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By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“My life is my message.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

Americans are, for good or ill, finally engaged in the sociopolitical dynamics of their day. For the longest time, those of us who were alarmed at the growing imbalance​ in political perspective​ bemoaned the disinterest of the average citizen, poking along in their lives, trying to get ahead and not make waves.

We were desperate for waves about then — pointing to the speed at which laws and policies were changing, lives and treasure disappearing, foreign misadventure​ eroding national credibility — but shaking the sleepers awake seemed a monumental task.

Now, not so much. As the political poles (polls) shifted, so did the mood of the nation. I remember saying, back in the first ​few years of this century, that when the natives finally woke up they’d be pissy. Yeah, well — they’re pissy now! Everybody has some outrage to point to, some injustice or corruption or fraudulent something that rankles, whether it be national or personal, and they’re quick to share it if we’ll listen.

The problem is — although many don’t seem to realize it — they’re so run by their fear for the future, so trapped in bubbles of philosophy, religion or ideology, that they can’t put enough of the puzzle together to help themselves. They don’t have the pieces that exist outside of their absolutes, and as we’ve seen, even if they had the pieces they wouldn’t know what to do with them.

I saw a clip of Trump supporters at a town hall being informed of things he’d said or done, and one after the next, they absolutely refused to believe it. This wasn’t just a guarded response, defending their candidate. It was a flat dismissal of whatever they’d just heard: No, it couldn’t be true. The Donald was their man, he had all the answers and the chutzpah to pull America out of the mire of ​21st century devolution. The things being said about him were all propaganda, lies told by lefties and those jealous of his growing popularity.

How did this happen? A Mother Jones read this week examines the accusation that the left is responsible for Donald, and it’s interesting for the pieces of puzzle it contains. Yes, the current strident political correctness that forbids any but the most tolerant language without censure has frustrated those whose cultural issues are trapped in unyielding conservative principles, and yet, although I’ve stumbled over that liberal absolute myself, I’m going to cry bullshit on this one.

Blaming the left’s political correctness for Trump’s rise is like blaming the Black Lives Matter movement on Abraham Lincoln. Trump is the darling of those who resent belittlement for brutish, unevolved opinions like racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia. If Trump can stand up to it, perhaps even beat it by becoming the candidate on the right​,  then so can they! The notion that Donald seems to have very little to bring to the presidency doesn’t bother them, since they apparently have no idea what the presidency involves.

Having said that puts me in the ‘liberal elitist’ category, by the way, which is how one can get a foot stuck in this tar pit. The Trumpettes are very much “you’re not the boss of me” folk, which puts them at odds with the 21st century imperative of worldwide collaboration and joint effort. Sorry, kids. With 7.4 billion people on the planet, you can’t stand alone — evolution is required.

Amazing, yes? But this kind of isolated, self-serving and selective — some would say deluded — sight has become epidemic, slowly inching up on us for years. Somebody turned on the bubble machine right around the turn of the century. Few of us were prepared for the division that suddenly appeared in our social contract — a crack in the Constitution — when SCOTUS declared George Bush the winner of the presidential race in 2000.

Because Americans are just beginning to grow out of their adolescent preoccupation with competitive “win/lose,” “black/white” thinking, those on the right of the political spectrum saw the maneuver as a glorious confirmation of their war on all things liberal, a war begun in earnest in the ’90s with the help of the religious base and Newt Gingrich.

Those on the left of the spectrum, while shocked and confused, were clueless about just how far that schism would widen or how much damage would be done before anyone noticed how badly the republic had fractured. The walls of the conservative bubble, stretching to accommodate reckless Wall Str​eet gamblers, fraudulent corporate lenders, militaristic overreach, and nationalistic drum-beaters, had no choice but to burst, and it was telling how quickly the Bush administration beat it out of town after handing over the mess to the new guy.

Once again, a Democrat had to use much of his measure of political clout to stabilize the chaos left behind, and the glaring hypocr​isy — which average citizens trapped in a radicalized conservative bubble seem not to recognize — of Republican talking points hammering Obama for being “the worst president in American history” is belied by the stunning progress he’s made during his tenure​, and to hear him tell it, he ain’t done yet. I want to believe! With the exception of TPP, I look forward to Obama pushing progressive solutions.

Nobody works around the bubbles as well as this president. He’s managed to stick out his tongue at the birther bubble, a delusion based on wishful thinking. The birthers are back at it, by the way, thanks to Trump “helping” his Canadian-born friend, Ted Cruz, by urging him to clear up his citizenship issues legally. Yeah. Right. Ted’s mother was American, which should be enough, but in this particular bubble, it’s not. The same folks after Obama are now after Ted, and remember: the Donald is one of them.

Then there’s what has been called Vanilla ISIS (to my delight.) Ammon Bundy, having tearfully announced he’d received a green light from Gawd ​ Almight​y, is occupying a rural federal building in Oregon with his armed buddies until the Constitution is served [sic] by the court freeing two ranchers who burned over a hundred acres of public land. That is as likely to happen as their success in holding out for long, because despite declaring they could inhabit the area for as much as a year, it appears they forgot the snacks, or​ even enough food to last the week.​

Bundy’s bubble is shared with those who live on the edge of the herd — survivalists, libertarians, a collection of tough guys with military, policing and biker experience and (literally, at the edge) cattle ranchers who disdain government. The majority are well armed and consider themselves ‘militia,’ sworn to protect the version of the Constitution they approve.

You will remember the name Bundy from 2014 when Ammon’s father, Nevada rancher Cliven (whom Rolling Stone calls an “infamous deadbeat”) went up against the federal government for confiscating his free-ranging cattle for overdue grazing fees on public land. He called on the Peacekeeper movement to defend his stand. Enough people showed up, guns trained on Bureau of Land Management personnel, to create a pocket of federal inertia. Hard to blame the Fed — it  didn’t want another Waco or Ruby Ridge on its hands.

In part, that tamped down the federal response in Oregon, and although they have proclaimed their determination to handle ​Cliven’s issues legally, their slow-mo actions have added credence to the posse ​comitatus theme (lo​​cal government vs. federal) ​long believed in this ​paranoid bubble. Additionally, as Ammon’s daddy still hasn’t paid his million bucks in fees and hasn’t been aggressively pursued, the son seems to think that will be his eventual fate as well. I have my doubts.

Interesting, isn’t it, that these folks call out the federal government in a “life and death struggle against tyranny,” pointing rifles at the law, and yet assume they will not have to be accountable for such behavior? If that had happened in Ferguson, we all know the result would have been bodies stacked like cord wood. Still, inequality on this issue is beginning to fade, with white Christian domestic terrorism becoming more transparent and recognizable. The large group of supporters Ammon was expecting failed to appear, and the public has not supported his effort. FOX’s Megyn Kelly was short with the younger Bundy, and even Hannity has disapproved the seizing of the Wildlife Refuge.

The wall of this particular bubble is thinning, but it’s taken almost four decades to create public distrust of government (thank you, St. Ronnie), and it will take a good deal longer to make government effective again, thanks to the Peter Principal, the corruption of money and the constant grind of Republican obstruction. There’s little public trust left. Don’t forget that more than half of Texans, including their political structure up to and including the governor, hid under their beds this summer during a Special Forces training exercise. Militia ‘Patriots’ showed up there, too, lest the entire state get sucked into the black hole of Federal tyranny..

There are an enormous amount of bubbles floating around out there, self-contained,  self-protective and defensive to instruction. ISIS represents one, and of course our own military is, by definition, a big, expensive one. Giving peace a chance would put both of them out of business. Corporations comprise the thickest-walled bubbles, pred​atory by design and now by law, but all of the​se are subject to changes of circumstance and information.

I read lately that the Kochs can’t figure out why they aren’t more influential, given their money bombs. There was a big pop this week — did you hear it? — when FOX’s O’Reilly chided the NRA for being opposed to background checks. He didn’t go so far as to support Obama’s proposals, of course, but with almost 90 percent of the citizenry in favor of checks, Bill stepped outside the bubble to go with the reality flow.

The answer to all this floating nonsense is education, although it’s not welcomed by those who are closeted in one mindset or another. I recall the snit Glenn Beck had when he discovered that his daughter had accepted a scholarship to a secular college, exposing herself to non-Christian concepts. There is absolutely no doubt that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, which in this instance, means that the more one is exposed to truth, the more it must begin to sink in. The reality concepts that are important to us need a megaphone, and we are it.

Ex-third-party candidate (and occasional spoiler) Ralph Nader wants to know why it’s only the Republicans making waves with “road rage” when there are so many altruistic needs out there for us to rail against? He’s got a very valid point, one Bernie Sanders is trying to remediate. Ralph illustrates:

“Gilead Sciences, Inc. bought a company that had a drug to cure Hepatitis C with a 12 week regime. It started selling it for $1,000 a pill a day in 2013 or $84,000 for the full treatment. In one year, Gilead took in more than $10 billion from the drug, Sovaldi.

“But in Egypt, where there are nine million people suffering from Hepatitis C, Gilead agreed with the government of that poor country to sell it for $10 a pill which is then dispensed free by the Health Ministry to ailing Egyptians.

“Do you Americans love Egyptians more than yourselves?” asked Hany Tawfil, one of the first Egyptians to take Sofosbuvir (Sovaldi), according to the New York Times, adding, “Why aren’t you putting pressure on Gilead to sell to you at a reasonable price, too?”

Nader asks why we aren’t furious that we’re being taken advantage of so mercilessly. He wants to know why we aren’t expressing our displeasure loudly enough for all to hear. He cites movements like MADD and other groups who agitated for consciousness-raising and succeeded grandly.

Those who will not be moved will remain in their bubble until the end, of course — in 2005, a couple of Japanese soldiers, both pushing 90, walked out of the jungle in the Philippines, unaware that the war had been over for 60 years — but that should be the rarity, not the rule when common sense prevails.

There are some bubbles made to last, one hopes, like the altruistic philosophy this nation was founded upon. The proposition that all are equal, that their votes matter and their voices will be heard, must not be allowed to dissipate like so many other proposals. If there is flaw in the administering of this government, if there is lack of political and cultural evolution that must be addressed and restructured, then it’s up to us to fix it. That is part of our heritage and the cost of our citizenship.

When Gandhi said his life was his message, he was speaking for all of us. His life may have been dramatic, simplistic and heroic, while ours do not seem so, but our sharing in his experience of self-empowerment has marked our own, and added light to the world in ways we can’t begin to fathom.

Now we’re ready for even more light. I’ll let Nader take point on this, since I bet that when you look over your To Do List, ‘rumbling’ isn’t on it:

“Short of organizing into a demanding group, why can’t more people just shout out via telephone, letter, email, text message, to anyone who could do something or at least spread the word. Just a growing rumble from the people has gotten elected officials moving, including President Richard Nixon who signed wonderful bills into law that he never wanted. But he feared the rising RUMBLE FROM THE PEOPLE. Who can stop you from rumbling?”

What we stand for and support defines us. Do just one political action every day and you will have dissolved some of the tiny bubbles of illogic cluttering up the conversation. Eckhart Tolle tells us that when we speak in consciousness to unconscious individuals, we are shining light. We can succeed daily by influencing the collective toward an enlightened outcome, which is why we don’t have to be Gandhi to change the world.  We just need to be authentic, aware of our ​power and purpose, and ready to rumble.