Obama is 100% defined by the political game. WITHIN this game, the jury is still out, but he seems to be desperately trying to make the best of a bad situation. That is to say, the FUNDAMENTAL political game rules have been defined by and for the elites and since he is the ultimate symbolic politician (the President) he must move within these lose/lose rules. Conversely, these same game rules absolutely guarantee an endless Greek God like existence for that less than one percent of America's parasitical elites.
It's as if he's stuck in a failed marriage, but since he loves his children, his only course is to make the best of a bad situation -- and Godspeed to his efforts.
Hence, the core challenge of America (and the entire planet!) is to GO BEYOND THE GAME RULES OF POLITICS. Politicians can still be pragmatic and useful, but only to the degree we return them to political "servants" of the will of the people, and not the bought and paid for puppets of the elites (also known as "The Beast").
To say it abstractly, we need a "paradigm shift" comparable to changing from geocentrism (the Earth is the center of everything) to at least heliocentrism (the Sun is the center of the solar system). Even better, we need to "quantum jump" (an equivalent image) like Darwin's Origin of the Species or Einstein's transcendental insights which left the bog of 19 Century physics and contractions to his two magnificent theories of relativity.
Forgive me, if I use an image I have used in earlier pieces, but our challenge is not merely to reshuffle the deck (of politics); rather we need to kick over the card table and leave the room. WE NEED A RADICALLY NEW MECHANISM OF SOCIAL CHANGE.
Politics, even at its best (which is never a threat to the Beast) is forever more part of the problem, than the solution. Indeed, even at is best, it is still simply running in place. Politics IS the status quo, not a medicine "for" the status quo. Remember the essence is fascism is status quo-ism, and the elites love to watch us gnawing on the bones and crusts they throw us. And how they must enjoy our pitiful delusion that politics is actually an expression of the will of the people.
So politics for pragmatics, but not for dealing with the ultimate challenge of civilization, i.e., DESTROYING THE BEAST (of mentally ill religious fanatics and/or the lunatic right wing fringe of every country on the Earth and/or UNIMAGINABLY rich elites, aka the Haves).
Be honest. Do you see any "microscopic" change in the Beast, even over the last several centuries? None, zip, zero, nada. The Beast is rapidly killing human civilization and even the human species, while we play this game of marbles called politics.
It's like we've got cancer or aids and we think we are substantively "treating it" with vitamin C, or drinking more milk, or (worst of all!) pretending its not there.
But the cancer or aides IS THERE and, to leave the image, it's been there for literally thousands of years. Call it "The Have’s", or The Beast, or the Rockefeller's, Rothschild’s, Murdoch's, and Paris Hilton's, or call it the God of the Earth. Yes, most of all call The Beast the God of the Earth because that says it to perfection.
And yet we suck our thumbs and shoot political paper bullets at the Beast. The insanity and futility of this almost "justifies" our peasant/peon/slave existence. Who was it who said a slave is someone who waits for someone else to free them. Or to paraphrase the words of the mystic J. Krishnamurti, politics AT ITS BEST is "decorating our cage".
Alas, the challenge here almost transcends being put into words, because there will always be that "slave conditioning" which keeps trying to hear it as just a new variation of "politics".
But it isn't. It's talking about a NEW DIMENSION, like the 4th dimension when compared to the familiar three of horizontal, vertical, and depth.
So what are we groping for? Is this a paradigm shift of consciousness? Almost certainly yes, but also almost certainly no, because without a corresponding dimensional change in "how we live", and "how we ACT", the inner transcendence will be betrayed.
Conversely, this can't be only some breakthrough of apolitical strategy, even though that too MUST be there.
Hence, it's clearly a both/and of a virtual "mystical transformation" all of a piece with radically new ways to manipulate the "fulcrums" of social transformation. Archimedes’s (probably the ultimate genius of the ancient Greek world) once said, "Give me a long enough lever, and I'll move the Earth".
That's what these radically new strategies would be: discovering the fulcrums for the levers to fundamentally "change human social existence".
This is seeing through a glass darkly, but surly we need to "go international" and use the internet a thousand times more effectively than we currently are.
Certain patterns of mental illness are characterized by variations of what Sigmund Freud called "the repetition compulsion". This is related to words like obsession and compulsion and it more or less means spending your life trying to solve impossible (and usually meaningless) problems.
For us, this means playing the political game endlessly, hoping that "somehow" this game will be Democracy in action. But it never, never is and never, never will be. It's our society-wide "repetition compulsion"; it's like those heartbreaking bears in zoo cages who keep walking and hurrying in circles, mindlessly thinking they will "eventually" find a way out back to the wilderness. What an agony it is to watch them; and what an agony it is to what US "trying to wash off blood with blood" -- in the infinitely wise words of an ancient Chinese Zen Master.
However, if a critical mass of us AT LEAST realize that politics endlessly recycles The Beast (i.e., less than one percent of the human race) while it endlessly stifles the potential and fundamentally enslaves the "working class" (still, probably the best way to say it), anything is possible. After all, seeing all the way through what NOT to do is often is equivalent to seeing "the way out". Plus it’s hard to be creative and affirming when your entire life (AND THE LIFE OF YOUR DESCENDANTS) has been reduced to being a blood bank for the vampire elites.
The Beast has to go. The Beast has to be destroyed. No more reshuffling the deck. No more pseudo compromise or "adjusting". This is all the way or nothing, because we have totally run out of time -- which is the second core realization in all of this. If we don't DESTROY THE BEAST with politics-transcending dynamics in the very near future, we're finished. The waterfall of human species extinction is already booming in the background.
Please, please remember that our time has completely run out! Basically, that means it’s now or never. ALL of this challenge falls on us. Everything (human Civilization, our species, and countless other species) will be past the point of no return in (what?) 4 to 5 years if we don’t transcend politics and create apolitical strategies to destroy the beast. We can do it. We have the intelligence, energy, and passion of literally billions of human beings, plus we have going ballistic electronic methodologies.
But do we have the will . . .
So is all this a voice crying in the wilderness? I hope not, God how I hope not.
ps: In Joseph Conrad’s’ magnificent novel, “Lord Jim”, the moment of truth was when Jim had to decide whether to “jump ship” or stay and deal with the chaos of an overwhelming storm. That’s us. Is the human species going to “jump ship” (i.e., keep escaping into politics) or radically deal with (i.e., DESTROY) The Beast? This is our species moment of truth. Perhaps the Universe is watching.
