time you read this, the bill will probably be in the can, awaiting a signature on Obama’s desk. At this point, Elizabeth Warren and her progressives are holding up a Senate vote on the poison pill that allows derivative expansion, and it’s important to understand that the principled stand she’s taken on this is not equal — as is being suggested by CNN as I write — to those held by Ted Cruz on the right. It’s taking a good bit of nerve to stand on that populist principle, to split her party and oppose her president. At risk today is closing down government, not a gamble for the faint of heart.

Still, this is just the opening shot on these kinds of heart-burns. In January, we begin a two-year brush with the wish-list of plutocracy, champagne glasses clinking in the ivory towers and the unaware below them bumbling along without a clue that life is about to get tougher. Not good news, but always best to bite the bullet before it bites you. Ultimately, we will manage it and it will inform the nation in ways we don’t yet appreciate.

And before I close, I want to do a little reminder of the “politics is personal” sort. I want to bring anything you’ve read here, buzzing around like abstractions, down to earth. This is the reason that the differences between Wall Street and Main Street are important:

A friend in her mid-seventies, who takes occasional work to try to flesh out her slim Social Security check, got caught by traffic cameras making a rolling stop this week. The system generated a picture of her failing to stop for the obligatory three-seconds, and sent a bill for $436.00; half of her monthly income. It seems to me that this is the kind of extortion that has kept Ferguson, and neighboring communities, in the cross-hairs. What was that example we reported? Some 1,800 residents and over 33,000 warrants? Warrants that citizens have no way to pay for or deal with? When the government feels free to consider the public a cash cow, it’s time to make changes.

A friend who has had chronic problems with arthritis was prescribed an 8 ounce bottle of topical cream that was helpful with pain. Covered by insurance, he was told his cost was $90.00, paid by his plan. As the yearly deductibles are due to kick in, he looked over the paperwork that is sent from time to time by his insurance carrier and discovered that the cream was charged out by the pharmaceutical house that offers it at $2,100. My friend called, indignant, and spoke to a representative, who said he’d have to speak to a pharmacist, who, you will not be surprised to learn, wasn’t available at that moment. Nor since. When these kinds of disparities are tolerated by the system, it’s time to make changes.

A family member could not afford a non-generic of a med she used every day, but the generic option simply didn’t do the trick. Although she only sees her (expensive) specialist when necessary, she contacted him because of her symptoms and he insisted she get the real stuff,” hundreds of dollars worth a month. When she told him she couldn’t afford it, he wrote her a script and gave her the name of a Canadian pharmacy where she now spends pennies on the dollar for the exact same meds in question, delivered promptly to her door by her mail carrier. When we have to go outside our own borders to get our needs met, it’s time to make changes.

It’s time to make changes, because we’re being victimized. Time to decide where we stand because the culture war has just been given a green light. Time to support those who support us and let the others fall by the wayside. In the wake of near-genocide of young black men, a close look at terrorism through the lens of an inquisitor, and a coming handover of power to the business class that considers us all a demographic to be squeezed and wrung out until dry, it’s time to take these politics very personally.

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.

Thanksgiving 2014 has come and gone, the last of the Scorpio energies taking their seat at the table, adding to the angst in anticipation of the inevitable Sagittarian blurt. I suppose, given the November energy mix, that every family gathering can expect at least one provocative moment – pushing buttons, kicking baggage, awakening dragons — and some, of course, can anticipate more than others.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

When I was a kid, prior to every large occasion my Libra mother would advise that “a lady” would never discuss religion or politics in a social gathering (sex, in those days, was out of the question, of course). And as a Sadge with weighty Scorpio placement, I did my best to contain my inquiring mind, but in typical fire-fashion, was as clueless as a puppy snagging the neighbor’s nylons when my offhand comments created a donnybrook at the table. I can still see my mother burying her face in her hands.

It seems inevitable that every November, all the tensions and dysfunctions of family relations merge with those of the larger American family for (as my daughter’s little clan calls seasonal events with the in-laws) Festivus. Most everyone must gird their loins in advance of a full-on family affair, because – as Edgar Cayce explained – family represents the most Karma we will ever face.

This year, some of the pent-up national tension that had been building was purged earlier in the week, when St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch provoked a Thanksgiving topic with his prime-time announcement that Missouri considered all black persons, especially young ones, locked, loaded, and hazardous to life. By Thanksgiving Day, the larger question of justice for Michael Brown – at least for the time being – had been answered, but a whole slew of new questions had begun to gel. Ladylike or not, if Ferguson never came up in conversation, there was an elephant sitting at your table.

Anticipating a gathering marked by division, a number of “how to” articles appeared this year, with hints to guide the unsuspecting away from the sharp rocks and rip tides of a familial day of gratitude. With only two at my little gathering here in the Pea Patch – both of us pretty much in political agreement — I didn’t read any of them, but I’ve been interested to see how this worked out. Our experience of the last few days seems a litmus paper for not just our biases and cultural conditioning, but how well we’re getting the message that our racial attitudes are so ingrained in our daily lives that we simply miss our own culpability in prolonging them. That should be bright as a light bulb, popping on over our heads now, but are we noticing?

I think it’s worth collecting the stories of the hour if we are to get a grip on ourselves and our culture. Many of us seem determined to grow through these challenges, but there’s all that Chiron wounding and wincing to consider, isn’t there! As Pogo said, “We’ve met the enemy and it is us,” and that isn’t a happy revelation. I would be very interested in your Thanksgiving experience, if you’d like to add to comments. We learn most when we share. I’ve had to rely on reports from friends and family, along with news and articles, to assess our progress this year, although a number of factors seem a no-brainer to intuit.

First off, for reasons that can only be equated with pure greed, the finger in the dike of dwindling traditions popped out early in the week, announcing pre-Black Friday shopping by means of earlier store openings and/or full blown dismissal of holiday closing. That means that the full implications of the holiday season suddenly loomed, whispering of the power of credit cards, to occult the glory that is turkey. There are plenty of Black Friday addicts who would not have let dining protocols or hope for seconds interfere with their need to shop — early and continually — ‘til they drop.

Ferguson protesters had launched a boycott against Black Friday shopping, active at various locations here in the Midwest, some joining Wal-Mart workers who were marching for higher wages in Chicago. They wanted, they said, to change the day to ‘Brown Friday,’ as in Michael Brown, but it seems to have reinvented itself again this year as ’Green Friday’ instead, as in ka-ching! So far the protests in East St. Louis and elsewhere have been peaceful and – I presume – stopped very few shoppers from achieving their goals. I read one article that said those entering and exiting one store being picketed were “bemused” by the picketers’ presence – white shoppers, no doubt, unaware that there is “another America,” living, in many cases, just down the street and around the corner.

These more uneventful protests are a relief, given the emotional response to the destruction the young and angry always seem unable to understand hurts the very causes they care so much about. Earlier in the week, as peaceful protests in Ferguson were shattered by Officer Wilson’s verdict, Mike Brown’s step-father, reacting to his wife’s grief and anger, tearfully demanded that the crowd, “burn this shit down.” The next few hours saw the burning of Mike’s birth-father’s church, the one in which he had – only days earlier – been re-baptized, and now those parishioners are looking for a new spot to congregate.

In the same time frame, reports of a small bakery (owned by a white woman) in the same neighborhood that suffered vandalism and broken windows went up on Rush Limbaugh’s website, getting the attention of Sean Hannity over at FOX. Today it was announced that she had received donations of $250,000. I’d like to tell you that this represents the milk of human kindness, but it’s more like an acid drip of self-righteousness. Read the comments over at the Drudge Report and you’ll probably agree.

Those who left Thanksgiving festivities early to get their place in line for a glut of holiday buying may not have had a lot to contribute to a discussion of the Mike Brown/Darren Wilson saga anyway, but don’t count them out. I’ve been interested in who ‘gets this’ and who doesn’t, and it appears that has a lot to do with one’s personal focus. If this was only about systemic racial discrimination and our inability to put ourselves in another’s place, little would stand in the way of this behavior having the nation’s full approval, but the flaws and glaring manipulation in the Ferguson decision have stood even the judicial system on its ear, as well as its outliers.

Take CNN’s Nancy Grace, for instance, a personality I don’t consider even-handed, open-minded or even, at times, rational. In this instance, however, even Nancy can’t swallow the verdict. She told her cultish viewership that she wasn’t buying Wilson’s story that he had no choice but to protect his life by dropping the ‘demonic’ black giant. Displaying hospital close-ups of Darren Wilson’s reddened face, she asked her viewers, “Look, do you know how many times I have sided against a cop? Never. But to me, this is bigger than a badge. And I don’t like speaking out against a cop, but this doesn’t add up.”

On its face, Wilson’s story sounds practiced but sincere. The ease with which he tells it, along with his selection of words, leaves no doubt of his white supremacist leanings. He’s a man of his time and place, and – so he says – easy in his skin, with no regrets. The kind of empathy with which authority figures might become truly responsible arbiters of the law in a community like Ferguson seems beyond his simplistic us/them story of a giant black Negro ‘demon’ who was determined to kill him. No sense protesting that demons are in the eye of the beholder. No sense suggesting that Mike Brown and Darren Wilson each stood 6’4” tall, that Brown was 80 pounds heavier but was not the one with the badge or the gun. No sense explaining that the Supreme Court forbade shooting an unarmed person running away, or even one running toward you, years ago, or that Wilson should never have been allowed to testify in front of a grand jury, as explained by no less than Justice Antonin Scalia.

For a nation that touts its ‘rule of law,’ we seem both lawless and senseless to those looking in from other countries. The question is: how do we look to one another? Is this all just too black and white (pun, no pun!)? Sadly, it seems to me that Wilson is exactly the kind of stand-up guy the police force is looking for, here in Missouri and – oh shit, oh dear – perhaps even where you live, dear reader. And while Wilson will probably not go back to Ferguson as a police officer, not to worry. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations he’s received from eager supporters will give him unexpected options.

In the midst of all this Ferguson frenzy, I read an article about how racism has gotten worse since Obama took the presidency. Well, duh! Who didn’t expect THAT after the first fifteen minutes? (Rhetorical, of course. The answer is: too many of us.) In one way, we owe a good deal to the Mike Browns of this nation. To the 12-year-old black child dropped by a rookie cop this week for carrying a pellet gun in Ohio. To the black Texan on death row being denied DNA testing for the alleged murder of his white lover, a woman engaged to a white cop with a history of domestic abuse and rage issues. These souls are holding up a mirror, one we’re forced to look into. There can be – will be – no change without a very close look at ourselves and our systemic failure to value one another, to nurture and protect those among us who need our kindness and compassion.

There IS no answer to all that besets us without education, without ethics, without strong citizen interaction. Ferguson – America – has the ability to rise from these ashes like a Phoenix, taking responsibility for what’s wrong as well as opening our hearts to what’s right. There IS no solution to all that challenges our growth without communication, shared experience, empathy. Whatever we aspire toward can only be shaped and realized by the whole of us, working together, warts and all – because there IS no us and them. There is only us, gathered around humanity’s table, feeding one another as best we can.

I hope that on your Thanksgiving Day something reminded you of how greatly blessed we are as a nation, as a people, as a planet. I hope that if your buttons were pushed, some holy insight quickly followed, making sense of what eluded you. And if there was a blurt by some clueless dinner partner, unaware that they had tripped your bells and tooted your whistles, I hope they were quickly forgiven and/or — depending on your willingness to become self-reflective– appreciated.

To value one another, no matter our differences, to appreciate what is best about humankind, we must embrace our ability to recognize ourselves in each other, vowing to overcome our differences by embracing our commonalities, having learned the alchamy of compassion for ourselves and one another. Like gemstones in a tumbler, we can only begin to shine when we mix it up, grinding down our sharp edges and polishing one another into brilliance.

We’re in the midst of that period in which nothing can remain hidden for long. Old secrets have come bubbling up in these last weeks, waiting for their day in court. The question at hand isn’t whether bad, dangerous or even criminal things have happened or if allegations are believable. The question is, do these realities so wound our sense of who we think we are that we will refuse to face them squarely?

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

On a relatively mundane level, we have the ongoing saga of Bill Cosby, America’s first black television star, and the first to fashion an acceptable portrait of an upper middle-class black family with it’s clan of spunky, loveable Huxtables. Back in the day, I was an eager fan of I Spy and its smart, stylish buddy-team of secret-agents posing as tennis bums. I was quite taken by Cosby’s understated performance as refined Rhodes scholar, Alexander Scott, foil to Robert Culp’s smart-ass, hang-loose character, Kelly Robinson.

Once again, it’s always good form in our culture to create the person of color as mild-mannered and studious, rather than passionate and unpredictable. Then — as now, if you study racial politics surrounding our commander-in-chief — the simple business of representing a person of color as a respectable citizen and leading man (from 1965 – 1968) so outraged some in the south that various television stations refused to air the show. It’s one of life’s little ironies that Cosby came to be not just accepted but generously quoted by those on the right, who approve his “tough love” stance on the black community.

I was much less impressed as Cosby’s career spun out. Although, to be fair, there are things to admire about the man, his innate arrogance seems to have been tolerated, even excused, due to his talent. And although his message has almost always been pro-parenting, I think the fact that the kids coming up in The Cosby Show all called their co-star “Mr. Cosby” says something about the kind of formal authoritarianism at the heart of his philosophy. That same all-powerful sense of entitlement can be tracked in the headlines today, with compelling stories of Mr. Cosby taking a similar approach in his sexual habits. His history of 13 incidents of sexual assault — and counting — go back almost forty years.

That he is reported to have often preyed on the naiveté of young, inexperienced actresses hoping to further their careers isn’t enough of a trade-off to make these ‘casting couch’ incidents acceptable to the public, although — predictably — the political right has been slowest to condemn this activity. Having worked in education for almost a decade, I recognize the expectation of deference and respect, the opportunistic use of authority to take advantage of those too young to know better as pathological. It happens, and too often. The use of drugs and coercion, however, as detailed in some of these accounts, remains Mr. Cosby’s own personal Pudding Pops.

Do we find the protestations of Mr. Cosby’s lawyer — that these forthcoming details from multiple women are “utter nonsense” — credible? Is poor Coz being victimized by “people coming out of nowhere with this sort of inane yarn …?” No doubt the media feeds on it like candy, but is it all empty calories and no substance? I’d be really surprised, if so.

Cosby has kept mum, despite the onslaught of details being unearthed, recognizable examples of that signature arrogance as impossible to ignore as a thumbprint. At 77 he’s no doubt surprised that his long string of misbehavior has caught up with him, and it wouldn’t have, had a young comic not used his sexual history as a punch line. Thus far, the Cos has refused to “dignify the allegations” and has resumed his (scheduled but slowly vanishing) comedy performances as if nothing is amiss. The public mood, however, can best be sampled by events: the pending deal with Netflix that’s been canceled, NBC’s dropping of a comedy project, and TV Land’s pulling Cosby Show re-runs.

And In Other News: The Fight to Release the Congressional Torture Report

In other news, I’ve been following the tug-of-war between Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee (at least for a few more weeks,) and the White House, which is covering the CIA’s ass as best it can by dragging its feet on the release of the long-awaited 6,000 page Congressional Torture Report. This compendium of who did what to whom, who authorized it and to what end, has long been anticipated by progressives, who have demanded a full accounting of this series of unhappy events under the leadership of the Bush administration.

As reported by Al Jazeera American News, the report has taken seven years to produce at a cost of more than 40 million dollars, and, according to Feinstein, “uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight,” as well as “exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never again be allowed to happen.”

This week the Committee hoped for a breakthrough, but was denied release of the material at a meeting with White House personnel on the premise that simply assigning aliases to wrongdoers (which is standard procedure) won’t completely cover them from being targeted, as those with grievances could follow the sequence of events to determine who the players were. As chairmanship of this committee will change hands — and radically so, landing in the lap of a Pub who approves enhanced interrogation techniques — in the next few days, issuing the report in a timely manner has been a primary goal of Feinstein and her fellow committee members, who have spent years on this project and refuse to accept a heavily redacted 500-page summary for release to the public.

According to a Huffpost article:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who served as intelligence committee chair before Feinstein, was furious after the meeting, and accused the administration of deliberately stalling the report.

“It’s being slow-walked to death. They’re doing everything they can not to release it,” Rockefeller told HuffPost. “It makes a lot of people who did really bad things look really bad, which is the only way not to repeat those mistakes in the future,” he continued. “The public has to know about it. They don’t want the public to know about it.”

As negotiations continue, Rockefeller said Democrats were thinking creatively about how to resolve the dispute. “We have ideas,” he said, adding that reading the report’s executive summary into the record on the Senate floor would probably meet with only limited success. “The question would be how much you could read before they grabbed you and hauled you off.”

You may remember Feinstein having a fit not long ago over the CIA spying on a Senate Investigation Committee? This would be that one. Not only has this report been compromised along the way, but the parts played by those at the top levels of the Bush administration and Department of Justice have not been explored at all. The word ‘torture’ does not appear anywhere in these thousands of pages, nor is there any mention that such action is forbidden nationally or internationally. Meanwhile, the continuance of ‘indefinite detention’ at Gitmo, in violation of international law, stands in stark relief against a backdrop of ethical considerations ignored when we practice state-induced cruelty. Our seeming inability to take a principled stand, legally, against torture further eroded our standing as a moral nation.

Why is this important, right now, this minute, today? On November 12th, President Obama made his first appearance before the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva, Switzerland. In advance of this date, a dozen Nobel Peace Prize recipients wrote an open letter to the President, strongly urging him to both release the historical details of our dalliance in torture — à la Dick Cheney and his CIA operatives — as well as repudiate the unconscionable use of enhanced interrogations in the future.

Shortly after his inauguration, Obama had issued an executive order distancing his administration from torture, but until this month, he had not taken a definitive position on world-wide torture, and his refusal to hold the previous administration culpable for past action gave an impression that he was either wishy-washy on the topic or approved it.

In the prior administration, Bush and company made it clear that the CIA and military overseas were not bound to any code of decency and unless Obama imposed one, our policy on torture would remain at the whim of the sitting president. The good news is that Obama attended the Committee Against Torture — coming before an independent body of exerts who monitor this activity among those who have signed on to its precepts — with a firm commitment to not just national but international prohibitions against “torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment at all times, in all places.” Nor, we have pledged, will this commitment be put aside in times of war or conflict. That legally changes the official position of the United States government on all matters concerning torture.

All of this has become terribly obvious, hasn’t it? How can we possibly entertain the idea that we are the be-all and end-all of civilization, while standing OUTSIDE the international consensus about torture? How can we assume our medical system superior to all others when the statistics prove otherwise? How can we pretend to be a scientifically superior and benevolent culture when — Katy bar the door! — we can’t find the courage to accept a Guantanamo prisoner or Ebola patient without coming completely unglued? And we KNOW all that, don’t we! We KNOW!

We know, even if we don’t want to. It’s easier to size up a situation than ever before. Take what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri, today. An enormous overflow of police presence is keeping the lid on an ongoing protest that has no choice but to explode. The chance that a grand jury will find Darren Wilson culpable in the death of Mike Brown is, unless I’m dreadfully mistaken, zero to none, while the probability of sheer frustration and impotent rage leading to more violence seems obvious. Ultimately, the population of Ferguson will have the sympathy of those who have, at one time or another, been victimized by authority or racism, or both. Authority will win, but perhaps not in the court of public perception. Eventually, leadership in Ferguson, Missouri is going to have to change or consider itself the Mississippi of the 21st century.

The right is imploding over Obama giving a couple of years reprieve to around five million illegal immigrants, many of them already folded into the system, some for decades. The more the conservatives disdain the black guy keeping a compassionate pledge to the brown folks, the less chance the right has of getting that vote in the next election, or the one after that. As much as the Republicans talk about their family values and religious devotion, when it comes to “doing unto the least of these,” they not only fall short, they fall on their face. They can’t hide their fears or isolationism, their elitism, racism or white privilege, and those of us watching them try to get a grip on governance over the next few years will quickly discover they have no talent for it.

Eventually, the Torture Report will come out. Eventually, the Bush administration will be held accountable for failing to live up to the standards set for us by prior generations, even if it is only in the court of public opinion. Bill Cosby could tell us something about that court today, having found himself on the wrong side of it. As we’ve seen in these last few weeks, public opinion is not always trustworthy but, nonetheless, it has the ability to shift as it becomes better informed. We’ve evolved a bit on what constitutes sexual assault and it can no longer be ignored.

Who knows? Reading the Torture Report might change a few minds about who and what America has become. Watching the brutality in Ferguson has already changed perceptions about the Midwest and the “end” of racism in our time. And despite conservative paranoia, little will impact the economy or culture as millions of families breathe easier in this nation, ensuring the continuance of diversity in the American melting pot, perhaps even forcing some permanent solution to our immigration problem.

This far into our national nervous breakdown, it’s a no-brainer to figure out what’s coming next. Just read the headlines and get quiet with them. We know what the problems are, they’re mostly all revealed. We even know how to find solutions to them, we’re just too fractured by our internal angst and polarities to deal effectively with our external chaos. As we witness the problems, the solutions and the public opinion of this shifting era slowly taking shape, then, I think it’s worth a deep sigh and a calming thought or two, especially at this time of the year.

I usually write about Thanksgiving on this weekend, with a note about my ‘boat people’ ancestors, John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, who arrived at Plymouth in 1620. Our Pilgrim forefathers weren’t saints, but they weren’t sinners either. My forebears weren’t galloping capitalists, or at least they weren’t for a generation or two. I would think, given their escape from persecution in Britain, they’d understand matters of immigration, but I can’t swear to it. You’d think, given their inability to shift for themselves without help from the locals, they’d understand matters of charity, cultural difference and indebtedness, but I’m not entirely sure. I’m very sure, however, that these two (of the six family members) who survived that first year in Plymouth — to marry, thrive and live long enough to see 88 grandchildren — understood the concept of gratitude.

No matter our national or personal challenges, I heartily recommend it, this Thanksgiving: a sincere outpouring of gratitude for the beauty and wonder of our lives, the miracle of changing consciousness and dawning awareness, the love that unites us all. It is gratitude, so they say, that calls in the healing power of the Universe, and, my goodness! We can use all we can get. For the events of this year, this era, this lifetime then, I thank you all for being part of my ‘bundle’ — my larger family — and I wish you an easy passage into a cooler season, blessings galore and the most loving of Thanksgiving Days — with plenty to share, and leftovers, later.

On Tuesday last, a number of our fellow citizens had the equivalent of an adolescent tantrum. It wasn’t pretty. Oh, we had warning of ill wind, blowing erratically, since so many of us find ourselves unhappy with Washington gridlock and stalled wages, but it hardly seemed reasonable to assume that the nation would tip itself over in such a tortured and skewed example of what I call ‘knee jerk’ behavior — but, you know — what part of ‘reasonable’ do we still expect these days?

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

When we go to the doctor and s/he tests our reflexes, tapping our knee with that little rubber mallet, if all is well, our foot kicks out obediently but the doctor — a person of scientific method and an understanding of cause and effect — is deliberately NOT standing in front of us. On Tuesday last, America kicked itself in its own tenders.

“Skewed example” is easy enough to illustrate, especially on the local horizon. Thanks to a temperamental and disenchanted electorate, the GOP now controls two-thirds of state legislatures, the most since the 1920s. If you have elders in the family who remember what their parents endured during that period, ask them for stories of those Good Old Days marked by misery and despair.

I think we need another review of history, since we seem to have forgotten so much, and in the interim, allowed consumerism to replace integrity, privatization for profit to strangle the principles of commonwealth, and political influence to trample the concept of public service and statesmanship. Punch that up with the fact that this last midterm was bought and paid for — BOUGHT and PAID FOR — to the tune of $6+ billion. BILLION!

Consequently, in an odd-year election that historically belongs to (old, white, rural) Republicans — the same ones who believe the black president bought his children in Malta and purposely brought Ebola to these shores as punishment for slavery — those with the most to lose, as usual, did. To vent their national spleen over all they’re asked to bear, the American electorate decided to give over control of their future to those who will happily gut environmental and fiscal regulations, eliminate safety nets for the struggling and impoverished, block necessary governmental and judiciary appointments, and offer up corporate welfare with a wink, a wave and a chortle of glee.

And that’s only the beginning! While skimming all the good stuff off the top for themselves and their corporate masters, this new majority of legislators can now access even the slim bit saved aside for the poor, freely punishing the ‘takers’ of the nation for moral ineptitude and slothful, possibly criminal, behaviors unforgivable in the eyes of their vengeful, party-approved and increasingly elitist Prosperity Gawd. (Somewhere, the late Stranger In A Strange Land author, Robert Heinlein, is shaking his head, wondering at the hardheaded American Calvinism that forced his book out of school libraries for its brilliant revelation of the American psyche and culture, denying generations a clear-eyed look at itself.)

As Paul Krugman wrote in his New York Times blog, “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet midterms to men of understanding.” Despite everything, many of us seemingly don’t have a clue. Turns out it was only some 117,000 additional Dem votes in Alaska, North Carolina and South Dakota combined that handed control to the business class, according to Geoff Stone writing for Huffy. At least that many were no doubt denied a vote by one of the twenty-something states that have put stringent new voting laws in place, another ramification of conservatives seizing local government in so many states; more now than at any time since the Civil War.

In Ferguson, Missouri, for instance — where there doesn’t even seem to be pretense of equality — only one in four Diebold machines was working at one polling location, which (conveniently, don’t you think?) ran out of paper ballots by mid-morning. And speaking of the Pea Patch, one Missouri state House member decided to change her political party from Blue to Red on voting day, too late to wave off liberal voters. Here in the Show Me state we’ve shown the world our homegrown delusions, still blissfully unaware of what a national embarrassment we’ve become, although reviewing the international response to this election, voters in all fifty states deserve a well-earned punch in the nose.

Be prepared, there are assaults on all things progressive in the works. Keystone Pipeline will quite probably be wrapped in a budget deal: take it or take it in the posterior, America! And the celebrations on the right have mostly wound down to a roar with the exception of the Neocons, who are making a din sharpening their knives and planning which oil-endowed country to offer their military expertise to in exchange for “democracy” now. And the welfare of issues we care about like the EPA, the Department of Education? Liberal concerns like animal cruelty, endangered species, child welfare, consumer protection, women’s issues? Fat chance, citizen!

What can we expect from the new Red governors of Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts, along with Jan Brewer’s Arizona replacement, four of which have successfully expanded government-provided Medicaid access? It shouldn’t take too long to find out. Indeed, while Boehner and McConnell are aware they can’t turn back the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, they have already signaled their intention to bleed it from dozens of small, and even large, wounds. As announced today, their work may be moot, as SCOTUS has agreed to take up the lawsuit against ACA exchanges, the tax credits to low- and moderate-income insurance consumers. Without the exchanges, Obamacare may well breathe its last.

And yes, although I’ll admit I’d rather skewer both 2015 majority leaders than cut them any slack for their policies of victimization, I don’t think either of them, establishment old-timers, want to lean as far right as their party has pushed them — but they will, trust me. Their party agreed to talk out of the moderate side of their mouths to win this election, but at heart the Bagger purists have no intention of allowing leadership to go mainstream. Think they’ll acquiesce to bipartisanship for the good of the nation? Look at the lineup.

Oklahoman James Inhofe, who wrote a book on the hoax of global warming, will be taking over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and let a soon-to-be-missed Stephen Colbert flesh that out for you here. Think that irony can’t be beaten? Evangelically-inspired Texas radical and climate denier, Ted Cruz — crazy as a bedbug and twice as debilitating to secular America — will now, ironically, chair the Committee on Science and Technology.

From the Department of What Were They Thinking, the electorate exchanged someone of the caliber of Colorado’s Mark Udall — champion of government transparency, environment and women’s issues — for the likes of Iowa’s Joni Ernst, she of the hog nuts and the Smith and Wesson pointed at your face. “Our first Alex Jones Republican,” as Tbogg, San Diego blogger and sometime Hullabaloo contributor, wrote in his piece titled “When God closes a Bachmann, he opens an Ernst.” There isn’t a right-wing conspiracy theory Joni hasn’t made her own, and perhaps it’s a blessing for Udall that he lost his race to a glib pretender to the ‘moderate’ throne.

Pushing the progressive boulder up the hill has gotten even more ridiculous now, making the effort of any well-intentioned legislator — a rarity in itself — an almost unendurable frustration. Perhaps the efforts of the well-intentioned are better spent in grassroots organizations and think-tanks than striving for a larger perspective. Meanwhile, of course, that leaves the public at the mercy of the narcissists and the corruptly self-involved, who have perfected the art form of squeezing the little guy because — well, because Mr. Smith wouldn’t last more than ten minutes in today’s Washington, given the deadly cynicism, deep pockets and amorality that define it.

Now, here’s the kicker about this apparent division among voters: research indicates that around 80 percent of citizens are NOT ideologically divided, that by and large, they agree on most issues. Surprised? It’s a dilemma. Eighty percent of us, both those who are politically astute and those who pay no attention at all, want the same things. Very few of us lean heavily to one side or another; which is both the good news and the bad.

The worst news? The majority of us do not see the inherent danger represented by the regressive policies pursued by the right. Meanwhile, the left has largely surrendered its progressive roots in the face of today’s fiscal realities, with both government and culture worshiping at the altar of a free (rather than fair) market. Money speaks more loudly today than ethics, civic responsibility or altruism as the pendulum swings back, even beyond the inequities of the Gilded Age. That the majority of voters do not see the moral implications of such a philosophy, and its full embodiment as one of the nation’s two political movements, tells us a lot about any actual ‘exceptionalism’ that America once hoped for and can never inhabit as it continues on this path.

How did this happen? We’ve been working on it a very long time. Wrote the late Howard Zinn, in his book A People’s History of the United States: 1492–Present:

“How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scarce by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred — by economic inequity — faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices.”

Is there a Best to go with the Worst? There is the possibility — should we become aware of the many factors manipulating us, the way in which we’re ‘handled’ rather than informed — that we could come together to make progress on those issues, ones that some 80 percent of us agree upon. It would take something of an earthquake, a suspension of suspicion and a willingness to end the separations — regional, cultural, racial and sexual — that divide us.

It would take an evolution of our willingness to meet one another as equals. It would take a reconsideration of both the way we engage one another and the way we allow ourselves to be spun by media, politics and religion. As Eric recently mentioned, we are more likely to vote AGAINST something than FOR it, and yet, that is exactly how things do eventually change. When some terrific idea comes along to capture the imagination of enough people, the old is effortlessly replaced and forgotten.

Over the short haul, then — at least the next two years — we have jumped from the frying pan into the fire, and I can already smell the scorch. Those who wanted less obstruction just voted for the obstructionists to lead the nation. And while the Dems could take up the (remarkably successful) Pub mantra of “do nothing and let them fail,” it’s unlikely that they will. They’ll still struggle to make some progress against a concentrated reversal of ideological fortune, which will most likely look damned pitiful, with the last hedge against acquiescence to plutocracy represented by Obama’s veto pen.

Instead, I’d like to see the left and those in the middle look determined, as if they’ve got little to lose because — sadly — they don’t. They’ve already lost power, short-term. And that should make them more effective at raising the roof than they’ve been in a long time. Truly, it’s the Pubs game to lose now. They’ll be tasked with governing, something they have neither skill nor desire to do. The nation will look to them for forward movement, only some of us aware that their throttle is perpetually stuck in reverse.

Truly, it’s time to break out the first aid kit because the nation is playing with fire and its fingers will inevitably get burned. But it’s all grist for the mill when you think about shifting the dynamics of an era, isn’t it? Getting a gut full of what doesn’t work may be exactly the thing that changes our dynamic from voting against, to voting for.

I suppose I’m leaning on differences rather than similarities when I mention that those who are driven to get/have/keep are hardly those who are interested in coming to agreement on policies that help us all. Deepak Chopra tells us, “The highest levels of performance come to people who are centered, intuitive, creative, and reflective — people who know to see a problem as an opportunity.” Somewhere in that 80 percent that are in agreement for common cause there should be plenty of us who are not so much opportunistic as willing to seize the day.

It isn’t the reality-based community that is going to singe its fingers in these next months. Two more Pluto-Uranus hits lie in waiting, bringing us the loud squeal of cogs straining in the machine, the stink of grinding metal and the heat of melt-down. It’s on our plate, but it can’t be much of a shock. After over a decade of political nonsense, we are not accustomed to looking to a political party for our good, although we have and must continue to solidify our intent to hinder any powers that work against it.

We live in a time of evolution and revelation, bringing us opportunities to become more mindful, more inspired, more aware. If that leads to revolution, it seems more likely a change in our way of seeing ourselves and our options than a clash in the streets. And if that’s true, as Deepak says, our highest levels of performance are just ahead. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and his decline was remembered for centuries. If the Republican Congress does likewise, their tenure will be short and informative.

It would be easy to mourn a loss of traction toward modernity and freedom today, but perhaps we could better spend our time practicing being “centered, intuitive, creative, and reflective.” Opportunity awaits our willingness to remain clear-eyed and open-hearted. The promise of progress lies just ahead because Shift happened, and — despite any evidence to the contrary — it is us.

I write this on Halloween, a cold, blustery day in the Midwest that is destined to devolve into a nasty trick on little ghosts and goblins later tonight when the wind chill hits the teens. Not that many go trick-or-treating door to door these days, thanks to the fears of ‘helicopter moms’ and the pagan-paranoia of evangelicals. More often than not, kids are bussed to cooperative malls and outlets that offer ‘safe’ treats and minimize the ‘stranger danger’ of being lured into some unknown house by a less than upright citizen.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

To be sure, unless we know our neighborhood well and have the kids on a short leash, there is suspicion that we won’t be able to find a trustworthy, upright citizen in the autumn of 2014, when nothing is as it seems and reality appears little more than a string of bewildering shocks and psychic-disappointments that go bump in the night.

As it always works out, this is also Samhein, a time when the veil thins and the voices of our ancestors become more than just memory, more a welcome whisper. This is one of eight Pagan festivals that mark change in season and sensibility, this one celebrating the autumn harvest and announcing the coming long months farther from the warmth and light of the great sun. My pots of brightly colored vincas and impatiens will not survive tonight’s freeze and, as I write, I find myself looking out at them again and again, red and pink splashes of color against an already graying backdrop, as if to get my fill until spring. Samhein, All Saints Eve, Halloween — all these traditions take us into deep Scorpionic waters today, signaling the beginning of slower, darker days ahead.

Reviewing the political aspects of the week would simply be mind-exploding for me this close to election, and tedious for you, I suspect, so I’ll just skirt the details today with a few comments on democracy’s challenges. However, in the mood of the moment, let me sweeten up all this tricky business with a few treats: fun links to entertaining reads or vids or pics — you’re welcome.

The barrage of pleas for money and the see-saw projections of who will win the Senate are both exasperating and withering. Let me give you an example of exasperating: this is a TV ad for a Missouri incumbent stumping for re-election here in the Pea Patch. Allow me to introduce you to Billy Long, jiggling his double-chins in disdain of all the political advertisement out there and so outraged [his go-to position] that he’s simply going to run on his 56 votes against Obamacare. Yes, Billy: depressingly homegrown and painfully exasperating. And the withering? That there are citizens out there who not only find Billy’s obstruction of progress a fine platform for a lawmaker in the United States of America, but that — thanks to gerrymander and evangelical politicizing — he will no doubt get another term to fritter away taxpayers’ money on small ideas to suit even smaller minds.

Know what else is exasperating? The monumental amounts of money going into this race even as so many vital projects are begging for financial attention. Indeed, we’ve totally lost the ability to assess the worth of this amount of treasure.

Remember the tizzy fit that John McCain had when Obama bailed out on public financing in favor of the record-breaking $750 million he was able to accumulate through internet contributions? At the time, one of the few people who approved his break with McCain-Feingold was conservative Norm Ornstein, one of the authors of that legislation. Said Ornstein:

What I told a bunch of people a few weeks ago, is that while it would be nice if he decided he felt honor bound to stay within the system and take the money, if he did so I might join a group of people who sued him for political malpractice. When you have the ability to raise the kind of money that he could raise and do it without selling your soul to spend all the time between now and the election on fundraisers, your goal is to win an election and not turn your back on the people voting. There will be outraged editorials and McCain will be justifiably pissed. But it was pragmatically the right decision for him to make.

I think the key words in that statement are “selling your soul.” In politics, the thing one has to sell — but mustn’t, to avoid a downward spiral — is influence, which is why monetizing our political process has led to our current disaster. Obama slipped the restrictions and did the pragmatic thing in 2008, but now in 2014, the run for money has mushroomed into unlimited funding made available through ‘social service’ groups that contribute multi-millions to individual campaigns. And there is apparently no end to the amount that ‘interested’ billionaires — to whom the Citizen’s United ruling guarantees a mighty megaphone of political speech based on income — will spend in pursuit of influence. The veritable glut of Koch money (nicely illustrated for us here, by Jon Stewart) seems to be successfully buying democracy this season, which Stewart has dubbed Democalypse 2014.

In North Carolina, for instance, the race between Dem incumbent Kay Hagan and Pub challenger Thom Tillis has drawn the likes of both Clintons and Mitt Romney to stump for their party. This is one of those states that will define the Senate balance, so the money machine gets bigger and bolder every day, spreading the cash. Spending has already exceeded $100 million, according to the Sunlight Foundation, and it’s no surprise that some two-thirds of that funding comes from groups outside North Carolina. This is just ONE state race, kids — think of the excess to be tallied before this mid-term is done on Tuesday!

(Since you’ve gotten this far, here’s your treat: Paris Hilton with Hooves! Here’s a cute little ‘toon made by We The Economy called “The Unbelievably Sweet Alpacas” featuring the voices of Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Sarah Silverman as pretty ponies, educating us about income inequality.)

To continue, while there’s no news about Diebold machines to fret over this election, let’s not discount that machine reporting is still a problem, part of our ongoing challenge to voter access. Gore quit fighting too early and Kerry didn’t fight at all; things would have been very different if either had kept the faith. Now ask yourself, why is it that it’s never Democrats who are concerned about purging the polls? Why is it that the blue umbrella is always open to newcomers and people excited about democracy, while the red one snaps shut unless you can produce your papers? Remember how excited the Bushy’s got when the Iraqi’s first voted, waving their purple fingers to prove they’d done the deed? Well, just dandy for the Middle East, but it wouldn’t have been so easy to vote here, citizen! Not with a dark complexion and suspect religious beliefs!

Voter suppression, although it’s been going on forever and a day, just seems glaringly obvious as a hedge against the decline of white authoritarianism and privilege. Hard to argue against the truth that the white folks don’t want the brown or black or yellow or red — or blue, for that matter — folks voting. You have to be blind to avoid drawing that conclusion.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote a scathing response to the SCOTUS decision to allow Texas to proceed with its radical voter ID law, warning that this was the kind of suppression — akin to a poll tax, a 21st century version of Jim Crow — that would stop Americans from voting. Early voting reports seem to prove her right, as literally hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters are being purged, and the money and access required to meet ID standards from state to state marginalizes citizens of slim means.

According to SCOTUS blog, “This was the first time in 32 years that the Supremes allowed a law restricting voting rights to be implemented after a federal court ruled it unconstitutional for targeting minorities.” Again — my mantra — if we needed a reason to vote blue, SCOTUS is it. It can’t come as a surprise that the Federalist wing of the Supreme Court wants to turn the clock back not just to the middle of the last century, but if Scalia holds sway, even further. Ginsberg, by the way, proves to be an excellent Halloween costume, even for the very young, as shown here.

No sense blaming anyone else. Politics is a reflection of us; American politics is a mirror held up to our issues of denial, self-deception, egoism and fear. We can’t move ahead into a new era while dragging the old one behind. Best to face it all now, look it in the eye and accept that our egocentrism and selfishness — what Robert Reich calls Empathy Deficit Disorder — can only be overcome by a needed, and evolutionary, growth in compassion.

Here’s something for you from the goody basket: for Campbell fans, here’s a speech that Joseph Campbell made on the roots of Halloween. I find it very ‘folksy,’ very intimate, as though he’s talking to friends. Not only does it speak to the magic of costumes and play on this occasion, as well as throughout our life, but gives a nice glimpse of Campbell, the person. Enjoy.

And here’s a treat, from my house to yours: go here for a dandy bit of nostalgia about the Ghost of Halloween Past which, despite a somewhat jaded view of disinterested moms, made me long for yesterday. When I sent the link to my daughter, I mentioned that I’d been a good deal more engaged than the mother described and seldom served her a TV dinner, unless she’d specifically begged it. ‘Course, I also got my share of the booty when she and her brother finally got home with the chocolate!

And finally, if you ate or drank too much last night and you’re looking for something to get the blood running, here’s an episode of John Oliver from his HBO TV show which illustrates how brilliant he is, worthy of the kudos he’s receiving. He offers you not just an easy understanding of Net Neutrality but an activist op as well. It will be 13 minutes well invested, and funny to boot!

Hope you found something tasty here, whiling away the hours until Tuesday’s results give us a clearer picture of what’s ahead. I wish a belated “BOO!” to those of you who celebrated a hearty — or quiet or spooky or boring — Halloween this year, and a happy Samhain and All Saints Day to the rest.

Continue to listen for the ancestors; they still have a gift to deliver. And although I know you’ll get to the polls on Tuesday — and if we actually have results the day after — do not be dismayed if it looks like we got a trick instead of a treat.

Like most of the things that scare us, “objects in mirror look closer than they appear.” Once we know that and free ourselves from the optical illusions, we’re calmer, saner and able to affirm that we’re always in the right place at the right time. Whatever happens next is not only do-able, but inevitably proves to be exactly what we need for our growth.