By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I suspect that most of you reading this today are exhausted by daily news and disgusted by the politics that drive it. We’ve long since lost the edge of hysteria used to manipulate us post-9/11, and if we’ve grown at all during the ensuing years, come to recognize any hint of war drums in the thread of white-noise behind government announcements. The 34th President of the United States warned us about the growing influence of the military-industrial complex in 1961, so we’ve had over fifty years to chew on that information, along with four major wars and countless skirmishes and military actions to illustrate our growing reliance on violence to both define and enrich ourselves.

Ten presidents later, we’re still chewing on the same old stuff; we know it when we taste it, don’t we? Tastes like war and rumors of war, and, although many of us are disappointed by Obama’s declaration of … whatever that was, this week … against ISIS and anyone who threatens American interests, reinvigorating the War on Terror, I’d be really surprised if you hadn’t seen it coming. Me? I’m surprised it took so long.

This is America we’re talking about, “the land of the free and the home of the brave” (with neither of those attributes carefully scrutinized nor fully comprehended), and the political party that’s been screaming about the lack of American leadership and the decline of American influence in the world has been relentless in its criticism of our president’s international lack of aggression. The first ISIS beheading was enough for them to implode, the second was a bridge too far. (Yet, if you will pardon the candor, is a quick beheading any less barbaric — any less brutal and unforgivable — than years spent in solitary confinement, one’s mind slowly slipping sideways?)

The same citizens who consider it their patriotic duty to keep and carry guns everywhere they go were not content when the black guy in the White House took a wait-and-see position against jihadi insurgents while fostering an international coalition to police them. Much as I complained bitterly about too much testosterone for the eight years of Dubby’s reign, the Pubs have been bitching, and loudly, about too little for the last six.

The loudest voices heard today, of course, are the war hawks, the “peace through strength” proponents, which translates into a mandate to pound the bejesus out of anyone who defies American exceptionalism or resists American power. Jon Stewart compiled a quick and decisive montage of their ISIS assessment, along with a nuanced analysis of Obama’s actions you won’t want to miss. And we might wonder, if this moment of déjà vu is so clear to those of us who watch Comedy Central, why isn’t it that clear to the rest of America?

Perhaps it is. Those who think the Prez caved to conservative pressure are probably missing the larger perspective on what is expected of a modern American CEO. The bottom line is always money, honey, and those pressuring the executive branch to ramp up the military cash register come from all sides of the spectrum. Is that cynical? You bet, and there are millions of military contractors and their minions licking their lips as I speak. Not to mention that, emotionally, these things are almost schizophrenic in American culture. The same president who brought Social Security and banking regulation to our society in the mid-20th century is the one who perfected the complex war machinery that established America as a superpower. The meme that FDR only crawled out of the financial hole left by the Depression by throwing the switch on that machinery still holds today.

But there are fits and starts on the ISIS project, this being the deeply divided political years that echo our Civil War, when a house divided eventually stood united — after what Lincoln historian Gore Vidal called the bloodiest war in history — while leaving half the nation to simmer in its own bile, nursing a grudge that still poisons the well of our unity today. For instance, the House of Representatives, Tea Party front and center, still isn’t sure if it will fund Obama’s request to arm Syrian rebels, even though John Boehner has pubicly approved it. The hesitation includes arguments that the arms used to fight ISIS might also be used to assist Assad and perhaps eventually even be turned on us (interestingly, that’s a Democratic argument, not Republican, but as good as any to throw the e-brake on what the black guy wants).

And to such an argument, all I can say is, “Well, duh!” Go just about anywhere in the world and you will find American weaponry, much of it military, that has found its way into non-military hands. Go to your local police station and see what they’ve got in their equipment yard, waiting in the wings. And because we still haven’t figured out that might doesn’t make right — that ideas that are shot, stabbed or blown to hell can still rise again like the undead to eat our brains — we continue the loop of attack/defend, of winner-take-all (this time around), of naked aggression dressed as humanitarian concerns, while protecting our power and influence.

That was, is, and remains the challenge of this foundering era, one that we’re still putting to bed. The problem is simple, the solution as complex as human behavior (and reflects our basic misunderstanding of our better nature: that we have one and need to nurture it). In order to create a peaceful home, neighborhood, nation or planet, we — each of us — must become peace. It must be our first choice, our best defense and the root of our power base. It must be who we are, not what we do, and that is a learning process that must be discovered, chosen, and embraced as an ongoing practice. It would also be helpful, I think, if we found peace at least as attractive as the chaos we’re enduring now.

War is part of patriarchy. The meanest, baddest son-of-a-bitch in the valley gets to rule everybody else, at least that’s the way it used to work when things were simpler. We still like to watch the western movies that affirm that concept, especially when the winners are the guys in the white hats. It was the philosophy George W. brought to his presidency, a naïve and simplistic view of the world, and he sowed the seeds of disaster for us all — despite Cheney’s bluster, even now, and Bill Clinton’s assessment that ISIS is the result of Uncle Dick’s misguided hubris — when it came to putting our deeply resented and unwelcomed boot-print on the Fertile Crescent.

Despite Dubby’s familiarity with the Saudi royals, he never understood Arab culture outside of its basic customs, or what motivated them. And now we’re reaping the whirlwind of his political aspirations, the clash between Sunni and Shia revitalized as Dubby unleashed Shock ‘n Awe. His attack on the one country in the Mideast that was strictly secular in its political concerns removed the strong man that kept the lid on the religious wars. Bush opened Pandora’s Box and called it good.

So now the euphemistic War on Terror will be revitalized as Obama attempts to stamp out renegade Sunni zealots, created in reaction to the hornet’s nest the Western world stirred up, and slowly but surely maddened, in the Mideast. If we hadn’t been there, sniffing around to secure bases and procure oil, unwittingly taking sides in an ancient religious struggle we didn’t understand, the Arab Spring might have taken its proper turn in Iraq, even Afghanistan, over time, securing new liberties for those societies bent on creating their unique brands of democracy and modernity.

True, as the sword point of the religious conflict, ISIS couldn’t be more reprehensible, but it’s not possible to stamp out the energy that creates ISIS, any more than we can eliminate the Klu Klux Klan, which fancies itself a Christian movement, on these shores, nor change the minds of the Westboro Baptist Church and its followers, simmering in self-righteousness (and unaddressed self-loathing). Neither, might I add, is it ours to do.

These hate groups CAN be replaced, however, with positive solutions to social issues that make their philosophy less attractive to sympathizers and converts, but that would require us to rethink our position as a superpower, give up our pride in exceptionalism and our addiction to colonization. That would demand that we rethink policy-induced disasters and retire our dependence on the cynical exploitation of the shock doctrine. We’d have to sustain a real change of modus operandi, and not just in foreign affairs. The power structure would wobble, the economic system would have to stop squeezing the American public for every dime it has in order to fatten the top one percent. You know, all those things Pluto in Capricorn is showing us about our failing government systems — and about ourselves.

But even now it appears too late to stop the war machinery, though it’s stuttering and spitting from lack of money and will. Obama’s reluctance to impose American power on the international scene has earned him a reputation as a softy, even among people I assumed too intelligent to fall for old psychological traps, but clearly we need our enemies, here in the home of the brave, in order to prove our superiority. In fact, we insist on it.

And — because we can’t tell the players without a program — our intrusion into Mideast politics has now earned us unintended frenemies, it appears. Obama has refused to link his ISIS campaign with Assad, but his declaration that he has the power to bomb in Syria will now assist Assad by helping to eliminate his regimes’ enemies. In an Iraq that is still deeply divided into religious schism — the Sunni and Shia rhetoric continues at sword point, despite the rushed election that removed Maliki, while the Kurds refuse to participate in a government that offers them little power — Iran has become a major player in pushing against an ISIS takeover. The Iraqi army simply isn’t able to cope, but the Iranian forces are good at what they do. As we assist Iraq to defeat ISIS, we end up making Iran look good. With no boots on the ground, we will likely become the new Syrian and Iranian Air Force.

Nations have soul levels, according to The Michael Material, channeled information I’ve appreciated over the years. America is classified as a ‘young soul,’ and it shows. For instance, this is the country that took the game of football and made it a multi-billion dollar industry reminiscent of the “bread and circuses” spectacle of gladiator games, used to lull and mesmerize a rowdy populace.

Yes, we love our NFL, even when it’s biased and sexist and turns a blind eye to critical issues it should address. We’ll allow it to pay out huge hush-money to injured players rather than minimize the dangers of the game, and forgive its bad boys anything so long as they impress us on the field. We love our padded warriors, especially those hometown heroes who play on high school teams, and we’ll tolerate hand-slaps for players guilty of drugging, raping, battering and brawling, holding their victims up to derision long before we find the perpetrators responsible.

And yet, even now — when many of us can newly admit these systemic failings to ourselves — we still defend the game and its adherents. Why? Because the very emotions it prompts in us are deeply rooted in our shadow side. As George Orwell tells us, “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.”

Now, a moment for football lovers everywhere: yes, there is a positive side to sports and we see that at the Olympics, where individual performance is given the same respect as team play. Athletics itself is not in question, but it’s all too easy to lose our equilibrium when we become that mindless thing called “a fan.” It is easy, even fun, to root for the home team, but not by demonizing and disparaging the opponent. Not all such contests are warfare, but warfare is what we too often make of them.

I think back to when we first arrived in Missouri and my son went to a KC Chiefs game with a friend. Sitting in a sea of red-clad fans, surrounded by those invested in win/lose mentality, my kid — who was rooting for the other team, his loyalties still influenced by a lifetime on the West Coast — was intimidated into silence when his team scored. They were, he said, “scary crazy” as a mob, surrounding him on all sides. Despite staggering paychecks and outsized perks, there’s likely more sportsmanship to be found in the locker room and on the field at these big, expensive and well-attended games than in the parking lot or the bleachers.

It’s the same kind of dark energy that inhabited the Roman Forum in those centuries that turned our calendar from BC to AD. It’s group think. It’s testosterone, it’s tribal, it’s primitive, and it can quickly turn to blood lust. All we need is an enemy to justify whatever comes next, and we don’t seem to have a hard time finding them.

We can’t read an American newspaper without discovering which of us, from helpless infants to fragile elders, died from bullet wounds, intended or accidental. We can’t read headlines without finding out which college has a rape scandal, which neighborhood has fallen prey to police brutality, which employer, bank, or corporation is victimizing those in its grasp, which is itself a passive but potent form of violence.

Here in Missouri, which is lately closing in on a ridiculous level of cultural suppression, our Dem governor’s veto of an expanded gun rights bill has been overridden by our Tea Party Congress. We now allow anyone with a concealed-carry permit to wear their firearm openly, and anywhere, even in places like restaurants which have denied them entry. It lowered the permit age to 19, which means some late-blooming high school students are legally entitled to tote their guns to school, not to mention students on college campuses. School districts will be allowed to arm teachers, and cops will be barred from disarming anyone unless they are under arrest. Given what just happened in Ferguson, how do you think this is going to turn out?

This law is in defiance of the Missouri majority as well as common sense. It’s in defiance of government itself. Remember those ‘entitlements’ conservatives consider evil, like Social Security and Medicare, and social safety nets? Turns out the political right feels it is entitled to meet violence with violence, and even to provoke it. America: land of the free, home of the brave and the well armed.

Violence is entwined in everything we do, all we see around us, as is the hard-edged competition that creates us as winner or loser, ‘makers’ and ‘takers.’ And although we are surely tired and dispirited from such a glut of rash emotion and disaster, we must begin to respond to this consciousness as an ethical challenge to the very soul of this nation, to humanity itself. We are raising up a generation who believe this is what life looks like — we dare not fail them, or ourselves!

There are logical consequences to every action, but in order to anticipate them, we have to tell ourselves the truth about what we’re doing. The logical consequences of war are not safety and security, but militarism, systemic and never ending. It’s provocation for more war, an everlasting loop of war and vengeance and tribal retribution. It’s more of the same, because it is a reflection of our fears and ego, our intellect rather than our heart.

If what’s past is prologue, then it would be instructional to remember that Jimmy Carter left office after one term with 36 percent approval and no war on his record. Now? 52 percent approve his presidency, looking back at what they might have done differently, and to different result. Certainly we would have made early and important inroads into matters of energy independence and environmental protections. In ethical considerations, Carter was a frontrunner. We need to find that ethical center again, because until we tame the beast within, the beast without will reflect the daily choices we make.

War drums are pounding, politicians are posturing, and all we can do now is act consciously to advocate for those actions and policies that will bring our nation back to it’s center. We need now, more than ever, to be the one we’ve been waiting for. To create peace in our experience, then, we must be peaceful. To create love in our experience, be loving. To change the world, we must begin today.