September 1st, 2008

The Circus

Okay. Political junkie that I am, I find that I am simply unable to resist commenting on some of the latest events unfolding in the two-ring circus better known as, “American politics”.

1. John McCain’s selection of veep running mate. Um. . , what the heck? Sarah Palin from up Alaska way immediately struck me as kind of high-pitched and totally non-threatening to any male ego which might hope to tread the halls of government. Compared to the self-realized personal power of Hillary Clinton, the contrast between Republican and Democratic thinking was striking. The whole maneuver made me blink. A kind of, “Yes, that’s nice dear,” brand of allowed power which fits the old American Pie model of family where the wife stays home to bake cookies and drive the kids to soccer and remains happy to let her protective dominant husband make all the big decisions. –Which will no doubt project an appealing image to many voters, but seemed to me exactly the opposite message Hillary’s supporters were generally aiming for. Whatever.

2. Barak Obama is one of the best public orators I’ve ever seen or heard, and his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention made me think wistfully about how cool it would be to vote for him. I’d have a lot more confidence in his message, however, if his running mate wasn’t an avowed Zionist, which essentially means the game of world politics fully intends to stay locked on the path of self-destruction. (I should note that I am firmly of the view that Jews and Zionists are very different things, and that Zionism is stupendously dangerous for Jews and non-Jews alike, which I suspect is the whole idea).

3. I am routinely fatigued whenever I snap out of the siren song to remember that this whole political play is a giant contrivance designed to distract everybody on the planet from the real battle at hand, (that of evolving and incubating personal sovereignty and awareness so that nobody can control you. –So that all of the knee-jerk programs which dominate virtually every aspect of our lives but which so few of us are even aware exist in our own psyches, finally dissolve away so that we can start treating each other and our world with a bit of love and respect). –That, and the division of people into various warring parties is similarly designed to waste everybody’s energy.

Paradoxically, one of the foremost engines of social control, (that of taxation), seems with increasing likelihood to be one of the major catalysts which has a chance of cutting through these social barriers and give people the impetus to unite into a mode of thought which has a chance of taking us off the infernal treadmill. (I include oil dependency under the same umbrella as taxation; the money flows exactly the same way, from the pockets of the middle and lower classes into the pockets of the same handful of very wealthy white men). But will enough people actually blink up from that siren song and move to do something about this, or is it just another one of those doomed-to-be-ignored opportunities? I don’t know.

sigh.

But then, I’ve always been a bit of an optimistic dreamer. Here’s one of my favorite summations of the American tax story, (produced by the same fellow who was fascinated enough by the American money system to produce that neat Eddie Murphy film, “Trading Places”). I know, “Summation of the American tax story” sounds about as much fun to watch as staying indoors to do math homework, but it’s actually a thoroughly riveting film.

So that’s where my head is at the moment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am about three days late in drawing the latest episode of Stardrop. (I’ve been racing to get another project finished for a local newspaper, so my drawing energy has been divided.)

Cheers!