The Swami nails it, IMO

[wisewomn]

I thought I'd share this recent post by Steve Bhaerman, aka Swami Beyondananda.


January 13, 2017

Evolution Plays Its Trump Card
A Post-Mortem and Pre-Natal Report

"Those who fail to learn the lessons from history condemn
THE REST OF US to repeat it."
-- Swami Beyondananda

Mock my words.

In the future -- if there is one -- when children ask their elders, "What sparked the evolutionary upwising?" the answer will be two words: Donald Trump.

The toxic shock of Trump's election as President -- along with a platform catering to "white wing" America, promoting fossil fuels, and denying human-caused climate change -- would seem like a setback to what Charles Eisenstein's calls "the more beautiful world we all know is possible."

I would suggest this apparent setback is really the "set forward" the sane and reverent among us have needed to, in Swami's words, "wake up, wise up, grow up and show up."

Before we explore the implications of this wake up call, let's assess what did happen, and what lessons we might learn. Ready to dive into the "assess-pool"? Here we go!

And The Last Trump Shall Blow -- Our Political Apocalypse

For the past year, as part of my comedy routine I have referred to the Biblical quote about the "end times": "And the last Trump shall blow ..."

It always gets a big laugh, partly because of the uncanny connection, and partly because of the heavy implications. Many people feel we are in "apocalyptic" times, although I see this more positively than most when I remember that apocalypse means "lifting of the veils."

In that regard, the election of Donald Trump was an apocalyptic event. The veils were lifted on the shadow of American politics -- how voters are suppressed and voting machines can be hacked, how lies that are intentionally spread can influence otherwise intelligent people, and how the system is indeed "rigged". Perhaps more importantly, the nicey-nicey mask has been removed from the neoliberal and seemingly more benign rulers like Obama and Hillary, to reveal the American empire, doing unspeakable things to people we cannot see, along with those we can see like those at the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Not to mention promoting fracking and GMOs here at home, defending big Pharma and agribusiness and talking about climate change, but barely crawling, let alone walking, that talk.)

More pointedly, the veils were lifted on the intellectual establishment living in an upper middle class bubble, and yet promoting social justice, primarily through identity politics. These were the smug people who were shocked awake when they realized that their high-falutin' ideas somehow never got grounded in the grassroots. Except for the Bernie campaign, that is. Of course, the "wiser" heads knew Bernie was unelectable so they used every weapon they could to defeat him and put Hillary on the ticket, not realizing that it was Hillary who was unelectable.

As Otto Sharmer wisely points out in this long but insightful article, there were three possible responses to what he called "massive institutional failures":

Muddle through, maintain the status quo
Move backward, as in building a wall between "us" and "them"
Move forward, and build "architectures of collaboration"

The problem was, Hillary represented the status quo, Trump represented building the wall and going backward, and Bernie represented forward progress. Except Bernie wasn't on the ballot. So the choice the voters faced was either change or stagnation. Unfortunately, in choosing the former, voters chose the most dangerous "rogue stag" in the nation.

How the Right Got Right, and the Left Got Left

So if there is any silver lining at all, it might be that the Democratic Party as we've known it is dead, dead, dead. The party of neoliberal globalism that has a shiny veneer but ultimately betrays us has been exposed. This frees the real agents of change and connectivity to build forward, albeit in a less friendly environment. And consider that the Berniecrats have already celebrated their first victory -- thanks to Donald Trump: the end of the Transpacific Trade Partnership. Had Hillary been elected, it would still be on the table.

Also thanks to this apocalyptic election, the veils have been lifted on the institutionalized evil of the system, AND the darker reasons why the Democratic Party establishment can never truly act in our behalf. These include:

Lack of vision
Lack of courage
Unwillingness to speak the unspeakable

To quote Proverbs 29:18, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

The Democrats haven't had a vision since they rode the coattails of Martin Luther King's dream half a century ago. For three generations, they've been running on the fumes of the New Deal, and this year even those faint and distant vestiges of vision and courage evaporated. Except for Bernie -- but again, he wasn't in the running. The Democrats have branded themselves as "we're not as bad as the other guys" and in 2016, this sorry-assed dogma just didn't hunt.

The one fundamental reason why the Democratic Party as currently configured will always betray the people is its unwillingness to speak about -- or even acknowledge -- the unspeakable. That's a word put into use by the noted Catholic monk Thomas Merton to describe the United States' secret government and policies following World War II that was more resonant with the recently-defeated Nazis than with the values of Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR. The term was later picked up in a book I consider the most pertinent, persuasive and definitive book about the Kennedy assassination, JFK And the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters, by James Douglass.

And speaking of the unspeakable, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the series that Trudy and I immersed ourselves in after the election, Oliver Stone's The Untold History of the United States, a gripping 12-hour documentary series that should be required in every high school classroom, and certainly for anyone who seeks "political climate change" and wonders why the old ways persist. In this documentary -- available through Netflix -- you'll see how the US defeated Nazi Germany and became "Not-See America", adopting a convenient but deadly "don't ask, don't tell policy" where we the people promise not to ask our government what it is doing to "protect" us and they promise not to tell us.

I encourage you to watch this series -- the whole of it -- with friends and family of all political persuasions, with your children and parents, and with your spiritual community. You will see how our ruling class missed opportunity after opportunity to create a world of peace and plenty for all. You'll see it with the 1944 Democratic convention where visionary Henry Wallace was nudged out for Vice President by the more malleable hack Harry S. Truman, you'll see it with the "business plot" to overthrow FDR in 1934 and replace his administration with a military coup (foiled by the very general they chose to lead it), and you'll see the missed opportunity to end the arms race initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev.

You will also see the one moment of amazing grace ... when John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev came to the brink of nuclear destruction in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and backed away. (You will also see how this development left the US Joint Chiefs of Staff FURIOUS because they missed their chance to nuke the USSR and destroy their weapons, even though it would have unleashed nuclear retaliation and millions would have died.)

It's a sad fact indeed when you consider the idealism of our Founders, and their determination to NOT become an empire, that in the 70 years since the end of World War II, our American military and its surrogates in Latin America, East Asia and the Middle East have been responsible for 20 to 30 million deaths.

It will make you angry, it will make you sad ... and as Swami says, "the truth shall upset you free."

If you are concerned that news will be censored under Donald Trump, no worries. Watch this series, and you'll have such a clear view of the "meta-story" that individual news items won't matter.

And speaking about news and the election...

If Real News Is Fake, Then Fake News Must Be Real -- Right?

The mainstream media -- which never misses an opportunity to miss the point -- has dubbed our current spiritual and political environment, "post-fact" and "post-truth". What this means, essentially, is that everyone now has permission to shed centuries of intellectual and moral development and go "fact-free". Reality is up for grabs, and "facts" are sticky only when they can be stuck to previously existing beliefs. Years ago, I stood incredulous as I heard someone say, "Well, it might be true, but I don't believe it."

Nowadays, that's how an entire segment of our population "thinks". The idea that facts only matter if they support what you agree with gives an entirely new dimension to the 1990's term "ditto-heads". But to focus only on the Trump voter's "dupidity" (willful ignorance and willingness to be duped) misses a very important point. The corporate state and media have willfully lied to the American public systematically and repeatedly since the end of World War II. If you have any doubt about that, I recommend another must-watch documentary, BBC's The Century of the Self, available for free on You Tube.

The focus of this 2005 4-part series is "the manufacture of consent", primarily examining the life and work of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew and "the father of public relations". Bernays was also the author of the book Propaganda and was a pioneer in manipulating the public mind.

When you're finished watching the Oliver Stone series, watch this one and you'll understand that "fake news" has been disguised as real news for years, and that much of what gets served up by mainstream media is smothered in "Bernays sauce." Into this space of well-earned mistrust and confusion, Trump and his gang were able to propagate misinformation, disinformation, and bold-faced lies, knowing their peeps would eagerly embrace anything that "sounded true" (i.e., conformed to their already-existing beliefs, prejudices and programming). Fact-checking? Hey, everybody knows those fact-checking sites are nothing but tools of the New World Order.

And so here we are, approaching the Day of Wreckening when we inaugurate something that reeks of the Old World Odor.

And the Good News Is...

If you've read this far (I know, this post is long ... it's taken me weeks to shorten it to this) you're likely wondering if there is any good news. At the beginning of this piece, I related the election of Donald Trump to our political evolution. It's important to remember that chaos is a natural precursor (or, as we prefer "pre-blesser") to evolution. If you're familiar with cymatics -- the relationship between sound vibration and the organization of particles -- you know that as sound frequencies get higher, the pattern of organization of the particles change from one geometric pattern to another, more complex one. If you watch the video in the link, you see that as the shift is taking place -- even if it's an "upshift" -- there is a chaotic pattern until the new arrangement is in place.

That's where we are today.

There's another widely-circulated idea that comes to mind: Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. And since the demise of the true American dream -- liberty, justice and equality -- isn't an option, nor is our demise as a species, I'm seeing these times as a chance to build the strength that will bring forth true and healthy "political climate change".

One final analogy that might be helpful.

About twenty years ago, I enrolled in a qigong class that involved an intense practice. We began by hitting ourselves in the solar plexus first with an open hand, then a fist, then a wooden block, and then a brick. Finally, after months of building "qi", we were ready for the two-person practice, which involved hitting one another as hard as we could in the solar plexus. You can imagine that many participants were apprehensive about hitting a much smaller individual, or being hit with full-fisted force by a larger one. Our instructor insured us that each blow we received would call forth our strength and our shield, and each blow we delivered would "light up" our partner. This proved to be true. No one was injured, and I can say from my own remarkable experiences in the wake of that training, my physical and energetic bodies were both transformed.

As we anticipate numerous blows to our sensibilities, to decency, to truth, and to the web of life itself, let's use these to call forth the evolutionary traits of love and community that will be needed to build that world we know is possible. While the election of Hillary Clinton might have allowed us to feel more comfortable in the short run, if we want human life on earth to be a "long-running show", we have to think about the long run.

Progressives have now been liberated from having to defend a "lesser evil". I predict that over the next four years, conservatives will have the same opportunity. And then together -- finally -- we will be free to work for the greater good.

Again, mock my words.

I look forward to this challenge -- and to the POST post-truth era.

Steve Bhaerman is the slightly-more-serious alter ego of cosmic comic Swami Beyondananda.