Know Your Candidate and Know Yourself

The US midterm elections are behind us now except for a few that were too close to call. Did the candidate that you supported win? I hope so. Have you ever voted for someone who was elected and discovered after a time that they were not what you expected them to be? Unfortunately, many people lie and cheat when they want something badly. Nowadays they feel little guilt or remorse for this because it is acceptable character in some circles and even expected by some others. Another problem that we have is that many voters will pick a candidate to support based on one ideal that the person has put out there which has little to do with whether or not the candidate is a sound and reasonable person who is capable of doing the job that he/she is running for and more to do with their promise to do away with an influence that people find personally objectionable. This is a selfish and lame reason to do anything, but it is an acceptable one for a person of one dimensional thought. Once you allow yourself to get caught up in a fear and hate based mentality you are not capable of making choices other than selfish ones. So, the rest of us carry the burden of trying to elect someone who is sincere and focused in their beliefs and has some sort of proven record to support the claims that they make regarding how to repair a broken society. But even if we think we know a person to be reasonable and true to form in their decisions it is still possible that they are lying through their teeth. Since you cannot be sure of anyone until they prove that they are what they say, you take an uneducated guess most of the time. Unless you know Astrology.

In two years, we will have another general election for the Presidency. God only knows who will be running for that office this time. Many will throw their hats into the ring and the BS will be flying for many months before we actually know who the final contenders will be. I actually expect to be disappointed in who will make it to the finals. This is not cynicism on my part. It is just facing the reality that my point of view is unique among Americans and what I see as someone who truly means to bring change to a fallen society has different aspects and criteria from the majority point of view. Since I became old enough to vote I have seen few people enter the White House that I had any faith in to make a real difference. The way that we conduct elections and politics here is not conducive to bringing in anyone that I could really believe in. The one exception to that is Bernie Sanders.

I truly believe that Bernie could have won in 2016 and in 2020. But he was sabotaged by his own party both times because reform is not what they want. Maintaining the status quo is. Bernie made an excellent showing in both primaries, and though I do not always agree with everything that he says and does (I usually do, though) I have studied his natal chart and it is evident from knowing what he was brought into this world with that he is true to himself. I have watched and listened to him since I first became aware of him politically and he has never wavered in what he presents to us as what is needed here. I cannot say that about any other career politician that I have ever seen.

I have heard people who actually like Bernie say things like, “He is just not everyone’s cup of tea.” and “He doesn’t show enough of himself personally. He only talks about the issues.” These people are showing the shallowest points of view regarding Bernie. It is not surprising that they can only skim the surface. If you don’t know his inborn nature you will likely misjudge him, as you will with anyone. In 2016 and in 2020 I wrote about Bernie on this blog. He is a Virgo. Do you know anything about Virgos? Probably not. So, I will tell you this as something to ponder upon.

In the 1960’s there was a tv series called “Dragnet” starring Jack Webb who played the character Sgt. Joe Friday. He was a no-nonsense police officer who was famous for saying the line, “Just the facts, ma’am.” That is pretty much how a Virgo operates. They are precise and have little time for or interest in side issues and telling the world about their personal lives. It has nothing to do with “the price of potatoes” or the fact that America is in the outhouse, so in Virgo’s view it has no bearing on “the facts, ma’am.” If being focused and direct is not something that you like or understand then you will never “get” someone like Bernie. To truly know a Virgo, you would have to make the effort to be their friend. They mostly do not have any burning desire to tell their story. If you prefer the more “stand out” types or the folksy “regular guy” types there is a reason for that and you are entitled to your opinion, but the problems that we have now will not be solved by anyone who craves attention and love, and needs a constant ego boost. Nor can they be solved by the phony “I’m just like you” types.  Anyone who cannot set aside ego and transcend the need for admiration cannot be effective when we are in such dire circumstances. I have heard people say many times that we need a president who will run this country like a business. We had that kind of leader for four years and we will be trying to untangle the mess that was made in those years for many more years to come. High profits, competition, and the need for worship from people are traits for the entertainment industry and private businesses. We aren’t making a movie here or trying to sell yachts. The entire world is in crisis and like in any family in crisis it will take an adult who can set aside their personal ego to get down to the real business of keeping the family together and disregarding what the neighbors think. I have seen a few politicians who could do that but they are in a minority.

I have considered writing a book or a series of posts here about the Presidents that we have had in the last 30 or so years by drawing up their natal charts and comparing what traits they were born with and what they actually accomplished when they were in office. It might be quite an eye opener of a read. I do think that it would be a troubling read. So many of us have no idea what we were meant to be like. Our world has evolved in ways that make knowing our true selves difficult in the extreme. Most people are doomed to fail in the endeavor because of capitalism. It takes an Aries-like determination on our parts to even make the attempt but it could be made a little less painful for us if we had parents and teachers who believe that this is an essential goal. If you have that in your life, count your blessings.

Before the next election, take some time to find out when the candidates were born. Look on the internet for an Astrology website that can calculate a chart on their birthdates. This is a very elementary way of doing it and I would not normally recommend it, but you will do far worse in trying to understand what a person is about if you rely on what they say or rely on news that cannot be trusted because it isn’t news, it is profit driven entertainment. You may be greatly surprised by what you learn. While you are there, take a look at your own birth information. The revelation of what you brought with you into this world can be felt on a soul level when you see it. It can also be vehemently denied if you have never been allowed to express it. But a staunch denial is extremely telling in itself. Take what you learn and use it to the best of your ability. It may change your life.

Seen But Not Heard

The term, “Children should be seen and not heard” is something that I was told frequently as a child. Many times, when I entered a room where people would be conversing about who knows what, this was said to me if I tried to participate in the conversation. Oddly enough, it was never my parents who said this to me. It was always my older sister, though my mother never contradicted her. I only had to be told this a few times before I stopped trying to engage in their socializing.

My sister was always snotty and condescending in her interactions with me and that didn’t stop until she got married. After that, she mellowed a bit, but not much. She told me once after we had both become adults that she was sorry that she had been so hateful to me when we were growing up. She cried as she admitted that she failed at being the “big sister” and how she could have and should have been kinder and more supportive, and as the older sibling she should have been there for me and been more caring. It is a fact that she never was but as a child I just saw it as normal behavior on her part. She was a mean-spirited person and that was just the sister card that I drew, but that didn’t make her cruelty hurt any less. I truly did not know what to say to her after her admitting that she was unkind, but it seemed to me that her admission was pretty irrelevant by then. I responded by brushing it off somewhat and chalking it up to kids will be kids, but mostly I just wondered “what the hell brought this on?”

Actor, Ian McKellen said in an interview once that his older sister was the same way, refusing to let him play with her and her friends and hurting his feelings constantly when they were children. He said that he forgave her and she grew up to be a lovely person. That is wonderful, but this was not the case for my sister. She became tolerable - if I didn’t have to be around her very much. So, I wasn’t.

This is the way that I used to feel about politics and social injustice. As long as I could stay out of the fallout from political and social inequality, I did. It is what it is, was the view I tried to take on it. Even though I experienced more than my share of abuse, misogyny, and unfair treatment, I worked around it as there was little else that I thought I could do. It was less troubling than trying to analyze the why of it, but when I began to see people in politics and local government that I knew gain power and authority and use that power to disenfranchise those least capable of fighting the tyranny I began to see things differently. Few things get your attention as quickly as working with the poor and being the poor, and I did both. It was around this time that the Universe came calling with influences that were too compelling to ignore as well.

It is much too easy to believe that charities will solve the problems that exist in this country. Former President George W. Bush tried to start a movement toward expecting churches and charities to take care of the needs of the people and therefore shift the responsibility of rampant poverty away from the government being obliged to do something about it. This was very popular in many states who quickly started dropping or cutting existing help programs for the people. To this day, many of those programs have not been reinstated and many more have been lost since then. What these lame-brains don’t “get” is that charitable giving cannot “fix” a problem that is rooted in a society that sets us up to fail so that capitalism can prevail at every turn, as profit is always the bottom line with “big sister”. It is designed to lift them up as they keep us down. It isn’t an accident that poverty exists. It is intentionally built in to the system. They cannot maintain their exalted status without taking us to the cleaners.

I saw recently that billionaire Jeff Bezos gave singer Dolly Parton 100 million dollars in recognition of her charitable work. What Ms. Parton has done as a philanthropist is definitely worthy of noting, but I am appalled that a billionaire would give money to a millionaire when Mr. Bezos could never be bothered to recognize the efforts of thousands of Amazon employees who once worked for him and made it possible for him to become a multi-billionaire, while they received inadequate salaries, intolerable working conditions, few if any Covid protections, and many were fired or penalized for daring to try to unionize. Charitable giving sounds very admirable on the surface, but deduct the salaries and administrative costs for operating said charities from the amount given to them and see how much of the money actually goes to the cause. Then realize how much of a tax deduction the donors receive for their generosity. Who really wins here? Not the Amazon workers or anyone else in this country who must survive on substandard wages which are considered acceptable by far too many people. 100 million dollars could make a substantial difference in the lives of a great many people if it was distributed to the citizens fairly. Charity would not be necessary in a world where classism and favoritism did not exist.

For all the things that our government does that never solve the problems of poverty and inequality, they aren’t responsible for how employers treat the people who work for them or how unequally resources are distributed and sold to consumers. They are however, complicit in perpetuating the problems.

Just like my Mother never stopped my sister from bullying me. She would just sit there and allow her to exclude and belittle me, and wouldn’t make eye contact with me while it was happening. This is how our government reacts. They can see the effects of not paying a living wage and ignoring the difficulties of the people but they do not intervene to stop it. So, the “big sister” employers continue to bully and abuse the “little sister” employees as long as the “parent” government says by saying nothing that it is acceptable to be this way. So many things are learned by the employees when they are treated as underlings and 50% of it results in depressed, burned out, and defeated workers with the other 50% becoming angry and aggressive toward everyone except the very people who are responsible for the injustice. We are a culture that admires and aspires to be like the wealthy capitalists who gorge themselves on what little resources that the people have. Anytime that people can manage to elevate their status to a higher level they many times forget where they came from and are just so proud of their achievements that they never look back because this proves that they have always been worthy of their new status, and the people who never get there just don’t deserve it.

Giving back to the processes that have helped us achieve a better situation should be as normal as breathing when you understand that no one makes it to the top by themselves. I believe that this is the place where Dolly Parton’s charitable giving comes from and I commend her for that, but being that she is a wealthy person now, I find it difficult to believe that she needs a benefactor like Jeff Bezos to continue doing what she does. The biggest kindness that anyone can do is to raise the standard of living for all of us with a living wage, healthcare for everyone, and a fair say in what happens in our world. Little can be done by a society that lives from hand to mouth and lives in fear of never having enough to get by on. We have been seen but are not being heard as to what will resolve the multitude of problems that we have. It is extremely easy to dismiss us as just unworthy because God didn’t see fit to bless us like he blessed them. We didn’t choose a lucrative career path or we just aren’t smart enough to do the jobs that garner a higher income. There are hundreds of excuses for why we are just unfortunate people but the only true reasons are greed and elitism, which are actually glorified and admired traits by many.

Our “big sister” capitalist employers are rarely held accountable for their crimes and abuses of the people. Our “parent” government refuses to be bothered with the system that never stops being thoughtless and lacking in empathy. Why should they? Toughen up “little sisters” because we have earned the right to lord over you by virtue of our superior status. You will be “seen” as a resource and nothing more. You will not be “heard” because your protestations of unfair treatment are irrelevant.  Breaking this cycle is possible if the “parent” government calls a halt to it, but few of them are inclined to do so.

Trickledown economics does not work. They know this already but they feel no responsibility for changing the prevailing warped mentality that exists in the world. Too many of us also feel that they are probably right about us not deserving better.

“Big sister” may grow up and learn to do better if there are enough voices out there to reveal the real cost to society as a whole when dis-ease and a simmering resentment toward them breeds a breakdown in the culture that has had a devastating effect on everyone. An apology down the road means little when the basic behavior stays the same. Crime, hate, loss of respect for others, and a perpetuation of egotistical and status seeking behavior that we see in profit driven pseudo role models becomes the norm in all areas of society. A set of values that disregards people as being people has evolved into what we are reaping on a massive scale right now in this country. This is the legacy of a “Me First!” country and family dynamic.

The United States is very much like a highly dysfunctional family that has many secrets, faults, and delusions which they continuously sweep under the rug and blame others for the fact that the rug is now too lumpy to walk on. We have arrived at this point in time by them being too arrogant and guilty of ludicrous choices to backtrack and repair the damage. The children must lead us out of this because the representative parents and the older siblings will not budge if we don’t make some noise and barge into the room with a determination to be heard. Many times, it truly is a child that can lead to a truth that was unnoticed before. The child may be an adult now but when people are used to not listening to them it is often necessary to cause a commotion to get attention. The hard part is getting a seat at the table with the big people. You won’t get an invitation but you have the power to be heard on social media and many other forums that were never available to the generations that came before you. To assume that your expressions have no worth in the eyes of the ruling class is an easy assumption to make but remember that they have made some major screw ups from where they sit right now that look pretty damn dumb to the rest of us. Ridiculous statements and insane comments have come out of their mouths on national television. To say nothing gets you nothing because it will be assumed that you either agree with what they have given us or you agree with their assessment that you have no right to be heard.

Say something. Give them a shake up, because you are very tired of the shake down that they keep giving to you.

On one occasion when my sister was spouting off to me I unexpectedly pushed over the chair that she was sitting in and she slammed into the wall. I got reprimanded severely for it by my parents but it was worth getting in to trouble for because the shocked look on her face when she hit the wall was priceless. She picked her battles a little more carefully with me after that and I felt a little more empowered after showing her that I had a limit to how much crap I would take from her. We have never really been able to become friends in this life but I have never felt guilt or regret about that. It was a necessary break from a dysfunctional relationship. She had to go, and so does Capitalism.

"An End To Need and The Politics Of Greed."

 -from the Tears For Fears song Sowing The Seeds of Love

In the late 1990’s my cousin won $175k in the Florida Lottery from a scratch off ticket. She and her husband were a young married couple who lived very modestly in three rooms of her parent’s house which had been converted into an apartment. After collecting her winnings, they were very smart and frugal with the money. This was a time when their money went a lot further than it would now. They were able to buy and furnish their own home, and decided that they could now afford to start a family. I was so happy for them.

Something like this should happen for every young adult. To receive enough money to start your life and establish a secure base before you have to face the many adult struggles to come would most likely keep you from having to compromise so much of who and what you are as a person in trying to attain a sense of security. While the US spends a great deal of money to support other countries with their individual issues, people young and old here could use a grant in a comparable amount to jump start their lives again now when loss is and has been for some time the only thing that we see on the horizon for us. But it would not be enough to just give the money/resources to the people and expect that to stabilize them. You would also have to call a halt to the capitalist/corporate invasion that would immediately follow the distribution with their hands out raising prices and withholding the necessary goods and services that we need to make sure that they profit enormously from what the people receive, rendering it impossible to benefit from the help as well as they ought to.

Author and Journalist, Chris Hedges said in a speech once how the money our government gave to US banks in 2008 after the housing debacle could have been used to help and support the American people by establishing a national health care system, giving all citizens a basic income and offering tuition free college plus many other systemic changes that would make a stronger society for a fraction of what they gave to bail out the rich. Why they never understand that stronger citizens make this a stronger nation makes absolutely no sense. When there are 1500 vacant properties in San Francisco for every 1 homeless person in that city it is ludicrous that anyone should ever be homeless here. I am told that the situation is very much the same in New York City, Toronto, Canada, and many other places.

It is only greed and ignorant public policies that make something like this possible. So how do we change the selfish and incompetent policies toward our people? Some would tell you that only public protest on a large scale would change it, but I truly do not believe that it has to come to civil unrest or civil war. What we really need is a change in prevailing thought and government representatives who can put ego aside and understand that we have been breeding fear and ignorance in this country for far too long. A few representatives have already come to that realization but they are in the extreme minority.

This country needs to be re-educated in the basic decencies of human rights and the benefits of strengthening the people who live here. It isn’t rocket science. It is only coming to understand that each country is a family and how you manage the family has to be for the benefit of the entirety. You would not feed and house a few of your family members in luxury and throw the others out to starve and die. In the 1970’s tv miniseries Centennial, this actually was shown to be the way the Arapaho Indians dealt with a woman in the tribe who had lost her husband. In their culture this was considered to be the best way for the entire tribe to survive without having to care for individuals who were deemed to have no more worth once the family patriarch had passed on. The children were taken in by others in the tribe as they assumed they might still have some worth in the future. This is basically what we have allowed to happen in America. It would seem that it doesn’t happen here if you don’t look very closely, but our policies toward humans who don’t look like they can produce wealth or create a façade of superiority are being allowed to live on the streets and in dangerous homeless shelters. Many have children with them. Many others, such as immigrants are put in to virtual prisons rather than try to place them somewhere safe and help them establish a decent life. We are not being taught or learning not to act in inhumane ways anymore.

Who will write a new Bible for the 21st century? Who will write the primer for the processes that will bring us out of the cesspool that we have created for ourselves? The Holy Bible was written centuries ago as a guide for balanced living - at least the New Testament was. Much of the Old Testament is a telling of history and the prevailing laws at the time. What we are experiencing now requires updated thought and laws that can be applied today in a world with a much different mentality. Who are the Scribes and Prophets in modern times with the knowledge and the expertise to advise and reach our people with a message of what needs to be done and how we can accomplish it?

It could not be written by one person. There would need to be many writers, just as it was for the Bible. Experts from many different fields would need to collaborate to assemble volumes on psychology, economics, civics and political structure, history, and sociology. It is a tall order but we have gone beyond the simple answers on how to restructure into a workable society. Thousands of books have already been written on these subjects, but separately and individually they are not capable of speaking to the masses as a whole. A Netflix movie dramatizing the information would also be a tremendous help. Distorted values are already out there and making a mockery of all that doesn’t suit selfish purposes.

The Bible has never been embraced by the entire world, but it has resonated with enough people to make a huge difference in how we came out of dark times to do better. Many people have forgotten or discarded the principles laid out there. Hence, the need for an updated system of thought and action is sorely needed. Can such a book go viral again as the Bible did? I believe that it can.

Most of the struggles that we have are born out of doing our damnedest to avoid fixing anything and, as any neglected house would, it is coming apart at the seams. Will it take a deity coming down to earth and separating the good from the bad as the Bible says to call a halt to the tragedy that we have become? Will the makers of chaos and inequality have to be cast into another dimension such as a hell to save us, or can we as thinking human beings make it so on our own?

At a time when some Americans are frantically doing their best (actually, their worst) to eradicate books that they object to on the grounds that their little darlings are troubled and being corrupted by truth telling regarding whitewashed history and alternative thinking, we desperately need a new and updated accounting of what it will take to break down the walls that we have built in to our society to divide us into a class system that is choking the life out of America. I don’t think that we need more of the news that we are in the crapper here. If you are paying attention, you have already figured that out.  Now that the truth is out there as far as what we have destroyed, there needs to be a step by step guide as to how we can fix up “this old house” and make it livable. We are at the point where you either bring in the wrecking ball and level the place to the ground or you bring in a Bob Vila and some contractors to assess the damaged structure and draw up the plan for remaking the house. I see a lot of “home inspectors” who are telling us that the house is no longer inhabitable but I see very few who are proffering a real set of blueprints for starting construction. In the film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,  Tina Turner sang a song called We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) during the end credits of the film. In the lyrics, she sings, “We don’t need another hero. We don’t need to know the way home. All we need is life beyond Thunderdome.”  If you have never seen this film or the precursor to it, Mad Max, I would recommend that you do so because you will see how a society that does not give a damn about its citizens can evolve into something so terrible that the people become savages fighting for every scrap of resources and decency that they are being denied. At the time that these films were made, it may have looked like pure fiction and an impossibility for us, but look around you now. We need a life beyond what we have created here. And we must have leadership that will help us bring it to pass. When you realize that there is a hole in the roof you cannot just sit there and say, “Yeah, there’s a hole in the roof.” Somebody has to get up and get a bucket, because the rain is coming in! And we are drowning in the deluge.

***

I would like to include here a thank you to Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, Tears For Fears, for calling attention to the many problems that have plagued humanity as far back as the 1980’s in their songs such as the one I cited above. We may have been listening but I wonder how many of us took the messages to heart? One of my favorite songs of theirs was called, Change.  In the lyrics, they say, “When it’s all too late, you can change.”  Too often, this is the case. Pray that it isn’t now. With their music to remind us, it may not be. Listen to them again, and remember how to care.