Both the written and audio readings for the beautiful 2016 annual edition, Vision Quest, are now immediately available. Order all 12 signs at a great value or choose your individual signs. You may access written and audio excerpts from the Vision Quest main page.
By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
It’s difficult to attempt to encapsulate any of what’s going on at this moment in history, mostly because reasonable people have difficulty accepting that this global sociopolitical breakdown has taken up residence in the hearts and minds of those around them. It seems particularly difficult to decipher in America, where we are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as mostly good people — oh, a few warts, for sure, but small and seldom acknowledged — who embrace a lofty moral and/or religious standard, contribute positively to 21st century culture, and lead the world (by virtue of our inflated economy and military) toward peace and prosperity.
Or not. George Bush the Lesser gave us a picture of the emperor with no clothes, a condition so obvious to all but his true believers that it wasn’t much of a lateral move to the American presidency as reality show. Now, Donald Trump and the 2016 Republican lineup of Duck Dynasty zealots have given us the empire as the Gong Show, and we’ve yet to reconcile the two parties as speaking similar language for an election eight months out.
I know you know this is exactly as the oligarchy likes it, the commoners dazed and confused, their hostility pointed in the wrong direction and their longing to devolve into past glories paralyzingly infantile. If we’re going to renew the energy of our republic, restore our belief in commonwealth and functional government, replace the money-changers in the halls of Congress, then we’d better stop wringing our hands and stand up for what we want our future to look like.
Now’s the time to acknowledge that our national tank of collective rights, constitutional guarantees and democratic principles is not even half full, it’s running on fumes. I’d like to tell you that this is true only for the portion of the country depending on the Republicans to float their boat, but essentially, the Dems are poised on a philosophical meltdown as well. The neoliberal mantra that continues to lock us into slow motion and half-hearted remediation of the business class coup known as Citizens United may look like a better product than the snake oil the right is selling, but it’s still just an infomercial, calculated to profit someone (who isn’t us) and keep [r]evolution at bay.
We need to stop with the easy answers and lazy interpretations. We need a fill-up of truth, of reality, of fearlessness and determination. We need to plug in to options that move us forward rather than backward, to commit to positive action rather than hedge on rocking the boat. As Bernie says, we need to believe we can change our world one household, neighborhood, city, and state at a time, working together to not only do no harm but to actively promote the collective good. We fill ourselves one success at a time.
If we want common sense, there are people out there screaming into the vacuum of ill-informed radicalism, serving as ballast to a right-wing gone so threatened and self-pitying that it’s become increasingly dangerous, like a fevered animal. If we’re looking for cooler heads, Obama’s still got one, along with much of a year to use it. Here’s a snip of him spanking a brooding Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a few years back and making it look effortless. The thing is, it SHOULD be effortless, and CNN could do the world a solid favor if they’d loop this clip for a day or two, giving us a clear picture of our choices and a reminder that intelligence at the helm of state is a necessary breath of fresh air.
If you haven’t checked out Samantha Bee on her political half-hour, “Full Frontal” (Turner Broadcasting, Monday nights), then you’re missing something special. She’s currently the only woman late-night host, and she nails it in much the way HBO’s John Oliver and Comedy Central’s Larry Wilmore are doing. Kudos to Jon Stewart for launching so much talent. Sam says what she thinks, and although you may wince from time to time, you’ll more likely laugh out loud when she gets started. She confesses that she’s not scripted, just naturally talented, so this gig is perfect for her. Google her for more clips, you won’t be sorry.
Now, granted, those who tune in to hear this kind of thing are not the same ones who can’t wait to see which black or brown protester gets mauled at a Donald rally, or takes delight in the ‘passionate’ pattern of violence we’re seeing take shape across the country. Donald seems to think that those who disagree with him ‘deserve it,’ which is — you might agree — the most troublesome of his personal quirks, writ large in his attacks on those who ‘aren’t nice’ to him. If you are one of those people who think that WON’T be you at some point, you deserve everything you get!
This is authoritarianism run amok, what economist Robert Reich has finally, and rightly, called ‘fascism.’ The kind of support Trump voters offer is so tone-deaf to constitutional liberties, so tribally infected with nostalgia for the romance of the White Man’s Burden, that beads of semi-erotic sweat seem to stand out on the upper lip of those who defend it. Consider this exchange (again, on CNN) where I find myself, for the first time, in agreement with moderate right pundit S.E. Cupp, who said, “I want to go to sleep and wake up when it’s over.”
The continuing problem with Trump as evil-doer of the moment is that very few people are paying attention to Ted Cruz, who is smarter than Trump, and frankly, craftier. His early data mining of Facebook accounts gave him information that allows him to appeal to individual state voters in targeted interest areas, and the eventual demise of the Donald — likely over the explosion of overt racism he’s provoked — will leave Ted crowing and preening, holding all the jelly beans. Anybody out there ready for a President Cruz? Ready to surrender your Obamacare, citizen? Your birth control, women? Your secular nation?
Now, it’s not like we haven’t had the wake-up calls, and some wake-up calls are more potent than others: the SCOTUS coup on a pivotal presidential election, the Twin Towers, Katrina, the Gulf spill, Fukushima. The lessons we’ve learned from these disastrous events were there for the taking but we too often decided to let the talking heads interpret for us.
If you believe the abridged version of rhetorical absolutes, the hanging chads were simply too much for a beleaguered group of Floridians, the nation didn’t have the grit to await a factual answer as to who would lead them into the new century, and so SCOTUS elected the president (but don’t consider it a precedent, because it wasn’t one — and don’t ever ask about it again!).
The Towers fell because Islam hates us, not because we can’t keep our noses out of other people’s business or our hands off other nation’s resources. Katrina was an act of Gawd, not a corruption of local and state government to deny funding — before and after the fact — to protect citizens from the inevitable challenges of its topography. Again, the Gulf spill was one of those flukes, not a problem with Halliburton’s cheap construction materials or the — now quietly acknowledged — undue haste and shortcuts at the rig, pressed for profit, not safety. And Fukushima?
I heard a CNN anchor announce, with a hint of astonishment in her voice, that on the fifth anniversary of the nuclear disaster, it will still take some FORTY years to clean up. She was young, pretty, I hadn’t seen her before, and so couldn’t speak for her knowledge on any given subject, but she seemed to me as empty — and therefore, dangerous — as that tank of ours.
Did she know how destructive her lack of understanding is, how inappropriate her incredulity that something as toxic as nuclear material might not be easy to sweep under the rug? Did Anderson Cooper — a man who likely puts sunscreen on his sunscreen — know, reporting from Japan in 2011, that he was putting his life in extraordinary danger? Greg Palast did:
“On March 12, 2011, as I watched Fukushima melt, I knew: the “SQ” had been faked. Anderson Cooper said it would all be OK. He’d flown to Japan, to suck up the radiation and official company bullshit. The horror show was not the fault of Tokyo Electric, he said, because the plant was built to withstand only an 8.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, and this was 9.0. Anderson must have been in the gym when they handed out the facts. The 9.0 shake
Then, this week, just when it seemed as though nobody was paying attention to the obvious dangers presented by the failing infrastructure and flawed construction of aging nuclear facilities, something interesting happened. The Japanese court system ordered the shut-down of Takahaka Nuclear Plant, leaving the nation with just two nuclear reactors, and signaling an end to its blanket acceptance of the industry as the gold standard.
At the same time, here in the states, seven high-ranking engineers with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took the unusual step of filing an independent finding warning that nearly every U.S. atomic reactor in use today has a generic safety flaw that could spark a disaster. They note that 98 out of the 99 nuclear facilities operating in the United States are currently subject to a serious cooling system defect that threatens every one of them. That they sidestepped normal reporting process with the NRC speaks to their concerns that their findings would be ignored.
There is progress happening out there in the real world, even if its not all that easy to spot. Look for it! Spread it around! In such a surreal political climate, unless we know what’s going on around us, we think the worst is all there is. We need to share the good news to buoy us, and pass around the bad to motivate us. But this above all — we dare not ignore any of it.
If there’s a take-away today, this is it: in 2012, John McCain corrected a woman at a rally who accused Obama of being foreign-born, a Muslim, and someone she considered dangerous to America. McCain quickly assured her that those things were not true. It was the last time I remember that kind of integrity from a politician on the right.
Last night, at the Republican debate, the topic of violence at Mr. Trump’s rallies came up and no Republican candidate — not one — spoke out against it. They danced around the issue as if it would burn their fingers. How race in so many guises can consume a party position and seldom be mentioned out loud is just beyond me! There is no question, none, that there is nothing more dangerous to the democratic process than the denial of anyone’s right to assemble, to speak, or to expect protection from violence.
That there is no such guarantee on the right, defended by conservatives of good faith and a belief in liberty, speaks louder than words. With their silence, the Republican party has denied American citizens their basic rights, and we — all of us — must speak out against it. If it is our intent to do no harm, then we MUST speak against what is harmful to any of us.
We know the cost of silence.
They came for the Communists, and I didn’t object for I wasn’t a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object for I wasn’t a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I didn’t object for I wasn’t a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object for I wasn’t a Jew;
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to object.
— Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor (1892-1984)
Hi Jude, so glad you are addressing this difficulty in deciphering what’s going on from the viewpoint of Americans. When you said “. . the commoners dazed and confused. . ” I thought of Kubler-Ross’s book and all those stages of death and dying. The dazed and confused (IMO) would equate to the shock and denial stages that the Republicans (and Democrats), those that have made a profession of politics, are in right now. Many of our fellow “ordinary” citizens are in the anger or depression part of the process, seemingly unable to confront the reality of the fact that we are running on empty.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross made it clear that these were emotional stages one had to deal with, not necessarily in any special order, when confronted with death and dying; either over one’s own death or that of a loved one. Starting way last year Astrology-for-the-Times-We-Are-Living-In has been telling us that emotions are now front and center stage. The emphasis on Pisces and Neptune, month after month, defying the left brain faculties of logic and facts has left us to flounder in the face of this overwhelming deluge of feeling.
Blame, I suppose, would be part of the anger level or stage and we have spent a lot of time on that. This could have been prevented if only so-and-so hadn’t done this-or-that we tell ourselves and others, but once we have done that for a while to no avail, another stage of grief appears. How many stages must we go through before we get to acceptance?
From my perspective, and I know I’m not alone, it appears that the U.S. masses wanting to move away from the dysfunction, starting right now with a clean slate, are divided into the Donald camp or the Bernie camp. Those who want to make slow change or little change lean toward the Hillary camp or the also ran’s in the Republican camp like Rubio and Kasich, and those with their heads in the sand go for Cruz. Perspective matters. So does age. So does income and race and gender. And religion so it appears.
So this is a test I gather; which of the symbolic personages will prevail when the masses go to vote. Which two people will we get to chose from when all is said and done? Supposedly, the results will reflect what the majority of people in the U.S. want. But you mentioned truth Jude, a fill-up of truth and reality, and because no other symbol in astrology represents that better than Uranus (IMO) I look to what Uranus is up to. Beyond that we must follow our inner guides with that other stuff, you know, fearlessness and determination.
I should probably stop there but, well about Uranus; there is the transiting Uranus, the U.S. Sibly Uranus, the Uranus cycles with other planets and there are lots of little natal Uranuses. 🙂
Take the U.S. Uranus for example. Recently he’s been squared by the transiting Sun, Ceres and Neptune, all begging for truth, opposed by transiting Saturn regarding just what is truth and soon by transiting Mars who will sit in exact opposition to the U.S. Uranus for 25 days of the 30 days of April as he stations to go retrograde. Has any of it exposed (or will it expose) us to the truth, and if so, has it helped? Will it help?
Then there is the transiting Uranus who for so long has squared the transiting Pluto. He has also shared the same degree as the U.S. Sibly Chiron and is coming back to do it again. Has there been pain and/or healing and/or learning enough to change us? Transiting Uranus has also jarred loose the potent energy he and Pluto alchemized 50 years ago. He’s doing it by forming a quincunx to the degrees where they met so many decades ago. Quincunxes are about adjustment to change.
Then there is the active cycle between transiting Pluto and Neptune who met in 1891 right on the degree where the U.S. Uranus is located. When transiting Neptune squared U.S. Uranus in January and February (jamming up the thought waves with emotional waves), he wasn’t just squaring Uranus, he was squaring the starting point of his cycle with Pluto.
This is a lot of truth to digest but does it penetrate the minds of Americans? Have our brains given room for our hearts (feelings) to express? Will we have reached the bargaining stage and moved on to the acceptance stage? Maybe, maybe not, but transiting Uranus will spend two full months – over 60 days in a row – in a square with the U.S. Mercury (= U.S. minds, media, trickery). All of July when the conventions are going on and all of August when transiting Mars will re-square U.S. Uranus, and transiting Mercury and Jupiter begin their new cycle with the 1st of 3 conjunctions (all before election day). Surely all that ought to wake us up.
Uranus is the Awakener and all this intense focus on the U.S. Mercury (Mercury being the lower octave of Uranus) should translate into some honest and inescapable truth for we the people. Goddess help us all if that doesn’t bring us to heel/heal.
be
Phases on death, dying, grief. Yes. Living the astrology of the masses here it seems still.
Just splurged on a copy of Stephen Levine’s Healing into Life and Death; I’ve heard good things about it. Figure I can squeeze it in between Hamlet, Great Expectations and a little of Margaret Atwood’s poetry. There is something on the other side of all this. Thanks Jude and Be for helping to raise the misty veil.
aWord, Stephen Levine’s book was a healing treasure for me after my father’s death. I gave my first copy to a friend grieving the loss of her husband, & another to a widowed male friend. Levine’s book of poems is also quite wonderful.
Yes, “there is something on the other side of all this”, & for me “all this” seems right now to be a personal wade/swim through my own history. Keeping my head above water so far.
Judith, I read an essay yesterday by Carolyn Baker in which she explores via Jungian psychology the idea that Donald Trump may personify (I hope that’s the most apt word) the collective American/exceptionalism shadow. Very interesting. I don’t know how to post a link, but it’s on CarolynBaker.net
Yes, I agree with Bette. You couldn’t have splurged on a better book, dear aWord!
Jude – am having a kind of dejà vu with Trump, because I lived through something similar when Berlusconi, media tycoon (and president of Milan football club) got in as PM of Italy, and stayed in, for far too many years. One of the things that people who voted for him kept saying was that at least he was something new, when in fact he was a product of the deeply reactionary and individualistic Italy that has always been. Am sure so many Trump supporters also think that someone different has come along at last, to shake up the status quo, and make their lives better. They don’t realise how far from the truth this is.
Thank you for your input and friendly voices, Bette and Lizzy! I’m looking forward to the reading.
Bette, glad you’re keeping your “head above water”. Me too, although I feel mostly like I’m “in the mist”…..which makes sense actually, as mist rises from the surface.
This has been an absolutely stunning three-day news cycle, and … OMG … where to start!
Heard Rubio say that the business at Chicago (which Trump has accused Sanders of organizing/hiring) looked like something out of a third-world country. I SAY it looked more like something we saw in Ferguson when people were no longer willing to get rolled over. How the Pubs … whose mantra is about taking responsibility … overlook their unwillingness to take ownership of their own callousness amazes me.
And Marco’s recent whine that Obama is responsible for our current enchantment with low-level discourse — as in actually questioning the compassion behind an austerity budget calculated to leave the young and elderly in lack — sounds more like Trump defending his stance on violence by arguing that he’s urged his rally police NOT to treat the vicious thugs and liberal rabble too harshly.
This kind of Orwellian double-speak makes my face squinch up, like Jake Tapper’s did today, trying to deal with a defensive, pouty and accusatory Trump on CNN.
I’ll give Rubio cred for being vocal about the level of violence and the devolvement of civil discourse, which SHOULD be an issue for all Americans. He MAY become a credible politico sometime in the future, if his party can hang together after Trump’s through mopping his brow with it. Yesterday Marco called Trump a third-world strongman, which is spot-on — just as you indicate, Lizzy, with your comment on Burlusconi. Trump has always put me in mind of Mussolini; I swear, his facial expressions and body language is doppelganger to a genuine thug and despot few people (unfortunately) remember.
Bette, I agree there’s something to the “collective American/exceptionalism shadow” issue — and that exceptionalism, which used to be based on constitutional guarantees, has gone cold and passionless. We consider ourselves exceptional so long as the money holds out and things favor “American interests.” In that regard, Trump IS the poster child for all things me-me-me.
He was in Illinois talking about how his Dad bought him his first little company there, and how he bought low and sold high and hit it out of the park so he LOVED him some Illinois because … what? Because that’s where he screwed somebody out of something for the first time? Because he took advantage of an opportunity that enriched him and that bit of nostalgia meant that all folks from Illinois are his friends? Do his supporters honestly think he wouldn’t slice them into bait for a buck? HOW SHALLOW IS THIS?
But that’s the point about American exceptionalism we have yet to recognize — or at least from those who still think we’re all that and a side salad. The national heritage the world has considered exceptional is NOT the part we congratulate ourselves over, huff and puff and boast, Trump-like, in a take no prisoners, winner/loser zero-sum game — it’s the very egalitarianism that’s under fire to survive at this moment, the stuff of hope and determination, infusing the nation with a sense of possibility. That’s the best of America, what is truly exceptional — we haven’t seen much of that lately.
I wrote my piece Friday before I turned on CNN to discover the chaos in Chicago — and, as Number One Son mentioned this morning, it’s amazing how long its taken this level of lefty protest given the overt nature of the racism at Trump’s meet-up’s. This kind of hate-fest stuff has been brewing since his first racist remark and was bound to meet a loud line of defense eventually.
Despite promising to pay the legal fees of any Trumpeter that would “knock the crap” out of a protester, the Donald declares that he considers himself the victim, denied his First Amendment right of free speech, trampled by Liberals and professional ‘disruptors,’ and unfair to the thousands of Trump supporters who “just want to make America great again.”
{Build that wall! Build that wall! Build that wall!)
Bernie did a nice job of calling Don a pathelogical liar today, irked to be called a commie by the steak salesman, and defended peaceful protest as an American institution. I presume that was in regard to Donald’s rant that “There used to be consequences for protesting.”
Hey, wait! Isn’t the entirety of his campaign a protest? Aren’t his people the ones willing to set aside normal rules of engagement and constitutional protections in order to wipe out anything standing in the way of “loving America?” It’s not like his people didn’t throw the first punch. You’ve got to be on the ‘right’ side of the argument in order to deserve an opinion, in Trumpville. I believe this is the “I know you are but what am I?” gambit.
Rachel Maddow finds that rhetoric suspect and has this and more (open the link) to say:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/rachel-maddow-it-is-impossible-to-call-clash-at-trumps-chicago-rally-an-accident/
“The Republican front-runners’ remarks also run counter to documented instances where his supporters have attacked non-violent demonstrators. Maddow said Trump’s rhetoric matches “a classic strong man political tactic” more commonly seen in other countries.
“Violence at these events, which may start organically, is in effect spot lit and encouraged to the point where it becomes something that is legitimately out of control of anyone,” she explained. “And then the spectacle of political violence is itself seen as something that is a problem that needs to be solved by this strongman character who incited the initial event in the first place.”
Remember when they threw you out of a Bush rally if you wore the wrong T-shirt? And remember when the discussion over health care resulted in cheers for allowing the uninsured to die? These are baby steps of allowance, slipping a bit here, skidding a bit there. See how far we’ve come?
The part that I find most dizzying is that this is a con-job … there’s very little “there” there, with the Donald. He’s got water to schlep, steaks to sell, deals to make. And all those people who clamor to support him are just marks — expendable, disposable, and nameless. An amazing American story!
This isn’t going to stop in Chicago. The Donald has opened Pandora’s Box and loosed the browshirt consciousness we all hoped was safely consigned to history. With the eclipse energies pushing forward into an Aries point, the air is likely to get pretty turbulent.
In fact, it’s already started to blow in unexpected spots — a ho-hum mini-protest over Orin Hatch obstructing a SCOTUS nomination turned surprisingly ugly, read it here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-violence-supreme-court_us_56e33f1ae4b0860f99d91dcb?utm_hp_ref=politics
The Missouri vote is Tuesday. Big Bill was here on Friday — Bernie and Trump were both here yesterday. The Rust Belt has potential for both populist endeavors, if it can keep from becoming an even bigger clusterfuck but this explosive energy feels like it’s on auto-pilot. With Trump threatening Bernie ‘pay-backs,’ let’s put a LOT of Light on this!
Bill was in a small union hall in Springfield, standing room only. Trump was in Kansas City and there were a few protesters met with pepper spray before they could do more than open their mouths. And Bernie — bless him! — got more than 4800 enthusiastic folks gathered on a rainy night in the Pea Patch to agitate for change and pledge big turnout.
Me? Fishin’ Jim and I will register as Bernie delegates, to push through the process here in a very red district. I don’t know how it will turn out but I’m REALLY thrilled that there is this level of enthusiasm — not just for Bernie but for progressive politics — within a 500 mile radius! Gotta look under the rocks for the Dems, but they’re there!
http://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/03/12/bernie-sanders-springfield-missouri-rally-primary-march-clinton/81717430/
I’m thinking we need to keep an even keel, be — even if the water’s choppy. We know that what ISN’T so easily seen is as powerful as what seems obvious. I ran across this quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn a few days ago, and it seems worth repeating: “The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”
No, seems to me like there’s a lot of BIG stuff going on right now — the shifting gears of an era — and there seems to be a lot of people out there who AREN’T blindsided by this glut of dark energy, not just naming it but calling it out! The virtue is in being part of the solution, not the problem.
On a personal note, this has been a VERY difficult week — I’m doing alright, but I’m the person others call when it all goes wrong. I’ve had so many calls this week … so many tears and fears to help with, losses and surrenders … that I was beginning to wonder just how swamped the whole of us were by this eclipse! And Neptune dissolves, doesn’t it! Letting go with joy, that’s the challenge. Not easy stuff.
Haven’t read the book, aWord, but I read an interview with him awhile back. Interesting man, mindful. I’m sure there will be some gems to find … along with a break from Old England, where there was a good deal more misery on a daily basis, and certainly a ‘misty’ mindset to go with. Be gentle with yourself, my dear.
ALL you dears be gentle, if you please! Go slow, do no harm and find something creative that folds time and soothes you. That’s how you jump-start your ‘hopey, changey’ little hearts.
Here it is, Bette — excellent read. Thanks for passing it along!
http://www.carolynbaker.net/2016/03/05/trumpenfuhrer-magnetizing-the-american-shadow-by-carolyn-baker/
Thank-you for posting the Baker link, Judith.
As a Canadian, I’ve never before been so keenly interested, though often horrified & puzzled, in observing the US electoral process. Wow! Up here, a candidate who at one time posted on social media something discriminatory or otherwise deemed “inappropriate” is usually turfed by his/her party & not allowed to run this time. Our debates can get heated, but remain (especially by comparison!) civil, & related to real issues.
Trump has fans up here no doubt, including one who told me the other day that if he could, he’d vote for Trump because “he’s against the establishment” & “tells it like it is.” Whatever that really means. Vulture capitalism IS part of the establishment, is it not?
I was happy to hear Prime Minister Trudeau, during his recent visit to Washington, respond to a question about Trump by saying, in part, “Fear is easy”. I agree. But oh my, fear becomes a powerful tool for those who know how to wield it.
Judith, re-posting what I posted for Eric on FaceBook because it’s so important: Pacifica Radio had Rosa Clemente of BLM on this morning and the trial that is about to start with unbelievable charges being leveled by the L.A. DA against the BLM protests after Ferguson is beyond the scope of any charges in any U. S. city. The goal is to eradicate free speech and the right to assemble here in (supposedly) progressive L.A.
Add to that, BLM’s Jasmine Richards who protested in my own Old Town Pasadena area is also facing enormous charges and the plea is for almost a year in jail, which she will not accept and is going to trial instead. This is a conspiracy to keep BLM from further protests in L.A. Ever. Shame on these cities.
Thank you, Deborah, for the heads up on this. I’m afraid I don’t consider ANY police force particularly progressive at this point. It’s going to take a real movement …. already started, even though it may seem not nearly enough … to change this dynamic. But the coasts are better, believe me.
As in the 60s, there is going to be a lot of this bubbling up so we can get a good look at it. Unlike the 60s, however, there are more people of color to witness and confront this kind of thing, so perhaps it will ‘give’ a little easier. It sure isn’t pretty.
Trumps rant about how protests used to have consequences (like being carted out on a stretcher) is the epitome of what’s wrong with this picture. Until we can sit down at a table and address these problems like adults, we’re going to see this level of bs.