Let There Be Light

At work recently, a colleague remarked, “ohhhh, the world is in disarray.” My immediate response was, “the world is fine.” Of course she spends some of her free time watching the doom and gloom cable news, which can bring anyone down.

Whether it’s the Faux News Channel, MSNBC or CNN, and other corporatist stations too numerous to mention, there’s a lot of propaganda in the media. And that’s far more real, and dangerous, than fake news. Sure, I grab the headlines in a quick swoop when appropriate, but the news organizations have been trumped by Agent Orange.

Anyway, the current occupant of the White House is not the cause of our Nation’s problems – he’s a symptom. What do you expect when 50 percent of the voting population chooses not to participate? It’s been said that people get the kind of democracy they deserve.

And the schism in the political system has been a long time coming. From the beginning, the political pendulum has been swinging back and forth, left, right, left, right, like a wrecking ball.

A Brief History
Of course, I wasn’t around for the American Civil War, how about you? That was nasty business no doubt, 620,000 dead Americans culminating with the martyrdom of Abraham Lincoln days after the war was over. And times are tough now?

Our prospects also looked pretty bleak in the 1960s between Vietnam, multiple assassinations (JFK, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK) and the cultural revolution, "Tune in, Turn On, Drop Out."

Let's not forget the AIDS crisis that emerged in the 1980s, 650,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, and there's still no cure. Meanwhile, things certainly have gone awry since 911, and the financial crisis was only a decade ago.

All things must pass.

In any event, do politicians have the answers? Does either party have the moral high ground? Is this truly a government “of the people, by the people, for the people?”

Trust yourself, I say.

Regardless, this nightly sturm und drang is so unnecessary.

The Country has been through political convolutions before, and we’ve survived many bad presidents, along with calamities, World Wars, epidemics, assassinations, natural disasters and economic collapses. In fact, the last one fucked me and millions of others, sideways. And then Sandy rolled in.

The funny thing about surviving a natural disaster is that it’s a lot like a bad trip, only without the hallucinogens…it lasts forever and day. My town has never been, and will never be, the same, nor will any of us who went through it. To paraphrase Nietzsche, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

So where was I? Oh yeah, the State of the Union.

People often draw an analogy between the U.S. and the Roman Empire before its demise, but perhaps the Nation today is more like Israel in the Book of Kings. After the civil war, the divided nation had many bad kings, and thousands of years later, Israel was reborn and continues to stand tall.

You have to admire the Jewish people, they are tuff muthas. Of course, that’s a politically incorrect thing to say in the era of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Depending on where one stands, BDS is either righteous or crypto, anti-Semitism. You decide.

But let me not digress.

Free Your Mind Instead
The point is this: let’s not forget about what’s right about America. Surely, the Nation has intractable social ills, but most of us are just trying to get by in life, regardless of the tribal warfare being engaged in by extremists on the left and the right, aided and abetted by CNN, FNC, and MSNBC.

And forming a more perfect union starts with the person in the mirror. There’s a lot of goodness to be found, if you look at it right. All the noise on the news and the cry of the electronic lynch mob on social media is like a wreck on the highway, fit for viewing by rubbernecks.

As for the world, look around at how capitalism, science and technology have made this a far safer, more prosperous and healthier place. And that’s not Pollyanna, because there remains human suffering aplenty.

Didn’t Buddha and Jesus start movements grounded in suffering, the 4 Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, forgive, love one another, respectively, and all that jazz?

Meanwhile, the planet will continue spinning around long after we’re gone. The universe is far more intelligent than we are.

So, perhaps everyone needs to take a step back and breathe. In the end, the only thing that matters is your family, your handful of friends (Facebook friends don’t count), and your faith, whatever that may be. Put those things first, and leave the rest.

Having survived plenty of darkness from within and without, I choose free will and plan to keep moving toward the light.

Hope to see you there.