By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

At this time of year, I usually mention my ancestors who came to this continent aboard the Mayflower. Of the seven who made the crossing, only two survived that first year: John Howland, a young bond servant to John Carver, suspected author and signer of the Mayflower Compact, and another, Elizabeth Tilley, child of Pilgrim parents, who eventually married. The boomerang effect of stripping whitewash off our mythologies, including the origin story of those first years in Plymouth, has offered us a more realistic look at the humanity that built this nation, and that is one of the blessings I’m counting this holiday season. As one of the 30 million descendants of that first motley crew of 102 immigrants, I find all this business of saintliness and unblemished virtue tedious.

I should mention an earlier adventurer, the lately maligned — and deservedly so — Christopher Columbus who “sailed the ocean blue” in 1492. We mostly ignore what happened during those years between mention of Spain’s entry and the perilous passage of the Mayflower in 1620. Since Columbus never got this far north, recorded history is sketchy, but stories of deprivation so severe at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia that inhabitants resorted to cannibalism have recently been confirmed forensically. No wonder, then, that the group who landed in Plymouth was reduced in number by half within the first few bitterly cold winter months.

Grampa John (times 13 generations, in my case) had a singular accomplishment prior to landing in Massachusetts: he was swept off the ship in a raging storm and grabbing hold of the topsail halyard, held on until he was eventually hauled back in. As a religious Separatist (Puritan), John no doubt considered his rescue providential. As bondsman to the first governor of the colony (who also served as representative of the British merchants who funded the expedition), his retrieval was also considered the successful securing of an asset. We have been about this game of profitable conquest — the birth of American exceptionalism and a hint of the fledgling doctrine of Manifest Destiny — since the very beginning.

As things are rarely as simplistic as historical events (that might prove useful to politics) are depicted, we are finally taking a realistic look at the socioeconomic complexity of our national heritage. The recent National Geographic two-part mini-series, Saints And Strangers, came closer to an accurate accounting of this event than we’re used to, although, as entertainment, liberties were necessarily taken with the dialogue, time line shortcuts were imposed, and facts important to indigenous Americans overlooked.

The tale is narrated, for instance, by William Bradford as leader of the colony, although he did not become governor until the second year at Plymouth. History tells us that Governor Carver — who presided at the first Thanksgiving but never saw the second — was soundly criticized posthumously by his financiers, for having spent too much time in those first critical weeks organizing the struggling colony and not enough securing profitable resources. Evidently, in service to the movie version of events, at any rate, he who fails to prosper can be consigned to history’s trash heap.

To its credit, this National Geographic offering attempts to grapple with the ethics of, for example, pilfering stores of corn buried by the locals, and explores the moderate voices of both colonists and Native American leaders, as well as those quick to judgment. Since everyone has a perspective dear to them, you will not be shocked to learn that we can find disparity in the reviews of Saints And Strangers.

Mainstream media like the Washington Post seemed to welcome the attempt at a more accurate accounting, while over at über-conservative Breitbart, the reviewer found the mini-series unimpressive, although it gave points for not succumbing to the “politically correct, anti-Western European hate-fest we’ve come to expect from Hollywood.”

Most conservative and several mainstream reviewers found the offering “boring,” which tells me more about them and their expectations of life as simplistic drama than about the facts at Plymouth colony. We seem to have an unstated need for some Kumbaya moment to take the edge off the harsher face of our aggressions — something more soothing, like one of one of those little construction paper Pilgrim hats we made in Kindergarten, celebrating the discovery of maize with our new Red Indian friends [sic.]

On the opposite side of the argument, the Wampanoag, who had been contracted to verify the accuracy of the script and dismissed when they demanded approval, find the mini-series denigrating and culturally inaccurate, and this, of course, in defiance of National Geographic’s reputation for historical accuracy. Frankly, it’s understandable if this topic is as sensitive as a wild hare among those who have seldom seen their history sympathetically portrayed, let alone truthfully told. And while I can be empathetic to their outrage, it seldom helps to settle a controversy. I appreciated a measured and not entirely negative review by a Mohawk man in Indian Country, titled “Close Enough is Great.” Gotta start somewhere telling a story not so warm and cozy, right ?

I’ve not yet been able to see Saints and Strangers, but I look forward to it. The cast includes characterizations of both my ancestors, which will be interesting to watch. There is, however, the bigger questions we don’t address when we discuss this topic — things like American hegemony, our continued empiricism, and the necessity of ‘American leadership’ that almost always extends our footprint of influence without improving the circumstances of those we seek to protect.

Was the Plymouth landing the first step in an intentional genocide of the indigenous population or  was that just another of those unintended consequences we’re so good at? And after all these generations, all this time relating to our neighbors, should’t we have questions about who and what the “savages” really are? At least, in this starker version of the Thanksgiving story, we can chew over the moral and ethical implications of taking what is not ours simply because we can.

There are some valuable takeaways, important in the scheme of things: gratitude for our ability as a species to overcome great odds and thrive in spite of them. There is encouragement in this story, in that we were able to find commonality with one another, even though those early agreements did not hold for long, along with admonition that we must continue to respect our varied cultural differences while caring for our mutual survival. There is comfort in knowing we’ve overcome so many of those early deprivations and influences that killed us so easily, that we’ve created a less difficult — if not dangerous — world to navigate.

The simplest bit of wisdom we can glean from this story can be imagined easily enough in my mind’s eye, me face to face with Grampa John, asking what he might consider the most important thing to remember on this epic journey. Not hard to conjure him telling me — telling all of us — that when the storm breaks all around, hold tight to the rope!

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Time flies, they say, and the past is just a loop of experience endlessly repeating until it comes to completion, hopefully defined in some life-affirming manner. Until then, we go over old patterns, ignoring their common thread, pretending the topic is new, reviewing essential fears and projecting them onto the usual suspects.

That’s true of our personal relationships as well as the political, the state of our unions as well as the state of our national union and beyond to our global unity.

While we seem destined to assume our adulthood at a snail’s pace, here in the land of the free and home of the brave, I was hoping never to hear the “why do they hate us?” question again, especially when the answer is so obvious.

I think it would be more productive to have a conversation about why we hate them — you know, our neighbors, as ourselves.

After all we’ve endured these last years, it’s something of a shock to read headlines that smack of turn-of-the-century hysteria, rhetorical déjà vu, threadbare and worn. Experienced by years of parsing actual and imagined terrors, I expected a modicum of nuance, something besides that old refrain about the homeland being threatened, swarthy foreigners presenting unwelcome danger to our freedom, all the while defended by tree-hugging liberals who hate American values.

That’s not for the lack of speaking calmly and slowly. The president has explained, over and over, how you can’t kill an idea, even a murderous one. You must correct it at its cause, and contain it until the fuel that feeds it is removed. He has made it clear that the xenophobic speech we use in assessing the challenge of Syrians seeking asylum only plays into the hands of the radicals, but  — many of us radical ourselves — it falls on deaf ears.

Having aligned ourselves with the French, we won’t speak of Freedom Fries this time around, but despite all we’ve learned about ourselves and the world since 2003, we seem compelled to retreat from our better angels in times of peril. A mayor in Virginia has called for Syrian camps, reminding us that FDR interred Japanese citizens during perilous times, as if that was history in which we could take pride. We are urged to circle the wagons, to allow fear to dictate our terms. I do not like to think of us as herd animals but that’s all too often how we behave.

On the other hand, our growing understanding of nuance has clarified much of the argument, this time around. Our thin-skinned nativism, for instance — a historical preoccupation since we mugged the original inhabitants of the continent — is obvious in every attempt to turn back refugees or limit assistance to fleeing Syrians. Over half our state governors vow to refuse resettlement despite assurances of extensive vetting, and a group of House lawmakers, including several dozen Democrats who should know better, are making the prospect of safe sanctuary increasingly difficult. Shameful that we suddenly come to bipartisan agreement on a project so unworthy of our higher aspirations.

Yet despite the look of it and the feel of it, we recognize it for what it is, don’t we? A knee-jerk bias against anything unlike ourselves, a deep and abiding mistrust of strangers. But what will we do with that knowledge? How will we proceed with this moldy oldie War on Terror do-over? How will we do it differently this time, how will we push against the walls of our cultural conditioning and tribal prejudices to come to a new conclusion?

Any strong emotional moment reveals us to ourselves and to those around us. We can identify the political inclination of those who would trust but verify as opposed to those who would reject out of hand. Those in Murrieta, California who loudly– and hatefully — refused to accept a bus-load of immigrant children running from South American drug cartels are emblematic of those who reject Syrian refugees. The voices are strident but they are being countered by others, calmer and less fearful, and surely we’ve had enough practice with these darker emotions to recognize them as even more dangerous to our humanity than the perceived threat that prompts them.

Eckhart Tolle tells us that in order to cope with fear thoughts that explode into a paralyzing wave of existential terror and magnify our inner Chicken Little, we must stand back from dark thought-forms without inhabiting them. We must feel and witness them without making them more than transient. In Eastern thought these are “tigers stalking the jungle,” to be acknowledged but not awakened.

Tolle teaches that unless we are practicing the summoning of that inner presence — our authentic spiritual self — on ‘neutral’ days (when there is no threat evident) we become less and less able to stop the avalanche of fear thoughts, arising from our pain body, when fear arrives. Eckhart being Eckhart, he tells us that staying in the ‘now’ alleviates the projection of fear where there is none, and he’s right, of course, although that’s a lifetime’s work (and more.)

Still, unless we wish to live in a state of emergency, we must strive to remain centered and practice the presence, speak peace, extend kindness, and recognize every fearful moment as opportunity to overcome irrational fear. That same presence will inform us of genuine danger, should it arrive, but not if our adrenals are exhausted from false concerns and unnecessary stressors.

Be assured, my dears, we have everything we need. There are soothing voices we can turn to, those that affirm our common humanity, like those two timeless gurus, Mike Moore and the Dalai Lama. There are stalking tigers, unaware of themselves, to witness and send on their way. There is revelation to be discovered and compassion to be offered from moment to moment. Here in the thick of it, we must practice the presence and be the peaceful, rational energy that we wish to see all around us.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

They say truth is stranger than fiction, but these days who can tell? Truth has always been philosophically elusive, but now ‘truthiness’ is not just commonplace, but the most obvious facts have become fictionalized. Need an example? Public Policy Polling found that 41 percent of Republicans thought that Benghazi was the worst political scandal in American history, far worse than Watergate, the Teapot Dome or Iran Contra (but Bush’s ignoring credible intelligence on the Twin Towers wasn’t a ‘thing,’ because, as his brother said, he kept us safe all that time). Need another example? Select almost any of the improbable things Ben Carson has said in the last month.

Now polling first among Pub candidates, Ben Carson is capitalizing on the public mistrust of the media by playing fast and loose with his personal history and trashing the ‘liberal media’ for going after the details. While I’m less than interested in who Dr. Ben threatened as a youth, his equivocating having already proven him vulnerable — or even today’s tidbit regarding a bogus offer to attend West Point — it should be clear that all questions are fair game. Media have not just the right but the duty to check the facts. Once upon a time, truth-seeking was the purpose of journalism. Liberty depended upon it.

So the question must cross our minds as we study Trump and Carson, the seemingly unshakable frontrunners of the Republican presidential race: how did this happen? How did we get here? This duo are not just political outsiders, they are bumbling neophytes to the process of governance, a domestic train wreck and international emergency waiting to happen, and in place thanks to decades of right-wing hostility to government and mistrust of press.

Once again, there are two political profiles at hand: the right vents their spleen on personalities, the left decries policy. Sanders and Warren epitomize the focus on the broken system that holds all politicos hostage to big money and influence peddlers, while the right demonizes individuals (the black guy, the white ex-FLOTUS) and is consistent in finger-pointing and buck-passing, hence the ridiculous dust-up over moderators in their last debate. The most enthusiastic response of the evening was the thunderous applause when Ted Cruz went after the media as handmaiden of the anti-Christ.

If the press did a better job of defining this situation, perhaps there would be some reality on why the right thinks government cannot be allowed to govern (besides its own party determined to prove it so), but as it is, every media outlet is suspected of political bias. Let’s make that reality bias, shall we? Even science is just one man’s opinion, no matter how well informed, according to those who inhabit the alternate reality that has provided us a parade of lawmakers ranging from anti-intellectual to just plain ignorant for the whole of this century. To say that this has left a sour taste in my mouth is an understatement.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I heard that Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett had finally made it through the hurdles of political correctness turned cynicism to release “Truth,” the biopic of Dan Rather and his 60 Minutes II producer, Mary Mapes, when they took on George W.’s AWOL scandal. That was just as Dubby was facing re-election to a second term, when, as you might recall, 60 Minutes used to be top notch, don’t-miss TV. Indeed, Mapes and Rather had previously broken the story of Abu Ghraib, putting Dubby’s entire administration in defensive posture and raising a shitstorm over the use of torture that has yet to be resolved.

This was a period when Dem candidate John Kerry was being successfully swift-boated, and any threat to the legitimacy of an incumbent Bush was viciously attacked, not to be tolerated. The Rathergate story, to review, detailed the absence of an extremely arrogant young George taking advantage of his Daddy’s connections to evade draft in Vietnam, and then failing to report for duty during flight training in the “Champagne Unit” of the Texas Air National Guard. The details, which had gotten short shrift from the press in the run up to the Bush win in 1999, had the potential to shake the election, which — history shows — was closer than most realized (and had Kerry protested the Ohio voting discrepancies, he would have put an end to Dubby’s tenure).

Rather and Mapes went after the facts with dogged determination, aware that the press had been so enamored of Dubya’s old boy demeanor and “compassionate conservatism” that they’d failed to follow up earlier. After years of  Monica scandal, MSM seemed too relieved covering a “moral” candidate to go after shadows lingering from Dub’s misspent youth. But consummate journalists, the pair decided that proof that the man who had sent thousands of National Guardsmen off to fight his wars might well be a deserter was too important not to follow.

They had their work cut out for them. Anyone recalling that George H. W. Bush was in the Texas State House of Representatives at the time — eventually becoming CIA Director, Vice President and then POTUS — will understand how complicit supporters would be, decades later, to cover any tracks showing that young Georgie had received a free pass, but eventually some were found. And while the documents serving as proof seemed genuine — and likely were, we now know — they could not be verified, since so many who knew the real story refused to talk on record.

The tale went on the air. As producer, Mapes took credit for rushing the story before other verification could be found, but rushed or not, the White House (and Karl Rove) had anticipated the fall-out and had their people ready to raise hell over the allegations. Push-back on possible forgery began before the 60 Minutes episode was even over, and — although a question about a Selectric typewriter’s inability to produce the document within that time-frame is now discredited — the story, and those who told it, were cut off at the knees.

Mapes’s book, written in 2005, has been on the back-burner for a decade, waiting for someone with the fortitude to tackle it as a film. Although I have yet to see the movie, I can imagine that Redford and Blanchett are the perfect duo to execute a story that turned a respected newsman into a verb: “rathered,” to be pilloried for improper vetting of a topic.

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Cate is receiving raves for her performance, and Rolling Stone’s reviewer praised Redford for portraying Dan Rather’s “wounded dignity” as he issued a semi-apology for a lack of due diligence, followed by retirement, resulting in a public lack of trust in his ‘name brand.’

Rather, then, reminds me of Brian Williams before his fall from grace, now consigned to MSNBC instead of MSM Nightly News — in fact, the two have commonality of a sort, both giving off that well-spoken ‘every man’ vibe that the public appreciates. NBC, we should remember, has a history of this sort of thing.

Political Waves, back in those days, put out several posts a day, and I was deeply into this story when the hit squad made Dan Rather a verb. That was one of those moments, early in the century — much like the demise of Phil Donahue on MSNBC in the run-up to war, or its drubbing of (now CNN’s) Ashleigh Banfield for calling out FOX News as the ‘patriot police’ — that raised all my red flags.

Without a viable Fourth Estate, holding those who manipulate us responsible, whom can we turn to? How will we know that the job of president is NOT, as Trump envisions it, about cutting deals and making profit? How will we calculate the cost in secular liberty should a man like Ben Carson put his fundamentalist stamp on our domestic policy?

We got here, to this moment in history, by allowing people to corporatize news, make it entertainment. Much like privatized medicine, that’s always going to be a bad idea that culminates in (literal and/or figurative) dead bodies. In the days of Watergate, when the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee backed his reporters in outing a corrupt presidential administration, he took a chance on losing money but flew with the angels, aware of his duty to the public to present them the truth. Even then he was a light in the darkness, with media consolidating all around him.

Of course, that is NOT what a privatized news corporation did in 2004 when it became apparent that Rather and Mapes were handling dynamite, capable of wounding a sitting president. Instead, they threw them on the scrap heap rather than buck power. And that’s what you’ll get from MSM today, although — and this is important to realize — the worst of the blackout of the last decade is over, thanks to the interwebs. We’re not so ill-informed any more, no longer so frightened or so invested in the squeaky-clean exceptionalism mythology that’s been shoved down our throats for decades.

We’ve seen too much, stubbed our toe on unnoticed truth, discovered decades of covert legislation that has left us without protections and, unfortunately, we still can’t rely on mainstream press to give us unbiased facts to help us determine our future. So we find ourselves in a Do-It-Yourself world, my dears, and only you can decide who, or what, is trustworthy. My take on that is if something touches a nerve, if it hurts to hear, there’s probably truth to it.

Today, for instance — after seven years of speculation and hesitation, and in advance of the Paris climate summit — the President scrapped the Keystone pipeline. It was a death from 10,000 cuts and a lingering one, at that. Hoping for better luck from a Pub president, the Canadian corporation that asked for the permit to be pulled is biding its time, but the global push is for alternative energy, and that’s increasingly difficult to challenge. Seems to me that if we can continue to build on the clean technology that is currently flourishing, such a proposition as filthy tar sands may well seem even more foolhardy in the future.

That is what I think, based on the growth of solar and wind capability, the systemic problems of discarding the remnants of coal and nuclear, the obvious and evident results of climate change happening all around us, but probably not the opinion of my neighbor who thinks Ted Cruz is the cat’s meow. She gets her news of the day from the pulpit, where Jesus is coming to change all that any minute now, so we don’t have to be concerned about coal ash or nuclear waste. That’s also Dr. Carson’s take on things, you should know, as well as a coming war between those who worship on Saturdays and the Satanic hordes that worship on Sundays. Or at least that’s the theology he favors, but don’t quote him because, well, West Point, yadda. But not to worry, it’s just media bias, all of it.

So, because we need to know what’s actually going on when we’re not looking, this was also the week that details of the TPP treaty were made available for public scrutiny. Here’s a read from Counterpunch telling us it’s worse than we thought, and another from In These Times which asserts that the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau, is under pressure to sign on, which might explain Obama’s comment today that although the new PM may be disappointed by his rejection of XL, they will surely be working together closely in the future. Canadians, bless them, may have something else in mind. Certainly the progressives do!

​I will probably wait until “Truth” comes out on Netflix to watch it, and when I do I intend to rent “All The President’s Men” as well. Redford stars in both, and while time will surely tell on his face it will also be evident in the habitual responses and expectations we’ve assumed in regard to these true tales of journalistic heroism. Because truth IS stranger than fiction. Both of Redford’s roles represent men who have dealt with their fate in different ways: Rather to continue his journalism on digital media, while Bob Woodward has become, at best, an Establishment yes-man and consummate insider. You can hear Rather speak to the challenges of the journalistic process here.

The truth is out there, as Mulder used to say (and will again in January!) and, as was evident back in the glory days of X-Files, finding truth remains a Do-It-Yourself project for us all.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Don’t look now but minds are changing. We’ve grown accustomed to that as a rarity, and now, seemingly from out of nowhere, we’ve got a reversal of what had long been chiseled in stone. Me, I think liminality had a lot to do with it. While this is a new word for a familiar process, it’s one I’ve been exploring for awhile now as my personal astrology reveals a marked period of transition. If you haven’t yet subscribed to receive Eric’s weeklies, then let me describe liminality as the process of shifting from one phase to another. That’s the brief take; Wikipedia provides a fuller description:

In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”[1]) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold”[2] between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.

The concept of liminality was first developed in the early 20th century by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep and later taken up by Victor Turner.[3] More recently, usage of the term has broadened to describe political and cultural change as well as rituals.[4] During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.[5] The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.

While we often think of change as coming out of the blue, a thunderbolt thrown by Zeus to complicate our little mortal lives, change is more often a result of pressure from within, the consequence of internal dissatisfactions that grow into rebellions or rejections. Change happens when the old is outgrown, when the consequences of worn-out patterns are no longer valued or required, when being stuck becomes a liability we can no longer live with — and everyone has a different breaking point.

The liberal personality is less frightened across the board, more at ease with social risk, and less defensive. The conservative personality is more easily threatened, more concerned with what will be lost than gained in any exchange, and quick to defend. While we’re each a mix of both, it’s fair to say that the conservative folks despise the liberal open society, which they refuse to join, while the liberal folk despair at the conservative closed society, in which they feel neither welcome nor comfortable.

But something had to give, we couldn’t remain at loggerheads forever, and that lock on doing nothing is beginning to slip. Perhaps we’ve finally come to that place where we’re bridging into the next thing — everybody a bit jumpy and unsatisfied — as defined by liminality.

Amazingly, for example, there will be no shut down of government this year. Congress, dysfunctional as it is, passed a budget bill so that the American pocketbook can remain open until March of 2017. The bill is touted in some circles as Boehner’s parting gift to the Democrats, a spit in the eye of the Freedom Caucus, and a sell-out to Establishment politics. Progressives are calling it a “survival” compromise, while regressives are furious at their leadership for caving to big government. Evidently big government includes struggling seniors who received no Social Security cost of living raise this year, while the ‘entitlement’ programs elders depend on are still first in the cross-hairs  for concessions to any forward movement.

This week China changed its decades old one-child policy to include one more. Perhaps now daughters can be as valuable as sons, and the Chinese can begin to solve their problem with too many males, some 30 million of them with no mates in sight. Talk about out of balance!  Still, because there is always a tit for the tat, this policy will not make the Zero Population people happy nor comfort the xenophobes who already see their numbers dwindling, and their ‘enemies’ reduced to dangerous and uncivilized breeders of hordes. Not to mention what the environmentalist will say about more energy demand by more Chinese babies.

The President announced that he’s sending a small number of special forces into Syria to assist the Kurds and a coalition of moderate rebels in combating ISIS. The White House does not call this boots on the ground, but truly, that’s splitting hairs, isn’t it? As much as Obama wanted everything drawn down, this call — along with the five thousand plus warriors left in Afghanistan — constitutes a sea change in military deployment. Much as I’d like to see all the nations sitting around the table, sharing a beer and planning better days, I suspect there will always be somebody quick to throw a shoe. Unless the military-industrial complex is dealt with — much like the big banks, big pharma, and the oil industry — we can’t really pull our foot — ummm — boot out, altogether. That’s not the play of one president or even one political party. Such a move can only come at the consensus of a nation.

The third Republican debate was also a game changer, finally showing Trump and Carson vulnerable on the actual logistics of leadership, which left the slickest politico in the pack, Marco Rubio, to step into the void. It’s interesting how Trump cut into a vein in what is considered politically incorrect on the left, while Carson routinely runs over political correctness with hobnails on the right. Donald mentioned Carson’s religion — Seventh Day Adventist — as an ‘unknown’ and caused a shit storm of PC commentary on the right about how questioning a candidate’s religion is un-American. This is absurd, considering that 60+ percent of Republicans polled consider Obama a covert Muslim, punishable by impeachment, and Mr. Carson himself finds a Muslim candidate unacceptable.

I personally find the tenets of Carson’s religion, with a six-day creation story and literal Bible interpretation — which Carson stands by, proud and unquestioning — far too inflexible in a presidential candidate. But even should the evangelical voters change their minds about Trump or Carson, it’s likely those votes will fall to Ted Cruz, so theocracy will still win the day with the base, who take their marching orders from the pulpit. That would be the same base who hate Iran because of theocracy. Yet, because things have changed, it remains true that they will hold their nose and elect a lukewarm Presbyterian if it looks like Trump can rebound to win the day.

JEB! — the Establishment candidate — did himself little good in a sharp exchange with Rubio in this debate, his less than impressive performance causing some of his donors to exit, stage right. Rumors of his demise are premature, though. He continues to hang in, despite a real lack of charisma and/or supporters, trying to wait out the process as the mainstream guy. Without an Establishment candidate to go up against (presumably) Hillary, the Foggy Bottom Boys don’t think they’ll have a chance. Considering how little Jeb is bringing to this game, I wonder if they realize how conflicted their line-up seems to be, and — because everything is in flux — perhaps it won’t be Hillary they’ll have to battle, or the Establishment types at all.

Meanwhile, Charles Koch told the Wall Street Journal that he’s just disgusted with the political conditions on the right, with its “coarsened discourse, lack of substance and civility.” No, this isn’t a real change of direction, it’s more a PR campaign.This is an exercise in ‘crying wolf,’ considering that he and his brother David spent more than three decades financing a political movement that could force big government to stay out of their affairs. If it morphed into the Tea Party — dead set on skewing reality, slapping a religious face on cynical secularism and killing off any government oversight that might interfere with profit and loss — then why should the Kochs complain? These are the very patriots who allow the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to ride roughshod over state programs and policies, giving Koch Industries easy access wherever it goes.

Ultimately, the big loser at the third debate was the media, who took it in the shorts from candidates and the public alike. While everybody is happy to take a poke at media, which rarely does its job any more, I wouldn’t have wanted to be the one quizzing Republican candidates from the reality side of the spectrum. FOX News is better at that than the rest of us: they made up most of the facts in question, so they’re the most able to walk the razor’s edge of right-wing truthiness.

As suspected, Paul Ryan was the only candidate with sufficient votes to take the speaker’s gavel, despite his insistence that he get weekends off with the family. This precludes the traditional courtship and hobnobbing duties demanded by big donors and lobbyists, the lounge lizard portion of the job at which John Boehner displayed genuine talent. Someone will have to step up for that part, if the party is to keep its mojo.

Paul gave a speech about uniting the party under one big happy new tent, while the various factions leaned in, purring like Cheshire cats and biding their time. The Tea Party has nothing to lose by continuing to obstruct: their rural constituents are happy when they plant their feet and say silly things, and when government doesn’t work they get closer to their goal of permanently drowning it in the bathtub. It’s hard to believe Ryan thinks he can herd these hard-headed critters — his long delay in decision told us he’s not so sure — but something sweetened the pot that allowed him to say yes.

If it’s liminality at work these days, it’s working just fine, isn’t it? Baby steps will do, a little willingness to make a change. What used to be absolute is now open to interpretation. People are changing attitudes because their lives have taken a turn, and their experience demands something more authentic than rhetoric. This is a good time for a dialogue, a good time to take cookies to the neighbor and start a conversation, a good time to ask questions about why someone feels the way they do, about what they need. This is a good time to listen.

The shift to the next thing is on us, the energy building to move us toward new options and discoveries. As long as our minds stay alert and our hearts open, our second thought about something important may take us farther than we suspect, while allowing someone else their second thought is guaranteed to change everything.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

There are weeks when everything seems stuck in-process — bubbling in the sociopolitical cauldron, unresolved — and others that offer breakthroughs, allowing a peek at future progress and potential. This week gave us some of both, starting with a major shift of political fortune to our north. Congratulations to our Canadian neighbors for putting the conservative leadership of Stephen Harper in their rear view mirror.

Although the more progressive New Democratic Party started strong in the 78 (!!!) day campaign, the more moderate Liberal party won the prize, with the election of Justin Trudeau promising an end to some of the stultifying austerity measures of former neoconservative leadership. While the election can be seen as repudiation of corporate values over populist ones, Trudeau’s support of TPP and the XL Pipeline continues a worrisome lack of environmental reality that will, hopefully, fall short of Canadian support.

Still, here in the states we celebrate every shift back towards governance for and by the people, and although largely untried, this new Trudeau (Pierre’s son) is a welcome ally to progressive causes. In his first week, the new Prime Minister canceled pending air strikes against ISIS and welcomed an additional 25,000 Syrian refugees into his nation. Since the U.S. is leading the mission against ISIS, this may not thrill the Pentagon, but Trudeau is expected to be a warmer alternative to the chilly relationship between Obama and Harper.

In terms of closure, the week began with Democratic moderate Jim Webb pulling out of the Dem presidential race, disgruntled by lack of attention and mulling a run as an Independent (where he would REALLY be ignored!). It ended with the only Republican Senator to vote against the Iraq war, Lincoln Chaffee, pulling the plug as well. That leaves Clinton, Sanders, O’Malley and perhaps Lawrence Lessig to duke it out, and only the first two count. Do note, by the way, that the pendulum swing quickly took out those too moderate to meet the populist demand.

O’Malley is interesting and well-spoken, but these election waters aren’t conducive to the survival of smaller fish. In that regard, Lessig told Bill Maher last week that his pledge to win, defeat Citizens United and corporate ownership of the political process, and then hand the presidency over to his as yet unnamed Vice President was “stupid.”

Running this through our populism-inspired ‘authentic-o-meter,’ his comment seems remarkably candid, but hardly politically astute, nor was making such an admission wise on a politically incorrect comedy forum where people are comfortable connecting dots from such statements to possible leadership capability. Largely unknown, he, Webb and Chaffee never got a single point in the polls, and for the moment, Lessig is the last man standing among the largely unappreciated.

The other politico to pull out of the Dem lineup — even though he never actually entered — was Joe Biden, who seemed to be endlessly scuffing his toe in the dirt, weighing his options and giving pollsters apoplexy. What can we say about Joe, one of the last remaining politicians whom the nation views with affection? I read a lede the other day saying he was “the last of an era,” and perhaps of all the commentary we could make, that is the most accurate. Having come to terms with our systemic dyfunctionality, Biden represents what used to be — not what is.

Joe’s intent to reach across the aisle to make law in a bipartisan manner is laudable but no longer possible, given the divide among the political factions. If these last years have proven anything, it’s that partisan stonewall will not go quietly or respectfully into the night. As Joe was bound to run on that long history of bipartisan achievement, he would have had as much success in that venture as does his boss. Or, for instance, Dennis Kucinich, who joined with FOX News to occasionally represent the view from the left, winning him a long exercise in yelling into the black void of misinformation and hearing nothing but the chirp of crickets in return, as well as a top spot on the Google cue for “where are they now?”.

We really want to behave in a civilized manner, don’t we? And there is every reason to be suspect of an inability to come to the table when mere political ideology is the point of separation between parties, but that is not what’s happening now. What we’re experiencing now is a growing awareness that there is no freedom to choose what is driven by oligarchy, with our divisions fostered by it and our citizens bewildered by the fear it promotes and the patrons it produces. It helps to remember that those who serve this cause are often themselves blindsided by misinformation campaigns and religious dogma.

Speaking of same, Ben Carson is running ahead of Trump in some polls. He’s been on local television, signing copies of his book in a Christian bookstore to my north, which pretty much says it all. He’s got Trump arrogance AND knows his Old Testament — a sure winner with the base. Ben wants to ‘intensify’ the war on drugs, while Bernie, meanwhile, has called for an end to the policies that have put so many of our citizens into an overcrowded and nonproductive prison system.

Paul Ryan has signed on to run for House Speaker, though he made it clear he wouldn’t take the job if the far-right continued its purity antics — they will, he will, and we will have more of the same. I suspect Ryan is counting on a bump in gravitas for a future run at the Oval Office, but it will also reveal some of his weaknesses, one of which is that he’s much less intellectual than his reputation and a good deal more regressive. He can run, but he can’t hide.

Mid-week, there were a number of revelations pushed to the top of the heap. One was the leak on Obama’s drone wars, of which little has (yet) been made, and a teen hacking into CIA Director Brennan’s personal e-mail to lift sensitive information, some of which was shared on a Twitter account. The hacker(s) told Brennan they would relinquish the account for “2 trillion dollars hahhaa, just joking.” When the CIA Chief asked for the next offer, he was told “We just want Palestine to be free and for you to stop killing innocent people.” (Crickets.)

Acting on an exposé by the Los Angeles Times, Bernie Sanders went after allegations that Exxon had done extensive research into the dangers of fossil fuels as early as the 1970s, and buried the result. He asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch to have the Department of Justice investigate the allegations. While that may or may not occur, this news has galvanized observers to consider that in Exxon’s unceasing push for profit, it cannot escape responsibility for not just irreversable damage to the planet but for the many deaths climate change can already claim, not to mention those to come. As Bill McKibbon put it, no corporation has ever done anything this big or this bad, and they’re daring us to stop them.

Unless you’ve been kidnapped and held in total isolation, you know that Clinton had a productive week, considering her eleven-hour ordeal of swatting back a swarm of killer bees, otherwise known as the 8th Benghazi Congressional Committee (only the first two inquiries were bi-partisan). Thanks to the Republican penchant for repeatedly beating a dead horse (and a slip of the lip from the former Pub candidate for speaker) this was largely viewed as a witch hunt even by Pubs, with Hillary the witch and defeat of her presidential presumptives the prize at hand.

Nothing new happened in all those tedious hours except for a televised, and outrageously disrespectful, tantrum by those on the right, determined to find something criminal to hang on her. In the end, it was Hillary’s to lose and she didn’t — she walked away tired but unscathed and looking, the Baggers rue, very presidential.

That whole drill was painful to watch, so I avoided it, checking in from time to time to see how Mrs. Clinton was handling incoming fire. Much was made about her facial expressions this time around, pictures posted on the net, and my favorite was the one where she looked tired and bored, leaning into her palm. This is a former First Lady of the United States of America we’re talking about. She knew exactly what that face portrayed, exactly what her posture represented, exactly what she was doing when she did it. Some would say that’s a cynical take on my part and a scripted response from her, so let me just say this about that: after decades of Hillary-watching and a certain appreciation for the Scorpio energy she is, that was an entirely authentic Hillary move, face in hand. I’m betting she knew she had ’em on the ropes by the time she posed for the camera.

The hot air coming out of D.C. is rhetorical, part of that cauldron bubbling with goo, and all but puts an exclamation point on the week. But elsewhere, suddenly, the air has become much more threatening, with Mexico bracing for the strongest hurricane ever recorded. Hurricane Patricia, a Category 5 — similar to Typhoon Haiyan that did so much damage in the Philippines in 2013 — will likely devastate Puerto Villarta and surrounding resort areas, leaving them “uninhabitable for weeks or months.” Loss of life and property seems unavoidable.

While this event appears to have shocked the meteorological world, due to “explosive intensification” over the last 24 hours, surely we might have predicted it. Climate change is the villain of all this extreme weather, even though we’re still not willing to level an accusing finger. For the moment, El Niño is getting the blame, having produced Pacific water temps of 87 degrees and more, running unusually deep and creating moisture in the air to bring a weather event to the Western Hemisphere that we’ve never seen before. If you’re the praying kind, keep positive thoughts for the well-being of all living things in Patricia’s path.

One last thing I’d like to speak to as we finish up this week’s list of seemingly disparate people and situations, at odds with one another. Today — all day — is a free event called Global Oneness Day, planned by the spiritual community for much of a year. It’s a gathering of world leaders, scientists, entertainers, spiritual leaders, activists, and business leaders, coming together to share a sense of our oneness and mutuality with one another and the planet.

You may recognize some of the names: Iyanla Vanzant, Michael Beckwith, Gary Zukav, Marianne Williamson, Ken Wilber, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jean Houston, Ervin Laszlo, Neale Donald Walsch, Panache Desai, Nassim Haramein, Dean Radin, Doreen Virtue, Patricia Cota-Robles, Stephen Dinan, Matt Kahn, and a video recording created for the occasion by Desmond Tutu. There are over forty speakers, something for most every interest.

If you’d like to experience this spiritual event, go here. You may discover that this is a day all about you. Every opinion out there, no matter how disconcerting we find it, exists somewhere within each of us or it would have no resonance with us — we would simply move past it without recognizing it. All those issues above, fleshed out in the news of the day — seemingly so disconnected to our daily lives — are part of the larger entity, WE.

They are part of what we are exploring about ourselves, a catalyst for our growth and self-revelation. We can only truly see ourselves in one another. As Marianne Williamson tells us, “A wave cannot separate itself from the ocean, nor can we separate ourselves from each other.”

Politics is personal and the news is as much our own story — yours and mine — as are the stories we’ve shared today. Recognizing and embracing this is the work, making each decision in kindness, compassion  and respect, if we are to evolve our humanity and build a safe and sane world for those who come after, unto the 7th generation — and beyond.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.”
–Albert Schweitzer

This week, American citizens — or at least the more than fifteen million of them that tuned in to the debate in Las Vegas — were stunned to discover that politics does not have to be a contact sport, blood letting and circus act. They’d largely forgotten, if they knew at all, that intelligent people have no need to talk over one another, toss out insults, and behave like loons in order to make their point.

Don’t get me wrong, there were diverse personalities on stage and not all of them above throwing a jab, as did Clinton about Sanders’s voting record on gun control, although both candidates have earned a solid and disapproving F from the National Rifle Association on gun rights. But by and large, the conversation was stimulating, the proceedings respectful and the politics progressive, except for ex-senator and military minded Jim Webb, whom one pundit described as a “perfectly respectable Republican.”

By the way, if you’re interested in finding out where each of our candidates — right and left — stand on policy as reflected by their record,you can find that information here.

If you read on-line and watch cable news, you will discover that everyone won the debate (except Webb and poor Lincoln Chaffee, who seems a very nice man but not up to the rigors of a presidential run). Polls, blogs, and forums all report that whoever you liked going in, you thought won at the end of the evening. Obviously, we like the sound of our thoughts echoed back to us.

Big Bill sent out an e-mail to the faithful, crowing that Hillary had swept the event, and mainstream (read that corporate) media agreed. She seemed poised and polished, having been at this ‘public scrutiny’ thing for most of her adult life, and offered an authentic and passionate moment when she discussed the Republican attack on Planned Parenthood. Hillary has an impressive record working with and for women.

On the other hand, alternative media and progressive sites all agreed that Bernie had won, having set the agenda that the Warren Wing of the Democratic party had embraced, heart and soul. Sanders led in all the casual polls and forums, and raised over a million dollars that evening,  and two more million over the next two days, all from small contributors. The loser of the evening was probably Joe Biden, who, should he still be looking for a reason to run, found none.

The Pubs behaved as expected, most of them either professing boredom or referring to the debate as a conversation about “giving away free stuff,” like Medicare and Social Security. Lindsey Graham couldn’t bring himself to watch the whole thing, Trump couldn’t figure out why everyone was so nice to each other, and Karl Rove called Bernie “an elderly dyspeptic Bilbo Baggins,” still unaware, I suspect, that those on the left — and even much of moderate America — would gladly vote for Bilbo over any of the narrowly drawn bully-boys running on the right.

Now, if things go as currently projected and Hillary gets the most caucus votes, it seems clear that she has plenty of energy and confidence for the run and, although an Establishment politician, will have the loyalty of voters on the left. If, however, Bernie captures the nomination, there is very little about the man’s politics to object to in terms of where he wants to take domestic policy, even among many Republican voters who view Hillary through a filter of literally decades of disdain. Those wobbling righties who refuse to vote for a Democrat under any circumstance might look at their own candidate and decide an Independent who wants to take on Wall Street is not so bad.

That’s the report on the political week, up to the actual topic I want to discuss today, which is character — national, presidential, and individual. I think of Eric’s discussions about the Pluto/Uranus energies, echoed again this week with the activity in Virgo, when I consider how far we’ve slid down the zip line since the sixties. The antithesis of the altruistic, spiritually-inclined anti-establishment qualities I knew as a kid is represented in the needle-swing of today’s Republican Party, whose mistrust of government verges on manic, along with a frightening disregard for intellectual discourse and the measured but secular response of science or social science.

They are no longer interested in electing the smartest candidate in the crowd, they’re going for the brashest. They have no love of religious scholarship that asks big questions seeking larger answers, they’re more comfortable with snake-handlers and creationists. They cotton to Ayn Rand’s manifesto that the superior man takes what he wants and deserves what he takes, with no mind to the ideals of the republic and its commonwealth that have provided them the freedom to think so.

And ethics? When Donald Trump declared that God was awesome  — because He’d made that wonderful golf course he was so lucky to have purchased at a heckuva  bargain — and lost no polling points, had no evangelical pastor thunder against his shallowness from the pulpit, caused no mainstream media pundit to question the ineptitude of his response as a sop to the Religious Right, it is easy enough to surmise that ethics has no place in the right-wing. That’s the same right-wing whose purity tests are so stringent that very few Pubs can live their life ‘out loud’ and pass them — and so they don’t.

Which brings me back to Tuesday night’s debate. A few things happened that made me think ethics might be making a welcome comeback. Most everyone heard about Bernie’s deflecting the heat off Hillary for her e-mail dilemma, winning him approval and applause from those who consider the issue another of the time-wasting tactics the right likes to employ. I suspect that’s where Trump would have pounced, and where he began to scratch his head at such polite behavior. Indeed, nobody was expecting Mr. Sanders’ exasperated response to a loaded question, especially Mrs. Clinton whose face showed not just relief but absolute joy.

Now we could say that Bernie made that comment based on his dislike for political posturing and personal attack, that he was just living up to his pledge not to bash other candidates. Or we might say that his answer was an extraordinarily clever hop-scotch over a Hillary-centric question in order to make way for his own message (which he then delivered). But since Bernie is not scripted, I’m going to take him at his word; an explanation given to a reporter right after the debate, who asked why he’d done it. “It was,” said he, “the right thing to do.”

Sanders typically does what he thinks is right. For instance, when asked about black lives mattering, Bernie had the right answer, which drew thunderous applause and preempted the question. In his response, he mentioned the name of Sandra Bland — the young black woman who was arrested for a traffic violation in Waller County, Texas this summer, found hanging in her cell three days later — which he’d promised her mother he would do when they lunched together recently.

The meeting was accidental, and remained confidential, despite the kind of political volume it would have engendered, much like the dust-up over the Pope’s meeting with Kentucky’s anti-gay poster child and religious zealot, Kim Davis. Clearly, Sanders’ decision not to exploit that occasion was an ethical decision that would have gob-smacked the average politico, who would have found some covert way to leak his growing bona fides with the black community, pre-debate.

Doing the right thing — despite the consequences — is within Bernie Sanders’s character, and I can’t tell you for sure that such ethical politics won’t disqualify him for the American presidency. That will be largely up to us as a culture and a constituency, able in the next months to push the nation into a return to ethical rule of law designed to meet public need, committing ourselves to that movement — or not.

I’m not bashing Hillary in this piece, as she’s doing a fine job of leaning as left as she can without cutting the threads she’s spent a lifetime weaving into the monetized politics of corporate neo-liberalism. If the left holds her to campaign promises, she may overcome her moderation to make some waves on domestic issues. I’m less hopeful about international entanglement.

But doing the right thing is something many of us have found a resonance for — some even a passion — not just in our own lives but projected into the community and beyond to government. So much that we see on a daily basis seems the wrong thing to do, institutionalized, politicized and stubbornly unyielding. So much is just plain unethical.

For instance, it’s hard to argue against a call for free (or even reasonably priced) public education when we discover that outstanding student loans amount to over a trillion dollars, a good portion of that in profit to the government, or hear of seniors dependent on Social Security having their checks garnished for back payment.

It’s difficult to justify multi-billions in corporate welfare to businesses that not only don’t need a hand, but don’t pay a cent in taxes to the nation that continues to feed them with perks and public money, while still playing with the notion of further cuts to the safety net.

It’s ridiculous to note the uptick in medical insurance and pharmaceutical costs when it’s clear that the prices being charged are “all the market can bear,” even though the free market isn’t free, the fair market is only a glimmer in a progressive’s eye, and all the market can bear is akin to Ayn Rand in perpetual orgasm. And that’s just the obvious.

It’s not the right thing to continue doing so much that we do these days, including celebrate bogus holidays that were politicized from the git-go. Since we’re just past it, let’s take Columbus Day as a likely example of how much we got wrong — and how diligently some of us are trying to make it right.

As I’ve already exceeded my word limit (!) I’ll offer a few quotes and links, for your exploration. This is a topic dear to the heart of natives of this nation and continent, and those of us who identify with them. I like what David Swanson has to say about Christopher Columbus, who we should all acknowledge was cruel to the point of sadism, possibly even a sociopath, and responsible for beginning a genocide that eliminated over 90% of this continent’s indigenous population even BEFORE the Pilgrims landed:

“Columbus was not a particularly evil person. He was a murderer, a robber, an enslaver, and a torturer, whose crimes led to possibly the most massive conglomeration of crimes and horrific accidents on record. But Columbus was a product of his time, a time that has not exactly ended. If Columbus spoke today’s English he’d say he was “just following orders.” Those orders, stemming from the Catholic “doctrine of discovery,” find parallels through Western history right down to today’s “responsibility to protect,” decreed by the high priests of the United Nations.

Evil is almost always mundane, is it not? A feisty little Italian, given to overreach, trying to impress the leaders of his country and church, while making a little stash for himself? A man not unlike some we know today. So long as we continue this antiquated notion of Manifest Destiny and colonialism, pushing ourselves where we’re not wanted in search of resources not ours — as long as we pretend that might makes right and profit is all that matters — we continue to be the anachronistic evil that infects the human race.

There are communities all across this nation changing out Columbus Day activities for celebrations of their native peoples, like Seattle’s Indigenous People’s Day. All it takes for that kind of sanity to spread is an educated population, respect for humankind and yes, a determination to do what’s right. Besides those already indicated, here are a couple more links worth your time — weekend reads, if you will — the first from people’s historian, Howard Zinn.

The Real Christopher Columbus

As Cities Give Columbus the Boot, Indigenous Peoples Day Spreads Across US

Doing the right thing is a matter of personal consciousness, of course, but it should look like, feel like, a higher calling than self-seeking and aggrandizement. An easy enough template to follow: whenever it looks like an ego-stroke, you can bet it is one.

When we live our life reaching up for that ‘right thing,’ integrity not only becomes easier, it becomes easier to notice when it’s absent. That’s where many of us find ourselves today — sensitized to what’s gone missing, and longing for it. The magic of transformation is found in doing what’s right instead of what’s easy.

If enough of us adopt that philosophy, the collective mind will change for the better, and perhaps in exercising those spiritual muscles we will find that we’ve discovered our purpose. Like Albert Schweitzer — a man of great compassion and a lifetime of service — told us, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”

It does seem to be Bernie’s thing, and a number of others I can think of, but few of them with a stomach for politics. Maybe we need to make it our thing, too, if we’re to create the personal, as well as collective, world we’re yearning for.

by Judith Gayle

After three months of Saturn dinking around in the last degrees of Scorpio, the Lord of Karma is racing through Sagittarius, fanning fires, taking necessary twists and turns and delivering the logical consequences of our actions. Case in point? Just when you thought the torpor of the American political process couldn’t get worse, it did.

All the anxiety over the government going unfunded again — the previous shutdown of this decade costing multi-billions in lost revenue — has fallen back to sheer amazement over the train wreck that is the House of Representatives.

I would have said leadership in the House, but a) there isn’t any, and b) it isn’t the leaders that are the current challenge. When John Boehner threw in the towel, no longer willing to try to bring his fractured party members together, he made plain his dilemma: the fringe of his membership had gone delusional, born in the cradle of FOX News paranoia and dedicated to achieving things they couldn’t possibly deliver without damaging the nation along with their party’s brand.

John called them ‘false prophets,’ which accurately captures the religious zealotry with which they’ve pursued that end. This is the same internal fracture that has resulted in the current crew of Republican presidential candidates, all but one or two of them unsuitable for national leadership.

Boehner had trusted the Republicans down the line to pick up the slack. Pubs are known for their ability to maintain a stable of likely prospects, groomed, well-financed and able to step up when it’s their turn at the gate. But that tradition has broken down since our Dubby was handed the presidency by errant Supremes. And that was before the Bagger movement fractured party priorities, and prior to the advent of the radical and unyielding Freedom Caucus.

The House Freedom Caucus is composed of the hard-core zealots who fly in the face of compromise of any sort, blaming Establishment politicians like Boehner for making any attempt to govern. They did not come to Washington to keep government running, they came to kill the beast — and they’ll take down anyone who gets in their way. While the Caucus itself is small, it carries a big stick: primary challenge. This has turned out to be a surprisingly effective tool to keep even old-timers like John McCain and Lindsey Graham in line with radical goals.

Boehner’s presumptive replacement, Kevin McCarthy, stumbled badly when he admitted that the Benghazi investigations had been successful in lowering Hillary’s popularity numbers, creating accusations of excessive and expensive ‘gotcha’ politics from the left and of sheer political ineptitude on the right. It’s also worth noting that rumors of sexual mischief on McCarthy’s part poisoned the water with the Caucus, who issue regular purity tests to their colleagues. Given all that, it’s no surprise McCarthy decided to pass, declaring the Baggers “ungovernable.”

The last time we had such a defection upon resignation of a speaker, we got House Speaker Tom DeLay, a bug exterminator from Texas who professed to know the mind of Gawd Almighty and George W. Bush, and served both faithfully in attempting to dismantle what was left of the common good established as The Great Society. His blanket refusal to consider any concerns of the minority party defined a period when the Republican machine simply rolled over anything in its path, paving the way toward the morass we find ourselves in today.

Since then, we have made little progress toward restoring economic equity to the public or mending our tattered social programs, and the Freedom Caucus has plans to make that even more painful for us all. Some say this is that place where the fabric rips beyond mending, where the Republican party becomes so regressive that the average American can no longer trust them to deliver on their behalf, and perhaps it is so. It’s difficult to see how they find common cause with those who want government to run efficiently — or run at all, at this point.

Anyone can become House leader; it does not require congressional membership. Some have suggested Mitt Romney could fill Boehner’s shoes. Some have said why not tap outgoing retirees to take the job, short-term, since they wouldn’t be forced to pay the price later (being primaried and replaced by someone farther to their right.) Insiders are begging Paul Ryan to step in, although Ryan has made it clear that he prefers digging into the complex minutia of the tax code to riding herd on Baggers — and this despite a loud and well-orchestrated plea from Establishment conservatives, terrified of any other outcome. Indeed, the few adults in the conservative party who see governance as an actual process, rather than a scourge on society, are beside themselves.

Nobody wants the job of House speaker, or almost nobody. You will probably not be surprised to discover that Newt Gingrich volunteered to step in for the good of the party and nation. And news today indicates that right-wing Pub enforcer Darrel Issa is considering the prospect of running to herd zealots, which isn’t much of a stretch since Darrel has spent a lifetime — much as has FOX’s Roger Ailes — creating them.

Issa has a long and checkered past, the kind that earned him a place on the CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) list of most-corrupt politicians even before he hit the tragedy in Benghazi like an ill wind. As Charmian of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, his select committee witch hunt of AG Holder’s failed Fast and Furious weapons experiment — while coming to little except expense and wasted time — earned him a favored place among the radicals, but few friends in Establishment politics. His tireless vendetta against all things Obama, as well as the IRS, sweetens the deal on the far-right. Interestingly, Issa was replaced on Oversight by none other than Jason Chaffetz, the ideologue who was determined to go up against McCarthy’s bid for speaker. Darrel’s been looking for a better fit since, and — always an opportunist — he seems to think he’s found one.

Yes, as a politician, Issa is dangerous. As speaker, that would be an understatement: Darrel siding with the radicals to bring the “real fiscal reform they’ve been denied by the K Street, if you will, influence.” Read that: government shutdown. But no matter who takes this position, this is the Republican Party’s moment of implosion. It’s not going to get better from here.

This kind of musical chairs is just so much internal busy-ness to those who consider Establishment politics a waste of time and energy, but it takes on a different gravitas when you consider how far up the leadership pecking order House Speaker actually is. Put plainly, as a piece over at PoliticusUSA was titled, “A Tea Party Fascist Will Be Second In Line To the Presidency By Halloween.” Perhaps this is worth our attention after all!

As of now, nobody knows how this situation will shake out. But it seems part of our explosive astrology, this fine mess coming right on time, predicted and expected and, some would say, part of the purge that is separating the gold from the dross on the evolutionary scale, tearing the blinders off all but the deliberately ignorant and fearful. Politics is a mirror — an overview — of the dysfunctional relationship dynamics that play out in our private lives, from our boardrooms to our bedrooms. We’re getting a very well-deserved look at ourselves, and it ain’t pretty.

Perhaps this is the part where realization comes flooding in, where we face ourselves and grow up a little. Perhaps we can get real, surrender our hubris and arrogance and dance where karma leads us. Karma, a.k.a. that long, slow, earned and needed learning curve that sensitizes us to all we would project onto others. Karma, the often painful experience that must eventually lead to renewed understanding and synthesis.

Getting a grip on how perfectly positioned we are to get that glimpse of reality might provide us a breakthrough, if we’re willing. Truly, if the Phoenix is to rise out of these ashes, we need to acknowledge how much has burnt down. What is not sustainable, not ethical nor compassionate, must be released, and a new template for the future put in place. That is the work ahead.

As our Len tells us in his latest piece, we’re poised on “the grandmother of fresh starts” this coming Monday morning. If enough of us have learned the steps to the dance, aware of what must be left behind, consigned to the past — if enough of us are eager to create our future in harmlessness and collaboration, ethics restored, hearts open and mindfulness engaged — it will be an excellent beginning.

As we are released from old errors and unworkable decisions, progress is assured. And it’s comforting to remember that it’s only a small number of the planets population that is thwarting our desire to create a prosperous and peaceful world. As it was with each of us, those who aren’t ready for change are still learning the dance, held safely in the patient arms of the Lord of Karma, who knows all the steps.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

This is the week I went on an involuntary news fast. That old trickster Mercury, perfecting its skill at retrograde SNAFU, had me chasing my tail making calls to people I could barely understand in an attempt to revive my modem and get access to the net. At the beginning of the week it appeared to be all about the phone line, but after waiting for a tech to test DSL from the street — and next day repairs under the house with new wiring — I still didn’t have access. Another call this morning led to discovery of local power outages, necessitating a reconfiguration of the modem and then instructions to load a favorite page, so I hit the link to Huffy and got this ledeline, front and center: Blood Bath USA.

We knew it was coming. We were expecting our hearts to break in this succession of full moons, and here we go again, another direct hit. Yet another horrific event involving home-grown — and apparently lone wolf — terrorism, accompanied by conversations about arming or not arming campus police, bad actors versus those who are mentally disturbed, no gun restrictions versus sensible laws regarding weaponry. Blah blah blah, until we’re numb. This is, essentially, just another piece of our All American culture war, much of it tracked back to mistrust of government and tribal values. And wrap it all up with a fifteenth — FIFTEENTH! — address from this President asking when we concerned citizens will shake the nation into common sense with our collective outrage and sorrow.

Yet while it seems clear that a vast majority of us from both left and right are in favor of more stringent laws regarding guns, who gets them and how, a congressional body that within the last few days has doubled down on its purity tests to all things right-wing will approve no discussion of limits, here in the Wild Wild West. On any number of fronts — Oath Keepers, for example — full-out insurrection is not beyond imagination, and nobody on that side of the fence is going to allow (let alone pass, it might appear) a mental health screening, or allow an ATF representative to get more than half-way up their driveway.

I’m somewhat encouraged by the conversations on CNN (my only news channel, here in the Pea Patch) regarding stricter gun laws, with some anchors confronting the pro-gun folks, like Huckabee, demanding explanation of how MORE weapons will stop random murder. But the question is not so small and manageable as simply new gun restrictions. The problem has more to do with firearms as a part of our approved culture of violence than any legal sanctions can deter, and we all know it.

We must come to the place where we acknowledge the need for a shift in weapons legalities as a first step toward remediating this dark energy, followed by a very close look at issues of mindless militarization, zero/sum competition, violence as entertainment, nationalized poverty, family dysfunction, repressed sexuality, and all the ills of our struggling society, because — you name it — that pressure will eventually find release with a finger on the trigger somewhere. It already has.

No, the problem is not so simple, and the recent visit of the Pope brought the problem into perspective. It seems to me that while statistics show that much of religion is on the wane, we have dropped out of those simplistic traditions without finding an internal mechanism that keeps our humanity in balance, and many of us feel its loss. We created a void space upon which to feed our children, yet filled it with nothing.

In a culture dominated by consumerism and a brutal race to success that seems increasingly improbable, Mother Teresa was surely right when she told us that “The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality.”

It’s a no brainer to assume that feisty old Teresa was talking about Christianity when she said that, and Catholicism in particular, but the concept is so much wider, and so is the conversation. Especially AF — After Francis — I’ve been thinking about the concept of spirituality and the piece written by our Amanda Moreno, Sometimes I Hate The Word Spirituality.

I understand that the term has come to mean just another kind of religiosity, one without much ‘there’ there, but I’m not uncomfortable with the word or even the concept. Even if defense of spirituality has become tedious, as has a reliable definition, the concept is in the mind of the beholder, self-defined as is the experience — and that’s where it is not just authentic but alchemical.

Back at the time of Harmonic Convergence in August of 1987 — what the ascensionists call the Second Wave of awakening, the First being the expansive philosophy of the ’60s counterculture — it was clear that religion had become largely unworkable in American society. A spate of cults, from the mildly absurd to the dark and dangerous, had sprung up, including a growing movement within the evangelical churches to return to their roots in the primitive church. The schism that took culture wars to a new level had already established the right-wing church, determined to grab political power, leaving an easy-going spiritual movement still wearing flowers in their hair, hugging trees and listening to crystals.

On the right, Jerry Falwell had politicized the evangelicals into a Moral Majority that became activists, and gave us politicians like Newt Gingrich who made Bill Clinton’s life hell in the ’90s. On the left, those of us who were looking for the larger spiritual picture called ourselves Seekers. We were not organized, nor did we think we needed to be. There is little ‘hive mind’ on the left of the spectrum, which has always been something of an Achilles Heel in terms of getting and keeping political power for liberal causes.

As a well traveled Seeker in the ’80s and early ’90s, I loved ALL the trappings, the metaphysical stores, the retreats and trainings. I tasted, I delved, I perfected. I meditated, I channeled, I astral traveled. At some point before the end of the century, I discovered I was no longer seeking anything — I’d found myself.

It wasn’t that the answers had been outside of me, somewhere — it was that I’d asked the wrong question. It wasn’t, “how do I do this?” It was, “who am I?” And essentially, what the masters all tell us of the spiritual path is true, we will come to peace with our search as we live out the focus of our path, as we inhabit our truth, and as we come to recognize and love self, others, and the Great Mystery that connects us all.

Amanda wrote that the Wiki description reads that “Spirituality may refer to almost any kind of meaningful activity.” And I will agree, so long as that activity connects us not just to our heads but to our hearts. To be spiritual is to open ourselves to spirit — to an awe-inspiring experience of kinship with all that is, with all of creation, with one another. That experience brings our innocence back to us, the wonder of childhood and discovery, the outrageous beauty of life in its many forms.

Spiritual perspective carves away all the dross of learned behavior and erroneous belief. It melts away the complex to leave us with the profundity of what is simple. It puts us at the center of creation to delight in all we have made, or to change it according to the dictates of our heart-connection. It excludes nothing, includes everything, and does no harm, because the very experience of our spirituality is found in harmlessness.

Religion is the codified ritual that someone, somewhere, insisted we must duplicate exactly in order to have an experience of spirit. It comes with rules and absolutes and a hierarchy that found benefit in keeping us all smaller — hence, more tractable — than we actually are. When we hear about Christians condemning Muslims, or Pagans being discriminated against or ISIS killing off those who aren’t true believers, we can know that this is the worst misunderstanding humankind can hold about their purpose on the planet — and that their need to control for God’s sake makes them godless.

It is said of Mother Teresa that she questioned her belief at the end of her life. Although she wrote with a good deal of wisdom, many disliked her. She was something of a tyrant to those who worked with her, and certainly judgmental in terms of her own religious bias. And yet, looking at the work she did faithfully for a lifetime, I find it difficult to fault her.

Teresa leaned in, embracing the dying, offering kindness where little existed, and counted it good even as she lost faith in the absolutes of the tenants of the life she had chosen — and don’t we all? Somewhere on her path, an experience of spirituality took the place of dogma and put wind beneath her wings to complete her work. Perhaps she had an experience of my favorite Course in Miracles affirmation: “If you knew Who walks beside you in the way that you have chosen, fear would be impossible.”

We love because we are loved — and a spiritual experience of that opens our hearts. There is little else to understand. Experience of that will change everything, and that one stroke of spiritual brilliance filtered through an open heart can mend the world. Your world and mine. The one you and I came to — collectively — co-create. When we think about leaning in to embrace an alchemical principal, that is the one to hold close.

Love because you are loved, love because you ARE love. And so it is.