If you want inspiring history everyday listen to Tom Hartmann on Air America from 12-3 p.m. I've read a number of his books, which are both spiritual and socially practical as they educate for enlightened action. But his radio program is a pulpit for democracy and freedom. Today he was describing our at the beginning of the Conservative Movement our American story was stolen.
Through think tanks and manipulation of the news flow, Conservatives changed our idea of government from being us to being an evil them. And then we began to think of the wealthy as being noble and the poor being lazy. Next we found ourselves divided into two warring camps with one side having God on its side and the other in league with the Devil. They stole our story of who we are.
Hartmann points out that America is the only country founded on an idea of freedom instead of a genetically linked people, like the French or Swedes. The Conservatives realized that whomever controls the story of us controls us, so they stole our idea of who we are and changed it into who we are not.
Obama is giving us back our story. Our story is that we are greater than we think we are. Our story is that we are one people, not two parties. Our story is that we are all in this together.
With the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican VP, we are witnessing an extraordinary surge of creative ways to shore up her experience quotient in order to avoid being asked in a debate, "Where's the beef?" While the efforts swing wildly from the sublime to the ridiculous, one of the best I've seen and perhaps the most revealing is "Conservative credentials trump experience." (Just aside for a moment, would we ever here a liberal say, "Liberal credentials trump experience?")
So lets look a little deeper into this thought process. First there seems to be a joining at the hip between conservative and religion as "conservative" in this usage is obviously elevated above mere political convictions. This is like saying faith trumps experience, or God trumps experience. (I'm reminded of the finger game where rock trumps scissors.) And this trump card is being played on the political game table from Palin's conservative hand that so far shows Guns, Abortion, and Creationism as the only face cards. Until more is revealed, these are the only credentials we have so far upon which to base our argument that conservative credentials is the trump card.
But lets take a look at the meaning of "credentials," since so much weight is being attached to them. First, credentials mean that one looks at reality through a particular set of iron clad convictions, and that you dare not flip-flop if you don't' want to have those credentials become a burning tire around your neck. So no matter what comes up on the river of life, you experience life from and through your past convictions. Everything you think and do is constrained by your conditioning, which are your credentials. You can't change. We are all held hostage by our credentials and our convictions.
Now here is the problem. Life IS change. Life is changing faster than we can barely tolerate, given that we all have our convictions of how things should be. So why do we want a leader that can't change, that can't adapt and find new policies that fit the new world? Why do we want a leader that when stuck in the mud just keeps spinning the wheels deeper and deeper? Credentials, no matter of what kind, won't allow us to find a creative way out of the mud. When we are imprisoned by our credentials, we keep doing the same thing hoping for a different result.
When we value credentials over experience, we value image over substance, fear over courage, and security over freedom. We take refuge in our credentials, our labels and self images. We find a safe harbor among like minded credentials. Credentials are the uniform of our tribe. They are the flags under which we march to war. Credentials tell us who we are. Credentials try to control our experience and keep us safe from life's change and challenge. But are we real? Only experience can tell us that.
We need to remember that before change can come, first their must be destruction. As for our country we can now see the damage clearly, what with 911 and the Bush followup with self inflicted damage to our nation.
For those who see the wave on the horizon and are ready to ride, their own lives undergo change as well. Change is not a superficial ripple. Real change is a wave that carries everything with it. One either rides it or drowns. Change has no favorites. Change doesn't mess around. God is change.
I never thought I would be "politically active" (other than donated to Obama online), but tonight we're hosting a House Party for the Obama acceptance speech. This came about by talking to the Chase City Obama office manager who suggested it and then put my name in the online Obama network for this area. With Virginia being one of the battle ground states, we can expect more Obama offices to open and more knocks on our doors asking us to get involved in creating the country we want. We can expect more house parties.
You know, this message of Yes We Can is a deeply spiritual message that goes right to the core of our relationship with God and our self, a relationship that in our time is changing right beneath our feet. The existential question being asked is simple: are we the created or are we co-creators in this life we are all living? In other words, are we separate from God, just puppets in His show or some game of chance, or are we also the sleeping puppeteers who have unknowingly handed over the string of our life to our conditioned ego and social institutional powers? Do we have the power to create our world or are we just the created characters in some absurd play signifying nothing. Is our story given or can we write our own story? There are so many ways to frame the question but only one solution.
The fundamental message of Obama and his campaign is a spiritual one, a radical message when taken to the heart that awakens our souls and moves us to action. Yes we can take back America and our lives. Yes we can choose to be who we really are. Yes we can take affirmative action and change the stage of our play. We are the authors of our existence.
But for Obama and his message, this is not an intellectual belief, not an armchair philosophy; this is a belief with muscle. This is a faith with arms and feet and a voice. This election is a call to life and to reclaim our birth right of freedom from the frozen ideologies of the past.
So yes I'm excited about Obama, but not only for his personality, for his policies, and for his promise. I'm excited about Obama because I'm excited about our own freedom that Obama through his courage helps us get in touch with.
(Letter to the Blackstone Courier-Record to be published next week)
In response to Mr. Pyle’s support of the recent editorial attack on Obama for his gun control views, I did a little research and found that the threat he poses to our safety here in Southside is wildly exaggerated and comes mainly from his being on the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based foundation that used its assets to “fuel a dialogue about how to address public policy issues like reducing gun violence,” said Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman.
Obama, who joined the board as a 32-year-old lawyer before he got into politics, reviewed over 1500 individual grant requests, and some of them were to study aggressive gun control policies, some of which were mentioned in Pyle’s letter. But the letter misleads us into thinking that these were Obama’s votes in the legislature.
“Not every [grant] got discussed,” said Carin Clauss, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who served on the board with Obama. “Some were just: ‘Yeah, we don’t have any problem with that.’ The primary function of the board was to identify the public policy issues that were going to be the subject of grants.”
So are we not looking at an irrational fear that Obama or anyone for that matter is coming to take away our guns and leave us at the mercy of the barbarians waiting at the gate. Fear always exaggerates the danger because fear impairs our vision.
“The other areas in which the foundation issues grants include reducing the influence of money in politics and boosting high culture in Chicago. Of the $219 million in grants approved from 1997 through 2002 — the years of Obama’s tenure for which the foundation has posted its annual reports online — the environment received $57 million, followed by education ($56 million), employment ($41 million), gun violence ($21 million), money and politics ($17 million) and culture ($6.5 million).”
So there you have it. Because of a few grants approved by a foundation board Obama was on, you are unlocking your gun cabinets and standing by the window. While the planet melts and China is set to overtake our economy and Russia is rattling its sabers, rural gun owners are afraid Obama is going to come and get their guns.
If this isn’t a false fear issue, I don’t know what is. Aren’t we better than this? Isn’t it time we woke up?
This morning I read on the Internet that McCain is surging in the polls and a sense of hopelessness surged in my mind: "Here we go. Deja vu all over again." Why does the candidate with the biggest pile of mud always win? Will the country wake up again after this election with another bush burning the country's future? Will people several years from now say, "I voted for McCain and I sure regret that." Will the youth of our country have to endure another defeat of idealism and settle for just more of the same? Will Obama put his plaque on the wall with the previous great hopes, Gore and Kerry?
But this play on the field of national politics, this political Olympics also plays out in our own soul. The battle between security and transcendence, between the fearful and the brave is always going on in every moment of our life. Each moment is a choice between the known and the unknown. Each moment offers us a world that is old or a world that has never been seen before. Each moment brings us another yesterday or an new tomorrow. Each moment we vote for fear or fearlessness; each moment we vote for the unreal or the real; and each moment we cast our ballot for darkness or light. Each moment we choose the world we are.
With our vote we can change the world. That is Obama's core message. But if we really are going to change the world, Obama is not the means, nor is McCain. Each of us is the world we live in, so if we are going to vote change, we have to vote fear out of office in ourselves. We have to say "the hell with it" and vote our courage. We just have to leap into the unknown of this mooment with a faith that says this world will be okay if I stop being afraid it won't be. Life is change, but we have to vote for it.
From Chogyam Trungpa this morning: “The neurotic aspect of the mind is always willing to fall into either the extreme of left or right. The right extreme is anger, the masculine extreme. The left extreme is passion, the feminine extreme. This symbolism is true and universal—a cosmic symbol.”
Looking back over the political divide of the last 40 years between the Nixon party of the right and the McGovern party of the left, you can see this cosmic symbol working its way out. There has always been an angry fist raised muscular side to the right that raises it rifle barrels against the passionate flower power of the left. And McCain evokes this masculine anger that wants to crush one’s enemies.
Do you remember how Odysseus got pass theses two extremes? He had his crew tie him to the mast and put wax in their ears. He could hear the siren's seductive call but could not react and drive the ship to destruction. The map Odysseus left us is simple: listen to the two sides but don't react. Let intelligence be your guide and you will find the middle way. Doesn't that sound like Obama?
But I believe the country is ready for the middle way and like Odysseus we will make our way between this Scylla and Charybdis that has been sinking our ships since WWII ended.
Which do we want for the next four to eight years, a healer or a warrior? These were the questions that rose to my mind as I watched most of the debate last night between Oama and McCain on CNN. One big difference I noticed was that Obama answered questions with thoughtful detail, being careful to demonstrate that there were no simple answers and the solutions and progress required finding a middle way.
This was especially apparent on the question, what is evil? Obama broadened evil to include say a mother's abuse of her child and that one should pay attention to the causes of evil and address them. You could see in Obama's thinking that he was interested in finding ways out of the impasse of absolute framework of good vs. evil through understanding. Obama is a dialectical thinker whose intelligence never divides reality into two warring sides.
McCain, on the other hand, when asked about what you do with evil, he said simply with the force of a fist, "Defeat it." He went on to frame reality as a war between the forces of good and evil, and that our only course was to marshal our forces and fight to the death. If I wanted a general to lead my army, I would want McCain. But if I wanted a leader who would reduce my need for an army I would want Obama.
The choice seems simple: do we want to continue the "us against them" war of the last 40 years of good against evil, or do we want to heal the divisions in the world and create a new and better world? I thought it ironic that while McCain paints Obama as the hollow messiah that will capture the passion of the people and lead them over a cliff, it was McCain last night that reminded me of a demigod that would call the people to arms and lead them over the cliff of endless war and wasted resosurces.
While waiting for the Olympics to come on last night I dropped in on a history channel documentary about the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1912 (?), and if you want to find what awakened the sleeping dragon of China, this might have been the jab in its side that woke her up. China was humiliated by the Western powers in the small but very significant war (if you can call it that) where it failed to throw out the Europeans and Japanese who had arrogantly carved up China into market shares. With that humiliation a hundred years of turmoil began that has now ended with the coming out party of the 2008 Olympics.
But I couldn't help but draw the connection between China's awakening dragon (creative power) and our own struggle to ride our dragon. WWII awoke our dragon and we rode her to world power.
But the Cold War and the ideological divide that split the world made us forget how to ride our dragon. Only a whole mind can ride the dragon. And ever since WWII our national mind has been divided an at war with itself. A divided mind is a fearful mind, and dragons sense fear in their riders and will turn and burn them up with their breath of fire.
We have lost our wholeness over the last 40 years as division replaced division. Never mind what we were divided over, once the mind is divided it just finds new content to satisfy the formula. A divided mind is not a creative mind because a divided mind consumes itself in mindless conflict. While the planet dies, we worry over gun rights or school prayer.
And there was Bush at the Olympics, our great divider. And there is Obama—the man who is awakening our nation’s whole mind that transcends division. The passion we feel for Obama is our sleeping dragon that is now once more waking up. Both individually and collectively, something is stirring, something is getting warm, and we can feel a living movement once more. When the dragon stirs, we feel hope, we see potential, and we lose our fear.
China, lets yoke our rising dragons and save our planet.
In response to last week’s editorial on Obama as a threat to guns and freedom, I found myself raising my writing hand and shouting like Charlton Heston of the NRA, “From my cold dead hands” that this blatant appeal to fear shall not win, not this time, not this election. Now I could spend this precious space listing Obama’s balanced approach to gun control, but what’s the point. Once branded as a LIBERAL no mater what he says you will believe he is still hiding behind a deceptive cover of words and policy shifts. Once a LIBERAL always a liberal, right?
If this long war between the blue and the red, the left and right, is to end we must get underneath this logic of fear that has kept our beloved nation shaking and paralyzed for 40 years. The subliminal message in the editorial is a warning that has been running in the south since the Civil War. “To arms, the Yankees are coming!”
There is something deep in the southern mind that fears invasion from intellectuals, especially northern ones who threaten to emasculate the southern male and defile their women. A liberal in the southern mind is a composite of all that will destroy our way of life—which in this urban age is really a bygone ideal of southern manhood. That knight on a horse went off to defeat the northern armies with his mere sword and courage. Now all we have is the myth and the fear.
Southern courage and dignity and freedom is real, to be sure, but the mythic layer that lies undisturbed by awareness makes us subject to manipulation by the politicians that know how to push our buttons. And the biggest buttons are LIBERAL and GUNS. Put those two buttons together and all logic is thrown out the window. We vote in herds for the button pusher’s chosen ones.
So, patriots of the south and our cherished values, lets put away our fear of invasion and take a look at the real world. As long as you have fear painted across your glasses you only see what your manipulators want you to see. Lets face it, if you vote from fear, it’s too late, you have already been invaded and captured by a foreign force that has taken your freedom and defiled your mind. Don’t let this fear win, not this time.
Why are there no campaign signs in the front yards of Blackstone this year? Is it too early? During the last presidential election there were Bush and Kerry signs everywhere, more Bush than Kerry, to be sure. But around here, not much is showing. Is this a sign of this election?
I want to put up an Obama sign, but I feel some vague apprehension. Is it imaginary? I’ve never been politically active before, so maybe it’s just stepping out of my anonymity. I got an email from an Obama supporter not long ago who said when she put her sign out in front of her business, some customers were upset, as if she were flying the devil’s flag. She put up her sign. Another friend said she wanted an Obama sign, and then she joked about her house being fire bombed.
Is there more going on here than just an election? Why are we afraid of hope and a change from the dysfunctional past? I think this election reflects something personal in all of us. We have all had dreams of doing great things, of making a difference, of “being a contender” like the broken fighter in On the Waterfront. And we’ve all had our dreams busted up by hard reality, so maybe we’re afraid to get back in the ring again.
Disappointment is in the South’s genes after its youth and idealism were ground beneath the invaders boots from the North. And we all remember the 60s when the idealism of both whites and blacks fell from the bullets of madness. So the fear of disappointment runs deep in all of us. “Better not try, better not dream,” says the fear. Even the dysfunctional past is better than the uncertain future. It’s better to be safe than hopeful, the fear says.
This election—while on one level is about electing a president—on a deeper level is about the disabling chill of fear. So whom do we vote for? The few Republicans I’ve talked to about this sing the same refrain: “I’m afraid of Obama but I hate McCain.”
So there are three people running in this election: hope, fear, and hatred. Which of these candidates do you want as president? Remember, we are who we vote for.
I watched Obama in Berlin and cried. It was not the speech but that wall of joyous faces and eager hands reaching for a touch from Obama that squeezed my heart and brought the tears. Here was a wall unlike any walls I have seen. A living wall of hopeful humanity was reaching to touch a hope, a possibility within them that was awakening. Obama was just a circuit connector that was sending their own energy and hope back to them.
Obama moved down the wall, reaching and connecting with as many hands he could find, and you could feel the energy grow and connect back with itself—something was alive, something was being released, and something was being awakened. And then it hit me. Seventy years ago in 1938 the grandparents of the people in this wall of faces were reaching out to touch Hitler, probably on this very spot, and they too felt that something was alive and being awakened. But it was collective ego nationalism that was being born; it was an “I’m special” mentality that was being forged.
Seventy years ago these hands were building a wall that would divide the family of man and bring millions to death and ruin. But Obama talked about tearing down the walls and freeing man from the artificial boundaries of the mind that divides the family of man. It’s not the walls of brick but the walls of thought that divide us now, he said.
How far these faces have come, these Berlin faces that now hope for a world without walls. We have to experience the suffering walls create before we can tear them down. Walls have a purpose when they make us see beyond. And Berlin has seen both sides of the wall. And so Obama comes with a wrecking ball and a truck full of hammers. “Come on world,” he says, “let’s tear down these walls. Now is our moment.”
