Hopedance

by Steve Bhaerman

... I just finished reading a provocative book, The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis by Paul Levy. Taking a Jungian approach to the madness we've witnessed over the past half dozen years, Levy suggests that George W. Bush is the out picturing of our unacknowledged shadow, the nightmarish evil twin of the American Dream. Without getting into Levy's very interesting ideas about persistent “thought forms” in our collective unconscious, his main point is this: America is finally ready to see her own shadow. If these other issues such as global warming, environmental restoration, and finding non-lethal ways of resolving conflict are to be addressed — and if the United States is to play any kind of role in this global “up-wising” — the gateway to breakthrough involves we the people of America facing our complicity in America’s imperialist past and path.

The purpose of seeing how we’ve benefited from empire, and the value of facing the human cost of our consuming 25% of the world’s resources is not for some self-indulgent orgy of shame, blame, guilt or breast-beating. It’s quite simply so we take responsibility for ourselves and what our government has done in our name, and then take responsibility fordoing something else instead. During the eight-year run of the Clinton Administration we could comfortably imagine “globalization” as some benign force extending the benefits of unfettered consumption and resource-extraction to the vast masses of unenlightened. In actuality, it has helped turn the third world into the turd world. Thanks to George Bush we can now see the face of empire “without makeup.”

Not that acknowledging our participation and benefit should let Bush and Cheney off the hook. Quite the opposite. Just as any program for personal transformation must necessarily begin with telling the truth and facing the consequences, so America's "recovery” (in this case, recovering our core spiritual and political values) must begin by dismantling the toxic force we have allowed to install itself to “protect” us. As we approach the 43rd anniversary of the JFK assassination — and as a shocking BBC documentary suggests CIA participation in Bobby Kennedy’s murder — we would do well to face full on the tremendous opportunity George Bush has offered us. Only exposure will help the body politic metabolize the huge toxins we’ve been forced to swallow over the past half-century.

We cannot wait for the Democrats to bring charges or even investigate the illegal, immoral and unconstitutional activities of the Bush-Cheney regime. Any such hearing for truth and justice must arise from a growing awareness that employing our evildoers to fight their evildoers is a never-ending trap that our own “field” of human intelligence seems no longer willing to tolerate. If the recent election brought slim majorities for the Democrats in both houses, it also brought something far, far more important: Those who oppose the war in Iraq and the lies and manipulations that brought it about are in the overwhelming majority. It can no longer be deemed" unpatriotic” to speak up and speak out. So speak up and speak out we must.

Beneath the perpetrations of this administration and our misadventure in Iraq are long-unquestioned assumptions about the nature of human nature and the nature of the world. These beliefs — like originals in, social Darwinism, the inevitability of war and poverty, the belief in a growth-at-any-expense economy— are kept in place by our tacit agreement. They are like well-worn grooves, made more solid by the weight of inertia.

As we freely speak an alternative truth, and as we bring injustice to justice through organizations like the Citizens Impeachment Commission (of which I am proud to be a member), we stand as an example to the world of what spiritual and political maturity looks, feels and sounds like. The “irony curtain” has been parted, finally. It is now up to we the people to enlarge the opening, and help the rest of America —and ultimately the world — break through to a happier, healthier and wholier world.

Excerpted from The Evolution Has Begun! America’s Unarmed Forces Claim First Victory By Steve Bhaerman