All good things must come to an end, so why should the Empire be any different? This presidential election may well be its swan song. At this point there are the two candidates of the establishment parties remaining. In elections going back to at least 1980, there hasn’t been anything but a miserable choice of lesser evils. Since then, the fantasy of America carefully nurtured by the powers that be (PTB) has kept most of us sufficiently hypnotized to get at least the bare majority to participate in the now quaint quadrennial ceremony - the most sacred of our political rites - the Election of the President of the United States. Not this time, I would think. My guess is that the majority will stay home, frustrated and confused, and angry – very angry.

 

Americans may be ignorant but they aren’t stupid, at least any more so than any other people. They merely suffer from a heady mix of nationalist propaganda that they’ve been spoon fed from kindergarten to old age. Yet somehow, the awareness that 99% of us are essentially powerless and that we’re all marks in a massive con game has been slowly but surely seeping through the smoke and mirrors. Creeping, pinching, ubiquitous poverty is becoming too apparent to be disguised by the flim flammery of the infotainment industry that has until now kept people distracted and politically infantilized. The economy is a giant Ponzi scheme that is rapidly approaching its inevitable collapse. Moreover, almost everyone outside of the 1% has been maneuvered into seeing themselves as members of one or another oppressed minority. The next giant step is for more people to become aware that we are all actually members of the overwhelming majority, the American people.

 

The rules of the game are fixed so that only representatives of the Establishment - the Republicrats and the Demoblicans - are allowed to participate in the ritual jousting match that ensures the perpetuation of the Oligarchy. Anyone else, given that the game is massively rigged, has no chance. However, in times like these, anything can happen in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter and the Red Queen are both disliked and distrusted by a majority. So there’s still a tiny opening for a genuine, positive alternative, albeit a highly unlikely one.

 

In Jared Diamond’s epic “Guns, Germs and Steel” there was a sort of throwaway phrase that popped up here and there. For those who are not familiar with the book, Diamond has written a blockbuster history of human evolution, sort of a sequel to Darwin’s “Ascent of Man.” Not genetic evolution, which has been mostly a non-factor for at least the last 5,000 years, but cultural evolution. When he very occasionally mentioned forms of government, he wrote that governments are invariably kleptocracies. He didn’t speculate about why that is so, but he did mention that governments rise and fall based on the balance that is or is not maintained between how much the PTB appropriate for themselves and how much they permit the populace to keep. If they are too greedy, then they will be faced with a popular uprising, from which emerges a new plutocracy. It seems to me that we have about reached such a tipping point. The current system, lorded over by what in the 60’s we referred to as the Establishment, is close to collapsing. To use the Chinese terminology, they are losing the Mandate of Heaven.

 

Politics, it has been said, is what happens when two or more people get together. What they bring to the table is, by and large, what they perceive as their self interest. Bound up with that is their view of the nature of things, a set of opinions, prejudices, rationalizations and beliefs that they try to cobble together into some sort of coherent whole. In societies that work well over time, there is a basic homogeneity of such views, resulting in what appears to be the natural order of things. When events and circumstances reveal that order to be built on thin ice that is cracking all around them they have to rely on something more fundamental, some sense of what is really important and what is actually at stake.

 

 

In this secular age we may not think of them as spiritual values, as spirituality is commonly confused with religion. But religions themselves are, by and large, the empty husks of what were at one time spiritual revolutions, breakthroughs into awareness of the basis of our relationships with others, our common humanity. One only has to refer to the words of Gandhi, Mandela, M.L. King, the Dalai Lama, Pope Francis etc. And that’s just in very recent times.

The Buddha put it this way - "In separateness lies the world's great misery, in compassion lies the world's true strength." This cuts against the grain of what we think of as normal politics. It’s not about “Me” after all; it’s about “Us” - all of us, not just our family or some larger identity group. It’s known as the Golden Rule, which has been enunciated by every spiritual school (aka wisdom traditions – e.g., Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism and the Advaita Vedanta etc.) since the dawn of humankind, even the theistic religions.

 

This tension between self interest and the good of the whole can be seen as a reflection of the sanskrit terms samsara and nirvana. The first describes the confusion that characterizes the experience of most of us most of the time, while nirvana simply means the lack of such confusion. That confusion - a heady brew of passion, aggression and ignorance - is clearly manifest in what we call “normal” politics.

 

In the tantric traditions, a great deal is made of what are called the Masculine and Feminine principles. In the Taoist tradition they are called Yin and Yang. At least in broad strokes, we can see these polarities reflected in political ideologies, distinguishing what are called the Left and the Right. The former leans toward the feminine and the latter the masculine. This is not necessarily congruent with the male and female genders, which can exhibit the characteristics of either. Think, for example, of our dear Hillary, who is very masculine, psychotically so. Just to prove that she has the cojones, she’s quite likely to start the next – and last – world war.

 

We may indeed have come to a watershed 5,000 years in the making. For at least that long, the pastoral, warlike hill tribes, with their wrathful, masculine sky gods raining thunder, lightning and destruction on their creators, have raided and pillaged the riverine lowlands, with their static, homebound agricultural societies built around stable and prosperous cities which typically worshiped the Earth Mother. Eventually, they would seize control and set up masculine dominated, warring kingdoms. Greed and aggression drove this phenomenon and it has morphed into the dynamics of modern nation states. It has, in recent times, taken such forms as Manifest Destiny and Vulture Capitalism in America, Nazism in Germany and, of course, Zionism. All forms of fascism are the primary obstacle to peace.

 

In the US the perversion of these polarities is most clearly represented by the neocons and the neolibs. Belligerent identity politics are the basis of fascism and have undergirded the current wobbly hegemony of the USraeli Empire. But the worm turns and now the world desperately seeks a return to a healthy balance between masculine and feminine. This is the foundation of a genuine feminism, something which is rarely discussed.

 

 

Lesser evilism has never been a satisfactory basis for making such a decision. And at this juncture, it just won’t cut it. The Drumpster and Hellary are out of the question. One is an ignorant, self-obsessed, boorish street hustler. The other is arguably criminally insane, eager to start more wars and do whatever her donors desire. The alternative is Jill Stein. Her fundamental qualification is sanity, which clearly distinguishes her from the front runners. Hers are basically the politics of wisdom and compassion, looking out for the well being of the country and its people. Aside from that, this election is perhaps the last chance to break the grip of the death dealing duopoly or at least move in that direction. Voting for Trump or Clinton is worse than a wasted vote; it would serve only to perpetuate the current, unconscionable system. As John Lennon put it, “give peace a chance.”

 

Anything is possible – the Cubbies could win! Please just look into it..

 

 
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