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By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I’m here to change history. If we want a change we can really truly make it happen.”
—Sandra Bland, b. 1987, d. Waller County Jail, Texas, on July 10, 2015.

Yet another theatre shooting ended a week that gave us an indecisive Jeb, a creatively dramatic Rand, and a copycat Lindsey, all vying for attention and sucked into the vortex that is Donald. You’d think Bush the Youngest declaring Medicare obsolete, then walking it back as he does most of his talking points, would grab some attention. Or that Rand Paul taking a chain saw to the IRS code, or Lindsey Graham doing violence to his cell phone after Trump outed his number, would tickle the masses, but no. All eyes were glued to our big-mouthed national embarrassment, who — capturing first place with the radical right as the “tell ’em like it is” candidate  — is making it plain what the Republican party has come to.

Two young women are dead in Louisiana, nine wounded. The shooter, described as a middle-aged drifter (who killed himself rather than be captured) is being vetted at this writing, authorities looking for motive. That seems at cross-purpose to me. He’s white, so it won’t be labeled terrorism — white folks get a pass on that, wrongfully. That he had mental health issues is a given, no one opens fire in a crowd who has all their bb’s in the pack. Still, what we SHOULD be vetting is our absurdly lax law giving us access to guns  and our heartbreaking inability to establish reasonable controls and safeguards, both of which the President has identified as his largest regret in office, thus far.

Despite anything the NRA might propose — everyone packing heat in the movie theatre, for instance — engaging the shooter in a gun fight would have created a shitstorm of bullets, even more havoc and wounding, if not more death. I’m surprised that didn’t happen, frankly. While I’m not anti-self-defense, in Louisiana — with some of the most lenient gun restrictions in the nation — you’d think someone would have been better prepared.

Since the shooter walked out with the crowd (before sighting the cops and running back in the theatre), it might have been productive if someone in the audience had one of those pink tasers in her purse — you know, hostess gift at the down-home Tupperware Party? — although even that makes me cringe. Still, there is a vast difference between tasing to stun and shooting to kill. One is self-defense, the other seems to me a bridge too far.

We’re very familiar with death in this country. We like to think that war and displacement only occur somewhere else in the world, that oppression and cruel conditions are only possible far from our shores, but that’s fantasy and it’s becoming more obvious every day.  We started to notice not that long ago. The Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri, seems a lifetime ago, but it was just last August. Remarkably, it provided a turning point regarding police reform, a critical need pushed forward in large part by a group of activists who named themselves #BlackLivesMatter.

Separate from the Department of Justice investigation into Ferguson’s police department and Brown’s death — which found that the cops routinely engaged in profiling and excessive force, as well as violating the constitutional rights of the city residents by “pattern or practice of unlawful conduct” —  the President’s commission on police reform issued recommendations this March that included “establishment of external and independent criminal investigations” of officer shooting or in-custody death.

It did not take a presidential commission to convince most on-lookers that this was a grievous situation of police exploitation and cover-up, just one of thousands occurring in this nation and routinely ignored — unless those on-lookers were white. Early polls indicated a white finger pointed at black troublemakers, and a complete misunderstanding of the perils of “breathing while black.”

Here’s the good news: we’ve come a long way, although it certainly came at a price. White America is quickly waking up to the disparities of systemic racial bias. Oh, not the smug conservative farts on the Supreme Court or the crusty old fools that still watch the FOX propaganda channel to validate that Obama — and his ‘kind’ — are the real problem in America. No, not them, hanging on to their world-view through thick and thin.

The rest of us are getting an education, a reality check, if you will. Certainly the kids are aware of the inequality situation, as are those of us who have noted the long list of people of color who have died in this revealing year since Ferguson. Statistics point to one black death every 28 hours, many of them brutally senseless.

Recently, poor oblivious Dem candidate, Lincoln Chafee, put his foot in it at Netroot’s Nation, confronted by a chanting Black Lives Matter crowd. Chafee, a particularly well-mannered man and one born to privilege in the nation’s smallest state, agreed by saying that “Black lives matter, white lives matter, ALL lives matter.” When he was booed, he seemed perplexed and repeated the sentence, more slowly.

Over at FOX, much was made about those black folks hooting at one of their own who was, after all, only speaking up for caucasians. They too, missed the point. The point of the movement — yes, it’s a movement and it’s gathering steam — is to make clear that black life is devalued in this nation, as proven by the dreadful statistics, and that is the issue taking prominence at this moment. The protesters wanted recognition by white America that they, as representatives of Black America, were on equal footing as American citizens. Yes, all life matters — but not in that particular conversation at that time.

Chafee was being asked to respond to the desperate need for action regarding the African-American population at crosshairs in cities across the nation, and he flubbed it. Well, Rhode Island isn’t famous for its ghetto scenes and racial disruption, I suppose, so Lincoln got a lesson in broader presidential politics — but the response from conservatives, pointing to this exchange with glee, shows how tone-deaf they are to the actual problem at hand. It is not within their tradition to figure it out, since it would shatter their mythology of superiority.

But here’s one of those things that’s changing quickly, adding fuel to the fire that finds not just government untrustworthy, but all of the justice system: the call  that ‘young black men’ are dying all around the nation has to expand to include not just women of color, but people of all colors who do not have the means to defend themselves.

Economist and populist pundit Robert Reich argues that we mustn’t allow “… the progressive movement to split into a “Black lives matter” movement and an “economic justice” movement.” He writes:

This would only play into the hands of the right.

For decades Republicans have exploited the economic frustrations of the white working and middle class to drive a wedge between races, channeling those frustrations into bigotry and resentment.

The Republican strategy has been to divide-and-conquer. They want to prevent the majority of Americans – poor, working class, and middle-class, blacks, Latinos, and whites – from uniting in common cause against the moneyed interests.

We must not let them.

While I understand the desire for validation from the white community, we must become aware how much a class issue this is — even more than racial, although perhaps not so overtly. Eventually we are going to find, I think, that — different moment, similar  context and stealing no virtue from the demand that racist genocide end  — Lincoln Chafee was right as rain. ALL lives matter. All colors, all sexes, all classes, and that’s because it isn’t a simple matter of racism that is driving the problem. It’s a misunderstanding of purpose by the law enforcement community, taking clues from a paradigm fighting to hold on to power. In short, this an ethical matter of civil liberty in the face of abusive authority, and that, unless addressed by a motivated public, will define our future on every level.

First, the particulars. I’ve been following issues of police brutality for much of a decade, my go-to girl on this is Digby over at Hullabaloo (and Salon) who shares a loathing for authority with a taser in its hand (let alone a service revolver). Unhappily, my scads of examples are hiding in my next-to-dead computer, awaiting liberation at the hands of some (pricey) techy type, so I can’t flood you with the gory details — or perhaps happily, given the content. But here are a few examples.

We all remember the woman who, apparently disoriented by driving into a White House fence, was chased to the Capitol building in October of 2013. Hemmed in by police vehicles, when she put her car in reverse, bumping up against a patrol car, she was shot five times, killing her, the bullets miraculously missing her one-year-old daughter in the back seat.

How about the eleven-year-old Bronx school girl who witnessed a snowball fight last winter that lead to allegations of cell phone theft. Mistaken for the perp, she was manhandled, thrown to the ground and cuffed. While she was released to her parents eventually, she is still dealing with the system and marked as a troublemaker, even though she was the one terrorized by those who have pledged to “serve and protect.” She will likely mistrust authority for all of her life, and with reason.

Here’s a piece by Charles Pierce detailing the five-year-old murder — no other word will do for this car shooting — of an unarmed mother of four by police outside Atlanta, and the complete corruption of the justice system in both overlooking and dismissing any culpability, including a congratulatory  discussion of how the target —  her head — exploded.

In January, cops fired eight bullets into the car that a young 17-year-old Hispanic woman was driving trying to escape. They felt compelled to answer the threat to their life by killing this girl for driving 16 feet, going all of 11 miles an hour before hitting a fence. She was, they testified, “too close” to them.

And if that’s not enough, here are a dozen more black women who fell prey to the system. There are fewer, but no less serious, allegations regarding many white men and women — many of them with identifiable mental illness, which is dealt with  as a character flaw that makes them ‘dangerous.’  If they aren’t killed outright, the for-profit prison system folds them in with little concern for their treatment.

Much as Michael Brown will be remembered as someone who was picked off for minimal reason and the subsequent, unjustifiable response of law enforcement in the Heartland, from street to court, Sandra Bland is going to be the poster child for naked aggression and abuse of power. Even so unlikely an accuser as The Donald has remarked on how disturbing he found this sequence of policing events. Perhaps you’ve seen the clip before, but it’s worth further scrutiny, because — as Larry Wilmore made clear — this is a study in escalation of authoritarianism. Given the deep divide with which this nation is forced to deal — along with the fixity of the Aquarian signature that will color much of our future — we need to get this under control now!

The video is a symposium of what’s wrong with law enforcement at this point. It presumes that the citizen has NO rights, when in fact she does. It presumes she may NOT question authority, which in fact she can. It assumes that absolute unquestioning  obedience is the first and only requirement for this woman to escape violence to her person. That is not what the Bill of Rights guarantees and is, in fact, a vivid example of what prompted its writing.

We have turned away, too often, from these stories, thinking there’s nothing we can do about them. We’ve given away our own essential freedoms by refusing to defend the liberties of those around us who are receiving the short end of the stick. We have scorched ourselves on this kind of oppression, probably not feeling that heat as much as the victimized citizens we’ve discussed here. We’ve seen the judicial system too often compromised, those with money dancing away from worse crimes scott free. We’ve seen the system no longer working. If it didn’t work for Sandra Bland, I guarantee it will not work for you and me.

With Venus slipping into retrograde today, we have several weeks ahead of us to rethink what is important to us, what we value. That can be a very private matter, very personal — or it can be very broad, as is the codified system of checks and balances that kept the ship of state on an even keel for a few brief decades. If we’re to keep her afloat, we all have to decide if we value Lady Liberty enough to create a groundswell of demand for her restoration.

To me, Venus has always represented comfort, a kind of authentic skin we occasionally slip into that soothes and allows us to present our best self. Given the mayhem of the moment, our larger national skin, unhappily, cannot feel all right to any of us today. The frightened, constricted response that puts a gun in the hand of law enforcement with no checks and balances is the fascism of absolute control.

ANY whiff of that energy must be dealt with from an intelligent perspective, putting paranoia and hysteria behind. There are answers to be found in retraining, in psychological testing, in inclusive culture and the review of professional ethics. There are techniques to be learned that de-escalate violence rather than provoking it. There are spiritual concepts that help us to shed old biases and let go of irrational fears.

But we need to WANT those badly enough to take notice, to become an active voice for healing the wounds of separation, to find commonality and respect for one another that will produce positive outcome.

Sandra Bland told us that she came here to change history, and she may have done just that. Her voice will not be silenced in this fight for civil liberty and balanced justice. We have come a long way in a short time, seems to me, and with a newly energized president who understands every nuanced bit of the problem. There’s every indication that he’s working behind the curtain to deal with the prison system, judicial inequity, and too-tough sentencing for drug violations. His ability to do what he’d like to do will very much depend on the energy that you and I can bring to that demand! Pushing him ahead on this will provide him the cover he needs to accomplish change in the short time left to him.

Let’s bring our best dynamic to the process, shall we? With the news of the day, we have another opportunity to demonize the man with the gun and idealize the victims, or perhaps, instead, we could see the vulnerability that has shoved so many of us to the edge. Once we stop placing blame, and see this matter of gun control as equally impacting us all — black, white, sane and not so much — there are options in front of us that weren’t available when our hearts were closed.

This shooting in Louisiana may be a similar fulcrum for tipping gun legislation as happened last year — begun with Michael Brown and ending with Sandra Bland — with a clear look at structured racism within the judicial system, leading to evolvement and adjustment. With Venus whispering in our ear, asking us to rethink, review, renew, perhaps we will realize that we need a more loving, more temperate and more inclusive way forward into a healing future for all our citizens. As ever — and especially for all of our brothers and sisters under the skin — we can only win this battle for tomorrow if we lead with our hearts.

Planet Waves is running a membership drive.
Read more in Solstice Fire and the Art of Service, by Eric Francis.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

It was difficult to know which story to focus on today, given a frenetic news cycle offering so much selection. There’s the ever-expanding clown car of the Republican presidential field that squeezed in union-killing Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, this week; the President smacking a former FOX Reporter on the snout with a rolled up newspaper; an official in San Francisco calling out FOX News in no uncertain terms; and the response to the possibility that fictional American hero, Atticus Finch, was more a man of his times than an idealistic Freedom Rider. And that’s the short list.

Getting a sure grip on the topic is a primary exercise on my Friday mornings, since I start to dig under that banner, tapping bits of information I’ve collected over the week and scooting around the web in search of more. Once I’ve got the general theme — and have invited Spirit in to ensure that what ‘needs saying’ gets said — then I bring my gaming skills to the project. I play Mahjong with the news, looking for the connections. In truth, all the topics above are connected in one big sociopolitical game board.

Most people have a game they prefer, perhaps a guilty pleasure, that is the equivalent of white noise, a mind-clearing, heart-calming exercise. Mine is Mahjong in various forms, always solitaire. If you don’t know the game, it’s simple enough. The board offers hundreds of tiles piled upon one another. The goal is to find pairs, eliminating them to reveal another layer of tiles and more pairs. The games I prefer are timed, the gamer racing to beat the projection. When my granddaughter was younger she was fascinated.

“How do you find them so fast, Grammie?” she asked.

My answer satisfied her. “You pick off the easy ones first and then you unfocus your eyes, just a little, to see the patterns.” Turns out that’s a valuable life skill.

So let’s pick off a few tiles, shall we? This week John Kerry made up for prior political stumbles by securing a deal with Iran, along with his place in history. House Leader John Boehner has indicated that the agreement “blows his mind,” that such an arrangement is “wrong for America,” and that his party will do everything in its power to stop it.

The warmongers are beside themselves that they might miss an opportunity to further their agenda, especially as the President has threatened to veto any attempt to kill the agreement. Lindsey Graham has his panties in a twist, doing an Aunt Pittypat impression that — especially for a presidential candidate — just ain’t pretty, making me grateful we were spared another run by his co-hawk buddy, John McCain.  Essentially, this is a smack-down between the neo-conservatives and the neo-liberals (which is why so many of us think there is no difference between parties).

Thanks to Dubby and his pal Uncle Dick Cheney, we mostly know what a neo-conservative is: someone dedicated to free market capitalism and international (for profit) interventionism (a 21st century form of colonialism). A term used less often, neo-liberalism, more often describes our sitting president’s temperament, if not entirely his policies: someone dedicated to the free market who by-passes traditional liberal doctrines and seeks progress by pragmatic means. There’s our first pair, then — the free market.

I’m sure that somewhere on our news board, we’ll find tiles that more explicitly define those doctrinal issues. Privatization of government, for instance, is also shared by the neos, as is hostility to safety nets or ‘socialist’ policy. Apparently you can slap the prefix ‘neo’ — a.k.a. new — on ideology of self-interest as old as the human species in order to put lipstick on that pig. This, I suppose, is the essence of marketing itself, blindsiding the public for ultimate profit. See how the tiles connect?

Hillary 2.0 is consistently more neo-liberal than Obama, and that’s easy enough to track. Although she’s come out in favor of the Iran deal, she recently wrote a letter to a large donor regarding the perception that Israel is practicing apartheid in Palestine, seeking input on how to put that image to bed, especially considering the growing wave of anti-Semitism in Europe. This follows an earlier pledge she made to be a better friend to Israel than Obama. Hillary just can’t win with real progressives on this one. It’s difficult to embrace anti-nuclear diplomacy with Iran and still support a nation so completely (and hysterically) at odds with such a venture. Harder still to avoid the truth that perhaps the world wouldn’t accuse Israel of apartheid if they’d quit practicing it.

Now — perhaps courting ire — let me once again insist that there is a difference between the parties, their purpose and tradition. The Pubs’ purpose is simplicity itself: kill government. I found a quote recently, attributed to the #occupy movement, that makes their tactics obvious as well, and if you squinch your eyes just a bit, the pattern will come into view:

First they create the mess.

Then they do everything possible to keep others from fixing the mess.

Then they blame others for the mess they created.

Then they propose the same policies that created the mess in the first place as the way to fix the mess they created.

First they create the mess. In 1953 —  the Eisenhower years — the CIA succeeded in toppling the democratically elected Iranian Premier, a dedicated nationalist whom the U.S. feared would befriend their Cold War nemesis, the Soviet Union (an action for which Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton issued an apology in 1997). They then re-installed the West-friendly Shah of Iran, who rewarded them by signing over 40 percent of Iran’s oil fields to U.S. companies. (My uncle from Oklahoma was in management with one of the big oil companies, lived in Tehran for a few years and loved to tell the story of how he and a group of friends taught the Shah and his family how to square-dance. I’m not kidding. This is still a family point of pride.)

Money and military aid poured into Iran for thirty years until, in 1979, anti-American protest grew into theocratic militancy to bounce the Shah out and seize the U.S. embassy, holding as many as 60 hostages for 444 days. If Carter bungled the situation initially, along with a failed rescue attempt, then Reagan — ever the showman — capitalized on Jimmy’s apparent ‘softness’ to catapult into power.

Carter had come to an agreement with the moderate Iranian President Ban-Sadr over the release of the captives, held by radical students, but the Ayatollah Khomeini, consolidating power, made a covert deal with Reagan’s campaign to withhold any positive resolution until after the election. The hostages were released just moments after Reagan’s inauguration and less than six months later, Ban-Sadr was overthrown by the new theocratic government. (You may not have heard about this betrayal of democratic principles, but you’ve surely heard the term “October Surprise.” This is a reference to down-low negotiations that turn the tide of an American election).

All of us remember when our Dubby described Iran as the major player in an “Axis of Evil.” By the nature of the beast, there can never be an agreement among adversaries that does not depend upon intense negotiation, trade offs, and verifications, and CERTAINLY no agreement if we refuse to talk to the opposition at all.

Dub’s position — that we never negotiate with terrorists (but we can sell them arms on the sly, yadda ad nauseum) — put up a wall on any diplomatic activity for much of a decade. Although seemingly oblivious to the religious schism between the Shia and Sunni factions that divide the Mideast, the Bush administration launched Shock ‘n Awe, resulting in a destabilized region and handing Iran a number of options about how to renew influence in a newly fractured Iraq.

Neocons everywhere, along with an eager Netanyahu, have been sure for over a decade that there would be eventual strikes against enrichment facilities. Imagine their disappointment when the black guy won, and that now — against all odds — he’s secured an actual agreement in Vienna.

Isn’t this cause for celebration? Can’t we welcome a win/win, even if it’s less than perfect, and isn’t it possible that Israel will benefit from a plan to verify, verify, verify? Buried under trivia and details we’ll find the ancient tiles of conflict and tribal intrigues, the same ones that colored the Cold War blood-red and attempt to keep us in the zero-sum game.

Clearly, there is plenty of hysteria over the ‘naïve’ action of this administration and the Western accord to bring a nuclear arms race under control. There is plenty of it reflected in Republican commentary, and if you need to wallow in it, go over to FOX News where there is a level of angst on display that would make even a drama queen blush.

There seems no actual intelligence involved in soliciting Dick Cheney’s opinion on this accord, given his dismal failure at predicting the result in Iraq, but it was Hannity, after all, that invited this comment that the agreement “… will, in fact, I think put us to closer to use — actual use — of nuclear weapons than we’ve been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.”

Be afraid, my dears. You know the mantra that drives us. Be very afraid! I swear, someone must — MUST! — define FOX network as not just a vehicle for propaganda (as happened in San Francisco) but a major source of hate speak. Tuning in today, my son and I briefly listened to zealots screech about open-carry options in order to defend against the inevitability of attacks from radical Islamists (presupposed in Chattanooga) and decided if we were forced to arm ourselves, it would likely be in defense of those very hotheads speaking.

Fear is still leading the way in the Iranian deal, of course. In whatever world we inhabit, the ‘enemy’ is not only mandatory, but demands respect and attention. Both the Ayatollah and Obama urge caution on the particulars of a final arrangement, and so, until Congress has its say and there are further assurances from Iran, the deal is still just ‘on the table.’ But, as Eric mentioned in his podcast, there is plenty of corporate profit at stake, which creates issues for politicians who are suddenly looking at renewed access to oil. We are distressingly predictable, are we not?

We must continue to look for patterns, connect the dots. Saudi Arabia doesn’t want a nuclear Iran, and Israel doesn’t want a nuclear Iran, and somehow —  odd partners, it seems — that’s a connected pair of tiles on the board, requiring further assessment. FOX pundits yelping like excited hounds over the need for more guns match the tiles represented by this front page of The New York Times, as chronicled by Digby yesterday. And Obama’s pardoning a prisoner who received a life sentence for pot lines up with the tile that reports a 90-something-year-old Auschwitz guard receiving four years in prison for being found complicit in 300,000 deaths (although a little late in the game).

Here’s another thought, the one that lingers in my mind and has since the beginning: how is it that we think we can, or even should, deny a sovereign nation nuclear capacity? Is the Nuclear Club just for those with a long reach and big budget? L’il Kim doesn’t think so. And why aren’t we huffing and puffing about Pakistan, clearly a danger seldom discussed?

There is threat here but not the obvious. It is threat to an old system that must fade if we’re to survive. Where would an old War Horse like Netanyahu be without an enemy? How would the conservatives keep their voters in line without an enemy? How could the evangelicals raise money and keep political influence without an enemy?

Certainly we must all mind the awesome possibilities of nuclear misuse, and surely it’s in the best interests of those who want to rid the world of nukes to curtail them, but who decides who gets a nuke and who doesn’t? As a representative of humankind, I’m not happy that North Korea has nukes and a developing delivery system, but neither am I happy that we have a technically flawed and all-too-human system of our own.

So where’s the virtue in all this? Is Iran the most threatening enemy? Or is it FOX News, a danger from within? Are the guys selling weapons to ISIS the problem, or is it the errors that allowed an insufficient background check to arm Dylann Roof? Perhaps it’s the notion that we can kill an idea and take vengeance on wrongs done us? Or could it be that the challenges of a 21st century world call for a higher level of consciousness than we’ve displayed lately?

While we should prepare ourselves for strident rhetoric and a continued campaign for militarism on the right as well as from Israel and her defenders, if we are to be part of the solution rather than the problem, we need to speak for peace and defend diplomacy. We must propose the spiritually mature concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation.

We need to keep picking off the tiles hiding the darker energies of old paradigm aggression that keep violence in the forefront of our thoughts and our politics. As Pogo the possum said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Until we get on to ourselves, the question of who can or who can’t arm, shoot, kill is moot — it’s us.

Planet Waves is running a membership drive.
Read more in Solstice Fire and the Art of Service, by Eric Francis.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”― George Gordon Byron

What a fascinating week it’s been. Too close to the trees, we’re lost in a forest of confusion and anxiety, with fingers pointed, blame assigned, and fear spreading like wildfire. Backing off to get the longer view, there appears to be a prominent theme: money equals power which, turned 180, means poverty equals powerlessness. Reminds me of the Repeal Citizens United buttons I made last week, that read: if money equals speech, then the poor have no voice.

The long view makes it plain that there is a war on democracy being waged by a few, a rich and powerful few. Those who argue that there is no difference between the two political parties in this nation can point to the glut of money necessary to campaign for, win and hold a position in Congress, greasing the skids within the confines of an establishment system that seems to run not on the higher concepts of public service but on money and access to same.

I won’t debate the obvious, but I will argue that there is only one party making any attempt to remedy the problem, and by the slimmest of margins. Some choose not to look or participate, and others choose to bitch and not participate. Since we — thus far — can’t even seem to get enough people together to elect one of the truly progressive, perhaps recent criticism of Bernie Sanders’s Faustian deal with the Dem party, rather than running as an Independent, is more smoke than fire. Those who pitch that it’s all or nothing limit the chance for anything. I’d rather change the tenor of the whole country by educating it on actual principles and policies than create another failed experiment like Nader’s.

The Good Book’s admonition about the love of money being the root of all evil seemed to color the week’s affairs. Staring down an unflinching Merkel, who can’t have missed world criticism for her compassionless stance, Greece blinked. Despite their defiant vote, they will accept meager assistance with their debt in exchange for further austerity that can offer no respite from a downward spiral into misery.

Any onlookers with historical perspective might note that if German debt had not been forgiven after the war, Germany would not be in ascendency today and Merkel would not be the leader of the Euro-pack. But history is just conjecture these days — much as science is only one opinion among many — and common sense, it seems, is singularly uncommon.

The economists I admire — the same ones that Sanders mentioned as possible cabinet members: Stiglitz, Krugman, Reich — all tell us that more austerity can only cripple any chance Greece has to grow out of its troubles and into prosperity, which seals the fate of the island home of democracy. Americans should pay attention. We have a similar problem with the cretins in Congress who can’t wait to punish the powerless while bamboozling the simple and unwitting into believing it’s what Jesus would do (if Jesus sold snake oil and had an account in the Cayman’s).

The tumble of currency (under suspicious circumstances) has been well tracked by Eric in his superb offering this week, linking what happened in China and Greece and the New York Stock Exchange. Monetized things are usually connected — some transactions more mysteriously than others — which seems to buttress the notion that the market is Gawd-like, even given to tantrum much like the Old Testament Yahweh (who had to practice for awhile before sending down Gawd v. 2.0 to be born in Bethlehem).

Perhaps that’s why we can’t convince ourselves to go back to the separated-church-and-state period after FDR regulated banks that gave us a stable, predictable monetary system. Remember that our most prominent judge just lately accused us of hubris by asking who we thought we were, making the argument obvious, if unsaid: humans shouldn’t meddle in Gawd stuff. And money is America’s religion.

While all men want to be free, some want to be free to think what they want, and other men want to be free from the burden of free thought. These men seek freedom through slavery.”

― Jarod Kintz, 99 Cents For Some Nonsense

Yes, the U.S. urged Merkel to give a little in order to save the EU, but let’s not give ourselves a pass on compassion. Puerto Rico, which is an American commonwealth, has buckled under its debt of $70 billion, accrued while the pharmaceutical houses, enjoying huge tax breaks, set up industry on the island. When the tax break expired, the factories moved, leaving Puerto Ricans to hold the bag. Hoping to restructure the debt, the Puerto Rico government is pleading with Washington to be given the right to file for bankruptcy, so far denied. This is our own Greek look-alike, putting Puerto Rico into a similar downward spiral that will take a generation to resolve, if not more. The muddle of politics in the U.S. seems tone-deaf to this crisis among hard-working people of good faith.

And there’s the crux of it. “Of good faith.” We do not consider people with these kinds of monetary problems ‘of good faith.’ Our brains have been conditioned to think that those who struggle, who fall behind, who fail in their quest to achieve what we’ve long considered the norm, are nothing but losers. We’ve been trained to impose class distinctions on those whose performance isn’t shiny and bright, up to snuff.

We have been schooled to think they’re “them.” Oh, but how quickly, my dears, they can become us!

The public is too eager to believe that all Greeks lived well beyond their means — Aesop’s fiddling grasshoppers to the industrious EU ants — and had no intention of paying back their loans. Similarly, white America is unthinkingly confident that the ghettos — purposely created by policies of graft and racism, and sustained by the opportunistic attitudes of the moneyed elite — are filled with dangerous ‘takers,’ uninterested in actual work if welfare, drug sales and theft are available, necessitating our most stringent policing efforts.

We’ve been programmed, since St. Ronnie the Reagan made up his mythical (and nameless) black Welfare Queen, to think of the poor and the disenfranchised as lazy, no-account self-promoters, sucking off the public tit — which is us regular well-meaning types who “play by the rules.” (YIKES, I despise that rules business, I wish the left would quit repeating it. Anyone who plays strictly by today’s rules is DESTINED to fail! Some days I’m glad I’m too old to be in the thick of it.)

In Ferguson, Missouri, we saw ministers and citizens come together as peaceful, thoughtful activists to walk the streets during daylight, but all we talked about were the angry kids who shouted insults and threw rocks after dark. In Charleston, South Carolina, we are gob-smacked by the talk of grace and forgiveness directed toward young killer, Dylann Roof, by the black Christian community and agree that the racist flag he was photographed holding remains a symbol of hatred, but think a three-year term of incarceration for the young woman of color and her white co-activist who took down the Confederate battle flag flying over public grounds at the statehouse is probably justified because — well, you know — lawlessness, anarchy, chaos! (Sign a petition to drop charges here.)

Yes, it seems that the United States is just bursting with tit-suckers, good-for-nothing under-employed whiners who do not contribute tangibly to their society. Jeb Bush recently told complainers that they needed to work more hours (while, I presume, eating cake) even though statistics indicate that Americans already spend more hours on the job than any other modern industrialized nation. Jeb’s people backtracked later to indicate that — oh, no! — Bubba didn’t mean people with REAL jobs, he meant part-time takers (strike that) workers! You know, those people at Wal-Mart, Burger King, Target and every other low-paying service job out there.

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade…”

― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

This is that same Jeb! Bush of the seriously suspect money trail and business deals we’re talking about, the one whose SuperPAC just announced a 103 million dollar total for the quarter, setting a record. All together, his campaign has raised $113 million plus change, more money than Romney spent on his entire primary in 2012. What do you imagine he promised his funders in order to raise that kind of cash, dearhearts? Whose back will he scratch to become ’45’ to Poppy’s ’41’ and Dubby’s ’43’? I’ll bet it won’t be ours.

The adolescent Randian creed of greed above all else has become the cancerous growth on liberty’s bum. The Kochs have declared that they want the entire Environmental Protection Agency dumped, et al. (I presume Jeb! is taking notes.) THINK about that. Corporate CEOs are, by law, uninterested in protecting the environment if it impedes the ability to grow the profit margin for themselves and their investors. That ALONE proves that corporations aren’t people. People would care whether their babies could breathe and drink clean water.

This is the environment we’re talking about, an already badly compromised system that has given us half a year of the hottest temps on record. This is about the survival of a species: OURS. THINK about the hubristic ambition of one elite, self-centered, bat-shit crazy family of gazillionaires making a planetary decision for us all that can only hasten our extinction!

Yes, there are adult voices out there trying to counter the money boys. Who would have thought the Catholic Church would be among them? On a tour of South America, the Pope is speaking frankly about the kind of top-down plunder that rogue capitalism has produced. The southern portion of this continent has been previously harmed by North America and Francis took that head-on when he spoke of the world economic order impoverishing third world countries by using them to provide raw material and cheap labor.

Getting medieval, the Pope quoted a fourth century Bishop who called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil,” because you can always count on a religious cleric to remember history like it was yesterday. And while I don’t know how that quote played with Bolivians, I suspect it pissed off some corporate devils here at home. Best of all, it begs the question of money and ethics, an examination of which is LONG overdue.

“You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”

― Booker T. Washington

This constant bickering between philosophies, between countries, continues to loop — repeating, unending — the one thing that never seems to change. It’s what ACIM calls ego-speak, the attack/defend that never ceases in the threatened mind. Logic doesn’t work to convince the right, and disdain and disenfranchisement don’t move the left.  I think that’s probably because we’re doing it wrong. We can’t use the same ego-speak that got us in this trance to wake us up, but we don’t need to cloister or get to an ashram to make some change in how we think about it.

The answer to our problems isn’t more money, which has taken on disproportionate influence and laid a veneer of empty affluence and competition over our lives that strips away our basic human instinct to nurture and protect one another. The psychology that’s needed to remedy this problem requires the same kind of dynamic we found both fascinating and improbable as articulated by the relatives of the Charleston shooter. We are slaves to fear, we can only liberate ourselves with love.

You know — we know — it doesn’t need to look like it does today. We know there’s another way to look at all this, but it takes maturity and compassion and, ultimately, patience. Anger over the retirement of the rebel flag shows just how much we’ve not addressed, forgiven or put in proper perspective in this nation — and some would say that this unsolved question of slavery is our Original Sin.

The punitive mindset of Merkel’s EU, and our own nation’s disregard for the wellbeing of the 99%, are symptomatic of how NOT to solve these problems. Our love of money has created an internal poverty that has hobbled our humanity, while our fear of losing the competition that keeps us powerful and respected is nearly pathological. We must re-invest ourselves, not in stuff or gain, but in one another.

Rather than make this piece longer, let me invite you to read a Mother Jones article entitled What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong? I worked in education for a lot of years and it didn’t take long to realize that if you could get a kid to like you, you could open up their world for them, pour in the information that would expand their possibilities, but first, you had get past their defenses. You had to face — and help THEM face — their demons.

While this article — which qualifies as a weekend read — is mainly about education and how to reorient problem children, the psychology is relevant to most problems we face with one another today. This is how to break the loop, how to encourage change, how to help develop new neural pathways for improved behavior. This is a strategy applicable to most things we care about, and well worth your time.

Our investment of love and caring for one another lifts both the caregiver and the one requiring care. There isn’t a ‘better’ or more authoritarian person in this scenario, just one more willing to remain open. In Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach wrote “You teach best what you most need to learn.” We are blessed as we bless others — truly the Art of Service and survival skill of the 21st century — and if, indeed, we can’t hold a man/woman down without staying down with them, then the converse is also true: we can’t lift them up without rising with them.

We are enslaved to those things that hold us in fear and, from a spiritual point of view, fear is that thing that keeps us earth-bound. If we’re to fly, we need to cut those ties to fear that keep us tethered in dysfunction and self-doubt. If we knew how wonderful we were, we wouldn’t waste time defending unlovingness. Here’s another quote from Illusions, one that helps us expand our self-assessment and calm our apprehension. Make it your mantra this week and see if it doesn’t reduce your level of anxiety while striking off some sparks in your soul:

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers and teachers.

We are all of it, my dears, learning to fly — and all of it is divine!

Planet Waves is running a membership drive.
Read more in Solstice Fire and the Art of Service, by Eric Francis.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“… the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?”

— Chief Justice John Roberts

As we contemplate the Art of Service to one another, we define what is important in our lives. When we are in service to something larger than ourselves, our lives expand with opportunity and growth. We have seen what happens when we serve only our own needs and desires, contracting into a kind of littleness that does not serve anyone. When Edgar Cayce told us that here, on planet Terra, we “serve or suffer,” I suspect he meant exactly that.

Here at Planet Waves, we hope you will grow with us by supporting the work we do, if you are able. You will find several ways to contribute to our mutual well-being here and we thank you for all you do.

This was the week that Chris Christy decided we needed another belligerent presidential candidate besides The Donald, whose annual Miss America/Miss Universe beefcake presentation was canceled by Hispanic channel Univision after he called illegal Mexican immigrants rapists.  NBC decided to turn the “You’re Fired” meme around on him, no longer supporting him as host for Celebrity Apprentice, and Macy’s will no longer carry his menswear line. Appropriately, New York Mayor de Blazio is “reviewing his contracts with the city.” Trump being Trump, he will sue (everyone, apparently).

As fallout, the ineffectual responses to Trump’s racist allegations by candidates have moved the Hispanic community farther away from the GOP than ever, as has the Pope’s encyclical, which has galvanized Hispanic youth in support of sound environmental practice and acceptance of climate change. If you have concerns about the young ones, read America Ferrera’s take down of Trump and soothe yourself. Unless the Republican leopard can change its spots, the likelihood of their capturing the national flag anytime soon is slim.

Christy, meanwhile, has pledged not to sugarcoat any issues, not that we expected him to — he’s a Jersey boy, after all. Obama mentioned that if this funneling of candidates into the Pub locker room keeps up, they will soon have enough contenders for their own version of the Hunger Games. A chilling thought, eh?

This was also the week that the media noticed that Bernie Sanders isn’t just a scruffy old socialist curmudgeon but a viable contender for the crown. Everywhere Bernie goes, his staff has to upgrade the facility to hold more warm and enthusiastic bodies. The message is the medium here, and the medium is a grassroots populist movement that has raised over $15 million dollars of support since April, with no big donors. This deems him legit, making his race against Hillary’s well-funded war chest suddenly ‘do-able.’

Pity the Pub who still wants to demonize the word ‘socialist’ when it no longer plays with those who hear Bernie’s populist message: citizens who think fair is fair and government is meant to benefit them, not pound them into silly putty. Starting out virtually unknown, Sanders is now just 8 points behind Hillary in New Hampshire and within 19 points nationally, according to a recent poll. He has consistently drawn the largest crowds on the stump, proven by no less than 10,000 people flocking to hear him speak in Madison, Wisconsin this week. The Elizabeth Warren wing of the Dem party is alive and well and it’s got legs.

A fifth Dem, Southern centrist Jim Webb, has thrown his hat in the ring and brings a bit of gravitas with him. As a senator from Virginia, Webb voted against Shock ‘n Awe, disapproves of the war on drugs, and has populist appeal. But he also voted against women in combat (or even admitting them to our service academies) and against strict carbon emissions standards, and he has continually — and recently — defended the Confederate flag, none of which will play with the Dem base. At minimum, we now have a mix of left-leaners, almost all of them left of Ms. Clinton.

A year and a half from the next presidential election, we’re well begun in terms of defining what we want to come next. Although it seems tedious to follow the election hijinks so far in advance of the event, it feels somehow appropriate to me — at this juncture, to again quote Poppy Bush — to recognize that re-definition is exactly what we’re up to, now that so much of our national persona is bent and broken and drowned in the Republican bathtub. With all the Sturm und Drang of attempting to move us backwards into what was, a very clear assessment of what is would serve us well.

In the decision to allow same-sex marriage, each of the four conservative judges — Alito, Thomas, Scalia and Roberts — wrote his own dissent. Each followed the philosophical thread we’ve come to expect from the right, which amounts to fear and loathing of change = instability = chaos. Out of all the nonsense sputtered by Scalia (watch this excellent little Fiori ‘toon to get a sense of the lyrical word salad he mixed with these two lost decisions), the tone-deaf meanderings of Thomas, and the harsh pronouncements of Alito that remind me of Cotton Mather pounding his podium, it’s a phrase from John Roberts that grabs my attention: “Just who do we think we are?”

This was a finger pointed at the apparent hubris of attempting to change the social order that has kept the marriage bed sacred for the propagation of the species. Essentially, Roberts considers the ruling unconstitutional, although — to give him his due — his dissent seemed the most secular. And clearly, to Roberts’ thinking, messing with that ‘natural order’ brings up too many questions to juggle in one little ruling, fiddles with the old paradigm notion of a husband in ownership of both wife and child, opens the possibility of polygamy, and worse. Most dreadful of all, now anyone loathe to tolerate same-sex marriage will no doubt be vilified and called bigot!

Amazing how hypocritical this seems, flipping the zeitgeist. Now it’s the Christians who are bigots, much as it’s the racists who defend their flag without a hint of remorse for the cruelty that inspired it. Looking in that mirror isn’t for sissies, my dears — it takes a big sack, as Stephen Colbert would say, and some of us just aren’t up to it. Smell the fear?

Indeed, the gay marriage decision made Scalia so verklempt he called it “The end of democracy,” and scorched his own seat at the table by calling SCOTUS “a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine.” I don’t recall him saying that when he ruled on Citizens United, which DID turn the democratic process on it’s head. I can’t help but think of the historical holes in their dissent, obvious enough to twist an ankle should we be unwise enough to step in one.

If we are to hold to the societal absolutes of the period in which the Constitution was brought forth, Justice Clarence Thomas would be standing at the door to the court, helping the white gentlemen with their coats. The Aztecs frequently broke open the chests of their slaves and enemies in order to raise their still-beating hearts to the crowd, a triumphant public offering and sacrifice to their cruel gods. As for marriage between one man and one woman, that is a complete cheat. The early Biblical law that later distilled itself into a one-on-one began with a plurality of wives under the same tent. We forget what is inconvenient to remember.

Still, with all the hot air wasted on this marriage argument, now encoded into law, Roberts’ question of who we are — meant as a chiding reprimand — is the most important question of the season, especially as we contemplate the snarled mess we’ve made of our Republic on this 239th national birthday weekend.

We, the People, have a very imperfect union right now. That doesn’t discount the extraordinary potential of the documents upon which our government was formed. The founders themselves were flawed humans, not holding to their own declarations. Feet of clay is the way of these things, historically. Best not to confuse the message with the messenger. Our childish mythologies about who these people were — mostly hard-nosed businessmen — must take on some reality if we’re to put a flawed past behind us, and this would be a good time to invite them off their (elitist) pedestals.

We have much to be concerned about and much to remedy, going forward, but we’re not lost yet. We still haven’t decided whether we should enter a hologram to take us back to those Good Old Days of colonialism and vigilante justice, or we’re to pitch in, each of us, to rebuild this nation with an egalitarian platform that supports a diverse and creative population. That’s up to us. That’s the assessment we must make.

That’s the question that’s finally posed itself, made clear by an embarrassment of riches in candidates like The Donald, the captain of crony capitalism and ego-speak, or Rick Perry, a delusional type who has assured the African-American population that they’re much better off voting the GOP. And even Hillary — who has more political experience than most of the others and would surely make history as the first woman president — is too busy courting Israel, to whom she promises to be a better friend than Obama, and dodging positions on the trade deal, for instance, to do more than offer lip-service to the progressive ticket.

In a perfect world there would be voices like Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein and old friend Dennis Kucinich heard loud and clear, bypassing the muck and mire of establishment politics and big money to propose answers to that profound question at hand. Yet in this imperfect world, amazingly, we do have one like them in Sanders. The miracle of the moment is that he’s no longer considered a long shot and his message can’t be missed.

In fact, if you like the idea of a populist reformation ticket, Bernie is putting together a “series of conversations about how we can organize an unprecedented grassroots movement that takes on the greed of Wall Street and the billionaire class.” If you want to host or attend an organizational meeting at the end of this month, you can contact his campaign here.

With the election still far off, promising allegiance to any particular candidate seems premature, but sharpening our skills at grassroots organization sounds pretty productive. As for Bernie, I haven’t heard any other candidate say “They have the money, but we have the people, and if we stand together, there’s nothing we cannot accomplish.” Until any of the remaining four do — and until they convince the people of this nation (as has Bernie) that they’re just one of them, lucky to be born an American and committed to making her that place the founders hoped for — he’s my pick.

The revolution that started this nation so long ago is not dead, just resting, as they say. There’s energy stirring from the bottom up to take on the greed and avarice at the heart of our social and political problems. On a joyful occasion like the Fourth of July, with fireworks and barbeques and family gatherings all around, it would be a fine thing if our nationalism was used not to mark or defend who we were, but to celebrate and define who we will become, because that IS the question, isn’t it?

Marianne Williamson tells us we didn’t come here to play it small. Neale Donald Walsch urges us to become the best version of ourselves we can conjure. Just who DO we think we are, this Independence Day? That decision holds the design of our future.

Planet Waves is running a membership drive.
Read more in Solstice Fire and the Art of Service, by Eric Francis.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

This has been quite a week, starting off with Obama getting his Fast Track and ending with a double whammy of Supreme Court decisions favoring people over politics. This is also the week my computer died, so I’m pecking this out with one finger on my little tablet, a severe strain to my patience and good humor, but I didn’t want to miss sharing this moment of celebration and gratitude with my Planet Waves family.

As we explore the Art of Service in our lives and this online community, it’s clear that the ability to gather together in like mind and heartfelt, authentic communication serves not just ourselves, but all of humanity. Nothing illustrates that so well as does the sea change in marriage equality which could simply no longer be denied.

Planet Waves is one of those spots on the cyber-map that is truly egalitarian regarding sexual, religious and political practice, so long as it is not harmful. If you can’t find a comfortable place at this table it would only be because you can’t open your arms wide enough. And even discomfort serves — some would say especially discomfort — so all of the cousins are invited to this picnic.

While some might say we lean far to the left in our worldview, Eric once wrote a marvelous piece regarding our shared conservatism and intent to protect and conserve history and science, environmental resources and species, Constitutional guarantees and civic protections as well as freedoms of speech and dissent. We are more like than we will admit.

And if liberty and justice for all is our national template, then we can’t rest until it is true for every citizen. Which is why, today — with some 6 + million fellow citizens still guaranteed healthcare coverage and our LGBT brothers and sisters free to enjoy the legal protections of marriage in all fifty states — we can pat one another on the back and hug everyone we see (at least the ones with a smile on their face) knowing that we’ve added our bit of conviction and intent to a game-changing progressive human victory. With so many saying it couldn’t be done, Hundredth Monkey won the day.

Over the years, I’ve assured friends and readers that marriage equality was coming soon and –although I’m no longer a big fan of the institution — I’m delighted my intuition proved sound. I’ve also signed off many Planet Waves articles with the meme of the day, love wins, and it’s reassuring to hear it echo across the nation, although my reference was more to the full-spectrum of ‘agape’ love as all-inclusive and unconditional.

That is such a HUGE concept, so empowering and Light-filled, I find that the continuing challenges we face as a nation and a planet take on a slightly different feel, at least for the moment. Our winning tactic for facing these restrictive challenges must continue to be our ability To keep on keeping on, always believing that what must be will be, so long as love leads the way.

And so, fingers cramping and battery running low, I invite you to bask in that feeling of overcoming great odds, and ‘bookmark’ it so you can return whenever you need a lift. Nothing builds enthusiasm and determination like success.

To my loved ones whose marriages are now legal everywhere, to my friends who now have dependable medical coverage for the first time and to my Planet Waves family, with whom I share the pleasure of this moment, allow me to sign off one more time, united with each of you in service to one another and a waiting world: LOVE WINS! Amen and amen!