Feeding the Wolves 2008

It’s elections again. It’s another time, after four years, for us to elect a president. I have lived through the presidencies of 10 men. I have been able to vote since 1960, and, quite honestly, presidential campaigns have bored the hell out me. They have been so contrived—just what have been the differences? Very few. Until now. That includes the election of 1960 where John F. Kennedy faced off Richard M. Nixon.

Let me be clear about my biases. I am not one of those who revere the Kennedy mystique. I remember the “debates’ between Kennedy and Nixon where the two tried to outdo each other on who would be the greater asshole towards Cuba. Sure, like that little island constituted a threat to the United States. It was a contest between a coiffed hairdo and Hollywood good looks, on the one hand and five o’clock shadow and shifty eyes on the other. An assassin’s bullet and a legion of mythmakers have transformed an otherwise mediocre president into sainthood.

The presidential election of 2008 is different. I am so excited. My hope is rekindled. I feel the excitement that I have felt when I read about the election of 1860 – about the election of Abraham Lincoln. That was a time when the parties made a big difference and the minority Republican Party was the voice of the future. Then, the Republican Party was the voice of what was becoming – a new nation in birth based upon free labor and free men regardless of race “or previous condition of servitude.”

It didn’t start that way, in 1860, but that’s what it became after four years of bloody civil war. And at the helm of the Republican Party in 1860 was a man, a man who had risen on the frontier. He really had. He was self-taught. There was no privilege or wealth in his background. And there was integrity about him. There was wisdom in his humility. That’s what made Abraham Lincoln great.

“I claim not to have controlled events,” Lincoln wrote to a reporter. The reporter, in the middle of the Civil War, wrote to Lincoln to ask what it felt like to have controlled events. “I claim not to have controlled events. But confess plainly that events have controlled me.” In my view, without humility, “leadership” is pure ego and politics is an egoists’ playground.

Lincoln knew his own demons well enough – his deep, deep depressions. He faced the core of his own soul – his darkness – and owned it. He wasn’t one to see evil outside of himself, although he came to detest the institution of slavery. Seems like Lincoln really didn’t judge people personally and built a cabinet of people, many of whom hated his guts.

Then, the Republican Party, led by a poor Illinois lawyer, represented the exciting unknown. It represented a leap into the future. It represented the force of freedom.

How times do change! Now, the Republican Party puts up an old man with old ideas. This old man stands against a man who personifies the American dream – a man who so clearly represents real change and hope as he has experienced it in his own life. You would think that this election would be a slam dunk.

Just think. On one side is an old man who has grown up in privilege and has married into inestimable wealth – a man who has come from three generations of warriors. War is in his blood, you might say. That’s all he seems to know, and he fairly froths when he speaks of war or bombing or endless occupation. His main claim to fame is having survived a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam – a country that neither he nor the United States had any business being in to begin with.

This is the candidate of the Republican Party – a party that has faithfully created and supported the policies of the administration of George W. Bush over the past eight years. It’s the party that has overseen an invasion and occupation of another country based on a tissue of lies. Even the Nazis had as coherent an argument for the invasion of Poland in 1939 as the United States’ “reasons” for the invasion of Iraq. And, of course, a good chunk of the Democratic Party crumbled, too.

This old man represents what has become the party of Robin Hood in reverse. It has robbed from the poor and given to the rich. Never since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century has government policy so loyally served the greed of the few. At least the robber barons of the Gilded Age built something. J.P. Morgan consolidated banking and railroads. Our present robber barons are just robbers – gangsters in suits who swindle poor people out of their homes, oil barons whose profits leap over 30 percent in one year while prices soar, pharmaceutical bigwigs who oversee skyrocketing prices while health coverage declines, and so on…and so on…and so on.

How can this be a contest? This John McCain is the candidate of the party that has bled us dry. The cost of this war was half a trillion dollars at four o’clock on September 14 and going up at the rate of a million dollars every five minutes. This McCain represents a party that has outsourced war itself, paying mercenaries ten times more than enlisted soldiers taking the same risks.Billions paid in a war that benefits only the investors in it.

All this while schools, health care, roads, and quality of life itself dissolve before our eyes. How can this be a contest? This McCain reflects the self-interest of perhaps one percent of the entire population…or maybe less.

On the other side is a candidate who, like Lincoln, comes from poor beginnings. Barack Obama is a man whose mother married a black man; whose father married a white woman. Here is a man brought up by a single parent. Through his own hard work this man achieved a scholarship to Columbia University, Harvard, and became the first African-American to become editor of the Harvard Law Review. This is the stuff of novels. Here is a man who is literate and intelligent, a man who writes his own speeches. Here is a man who speaks to us as if we, too, are intelligent. Here is a man who trusts us to look at the issues. What a change! Here is a man who chose to use his legal skills and training to help folks on the south side of Chicago. He could have made millions as a corporate lawyer, especially at that time when Wall Street wanted to look like it was an “equal opportunity employer.” Here is a candidate who opposed the US invasion of Iraq from the beginning. Sure, he wasn’t in the Senate then, but opposition to the Iraq invasion was a very unpopular opinion at that time.

Here is a man who is calling for universal health care coverage. Here is a man calling for funds to rebuild our infrastructure. Here is someone calling for returning the taxes on the very wealthy that were cut during the past eight years. Here is a man who has spelled out the beginning of policies that would increase the quality of life for, and express the self-interest of, 99 percent of the country. It would seem that at least 90 percent of the population would support the candidacy of Barack Obama. There are no shades of difference here between the candidates – there is a Grand Canyon.

What is going on? To me, what is going on is a crisis of consciousness. What is going on is the manipulation of our own unconsciousness.

There is an old Cherokee tale that keeps coming back to me these days. An old grandfather is telling his grandson that there is a tumultuous fight going on inside of him. “It is a massive fight,” the old man said, “between two wolves, two wolves inside me. One is hateful. He is angry, judgmental, righteous, blameful, envious, suspicious, greedy, arrogant, full of self-pity, guilty. The other is lovely and loving. He is accepting, joyous, peaceful, filled with humility, kind, giving, compassionate, trusting, generous, and truthful.”

The grandfather paused. “The same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person, too.”

The boy thought about this for a moment and then asked. “Grandfather, which wolf will win?”

The old man answered simply, “The one I feed.”

More and more this election campaign has become a matter of feeding the wolves. Feeding the wolves of fear and anger has been part of the Republican strategy at least since the pioneer slimemaster, Lee Atwater, dragged out the Willie Horton ad campaign to defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Jon Stewart, commenting on the Republican national nominating convention four years ago showed film clips with the speakers repeating “terror” and “terrorism” so many times that it became an hypnotic mantra.

We all have the wolves. We all have the struggle inside of us. We all have our dark and our light side, our unaware and our aware, our bestial and our divine. That is what makes us human. As soon as we project our darkness outside of ourselves we give ourselves permission to act without compassion and without sensitivity. Witness the Nazis and the Jews. Witness the demonization of Arabs today. It is significant that in this election campaign Barack Obama has consistently appealed to our higher selves. He has consistently reminded us that power lies in the people. This comes from his experience as a community organizer, not from some glib speechwriter. He has told us again and again that we can make things happen.

The Republicans have responded. The speech by the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, derided all of this. Before cheering crowds, the Republican vice-presidential candidate exhorted Americans to obey their worst impulses. It was “us” and “them” yet again. “Us” didn’t care about the rest of the world except that it constituted a threat. “Us” had no place in our minds or hearts for those who held other views, led other lifestyles—or were different. This voice of the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska was a voice from a dark cave, echoing with fear and cloaked in that last refuge of scoundrels – patriotism.

We all have anger. I have noticed how easy it is for me to roar into rage when I read the latest distortions and outright lies perpetrated by the slime artists in the shadow of the RNC. And yet, am I not being manipulated by the very same forces that I oppose? We all have fear.

I hear good people say that they are terrified about the outcome of this election. I have good and courageous folks tell me that they will leave the country if the old man from Arizona is elected president. One of these, my oldest friend and a brilliant artist, once told me that we cannot be creative from a space of fear. Are we not being manipulated by the very forces that we oppose?

We all have envy and, that flip side of envy, superiority. How many times have I heard good people speak of the stupidity of the American people? Who are we and why do we separate ourselves? Why do we let ourselves be separated? Are we not being manipulated by the very forces that we oppose?

So much of the social and political discussion of the past eight years has been dominated by the Bush administration and its spin masters. Even our great American majority has defined itself as against this administration. Against. Against. Against. In defining ourselves as “against” we are defining ourselves by that which we oppose. Are we not being manipulated by the very forces we oppose?

This is a time of action, not reaction. Let the reactionaries react. And Barack Obama has chosen to be at the head of a movement that is much larger than he is. My guess is that, like Lincoln, he has the humility and intelligence to understand and act upon this. This election campaign is not about Barack Obama. It is not about just how pretty the Republican VP candidate is. Is about a sea change that is happening and Obama has tuned into it. Certainly he is a politician. So was Lincoln.

No one has a monopoly on awareness. No one is a fountain of consciousness. Yet these times we live in have provided stark contrasts of darkness and light. In such times awareness can blossom. At this time we cannot lose. Polls, pundits and a rancid media cannot turn turds into gold.

Perhaps for the first time in American history, the consciousness of the individual is a potent political force. It is not for “others” to become aware. It is for all of us, individually and together, to recognize the wolves that live inside of us, and we have the opportunity to choose our higher selves. People, we people, can take charge of our lives.

How rare it is when the issue of consciousness becomes national. It happens at times of crisis. And, as the Chinese word for crisis (wei-chi) implies there is both danger and opportunity at such times.

The nation is going through a dark night of the soul. Such journeys lead to consciousness. Such consciousness leads to light, freedom, and empowerment. We are all part of this journey. Let us rejoice!