time for change

[Rootsie]

It's been quite a time. With this election, a number of realizations, about cynicism, arrogance, and words versus work. The paralysis engendered by my point of view about things awakened me to a more pragmatic reality, because it really was too much for a body to bear. I feel like I've grown up or something.

What attracted me to Rasta after all is said and done was not hope, but an expression of my despair. So it wasn't utopian so much as dystopian.

How do we expect that the world we want to see (and that every one of us deserves) will materialize? For me, it was the vague idea that everything would fall apart, clearing the way for some unspecified something (Jesus coming down? "The Revolution"?--what's the difference?) that would make all things balanced and good.

What I heard Obama and his wife say time and again is that, although it is understandable that ones like us have become furious and disengaged, this is simply not acceptable. I believe 'the time to move' that I always expected has indeed come, in a surprising form I could not have imagined. Frankly I am astonished at myself. I see the folly of my angry disengagement and my resolution is to find my work and do it and not wait for anything anymore.

It's not about ceasing the criticism, or abandoning my sense of how things are, but about engaging in the debate, about tolerating the idea that inevitable compromise is not collaboration with evil, or capitulating to it,  daring to see the world as it is, daring to dream a better one, and not expecting a whole lot after all is said and done. It is for each of us who care about such matters as justice and freedom and peace to get ourselves to work, without personal expectations or global ones either. This is how real stuff gets done. I think in the end this what it means that "the Kingdom will not come by expectation."

It is not about agreeing with Obama or any of that. It is about respect for the millions who aspire for a new day and expressed themselves by voting for the guy and joining in, rather than sitting bitching on the sidelines.

So I wrote this poem.

I wonder if others of my generation
Of a certain outsider persuasion
And political orientation
Find themselves, like me,
Midst unfolding epiphany
Entertaining thoughts so alien.

Ah the fury I have hurled
From my safe spot on the periphery
Among the other permanently disgruntled
Cassandra was the best face I could put on it
(At least my posterity would sing of me)

cynicism was the worst
with arrogance close behind
my fine mind’s eye blind

I am daughter to a man
Who at the age of 97 still longs to find welcome in a strange land
I read Malcolm X
Saw that he
And all other paradoxically pure products of America
Could belong to me
But that was about the best I could do
I resigned myself to alien-nation
Cultivated my righteous indignation
rejecting any thought of compromise
Calling it capitulation

Giving as little thought as possible
To how the work’s supposed to get done

I begin to understand my grief
How, like my father, I have felt orphaned
Beneath the fury a simple need to belong

The best thing about us is that we are everyone from everyplace
 In some way that we scarce understand
And evidenced by this election (is it me saying this???)
We embody the aspirations of every person on the earth
 This is nothing to be arrogant about
this confluence of history
should inspire humility
and a sense of grave responsibility

the reality has been decades of depravity
done in our name…it’s no wonder the wonks have become cynics,
others willfully oblivious, flashing our privilege
like badges of honor
these emblems of shame

so many of us undone either by despair
or by an apocalyptic idealism
that looks forward to the ruin of everything
as preface to a perfect world

right and left bump up in the dark

When I was young I looked around me at a loss
Imagining a time would come
And that we would know what to do

I choose now

the guy’s right to say
it’s not about him
it’s about a prodigal generation
putting its queer shoulder to the wheel
 using what we know to manifest fruits
instead of sniping from the sidelines

both my grandfathers were anarchists in Spain
and I smile thinking how I get  them all of a sudden
like most Spaniards they were down in the dirt realists
utopian visions not for them
it will not ever be okay
there will always be evils with which to contend
but today we act and work with hope
 and yet hopeless also 
just today we will do the hard work
of being good women and men
caring for our communities
amplifying the voices of the voiceless

not for justice like a flowing river
or righteousness like a mighty stream
but for the here the now the small decent gesture

one after another
and then who knows?

Hopeful, hopeless

It’s time for poets
Who revel in paradox



Better New Year to all,
Rootsiegal

[Rootsie]

Our funnyman Stephen Hawking says
Re:  matter and anti-matter
“If you meet your anti-partner
don’t touch or kiss
or you’ll both be obliterated
in a tremendous flash of light.”
This a caution all lovers should heed.
How does one recognize the anti-partner?
It’s a quantum crapshoot
And God plays dice indeed.

During the Big Bang
Undifferentiated energy
Gave birth to form.
How Biblical. The Creator as Divider.

If the symmetry were perfect
One-to-one
None of this
Would exist
We are the product of a broken symmetry
And as was, is, and ever shall be

It’s all just a little broken
Therein of course lies the beauty
How we try to piece the shards together

The first rule of Byzantine glass mosaic
Was reverence for light
___________

“Loving you
I become you…”
We seem to yearn for blinding  obliteration.
But in our cataclysmic collisions 
it is our own true selves we seek.

[discipleofmaat]

*******It is not about agreeing with Obama or any of that. It is about respect for the millions who aspire for a new day and expressed themselves by voting for the guy and joining in, rather than sitting bitching on the sidelines.*******

So there we have it?  We have overcome?

My how emphatically we acknowledge this act of voting which is nothing but buying into an empty, contrived, manipulated notion in the first place.

Just think about it for one second.  Look at all of the accolades for JUST voting instead of the actual calling for and action of truthful fundamental change.

How is this person elected to the presidency to 'change' the evil processes that empower and perpetuate the folly that is prevalent in every corner of the known world?  The problem is MALE SUPREMACY.  White/male supremacy is just the "summa cum laude" of male supremacy.  There still is inferiority complexes...there still is fear of annihilation...we have those in power worshiping ONLY that power...we still have ones who feel DIVINELY authorized to control, rule and dominate others.  That is the American/Imperialistic/Elitist way.  Is this president elect to change what the founders of this country believed in?

You mean to say that you wholeheartedly believe that somehow this illusional icon of choice will change or depower the structure?

If anyone I have ever witnessed, this Obama represents "the anti-KRST".  The reason I say that is because the entire circus is one of change or to be specific, egotistical/material "resurrection" from the depths we have been plunged in instead of FUNDAMENTAL moral and conscious analysis.

How does this elected official and this associated circus help us look into our hearts as Americans, black or white, and truly assess HOW the US imperial regime operates and the costs.

How does this elected official and this associated circus cause ones to EMPATHIZE with the atrocities that MUST be done in order to attain the natural resources that we gluttons consume?

A revolution or truthful change begins from within.  So far, it is obvious that this contrived hollywood production is about props and scenery.

There is ABSOLUTELY no change in the mindset or heartset of Americans except for the willingness to let a tan complexed person lead the way within the SAME BUSINESS AS USUAL.

In fact, NOW ones are absolved of any resistance by the fronting of complicit blacks (obama) and females (hillary).

The only thing that has changed is the FACE.
It is still a FARCE.

[Rootsie]

You are of course entitled to your opinion.  For me, it's not about putting faith in politicians. For me, it's about stopping putting up my hands asking 'what's to be done'? It's about doing. Speaking only for myself, I found that the point of view you express, and that I too have expressed many a time, has its own fallacies (namely, that 'they' are exquisitely organized, have a lock on the planet, and so on) and had tied me up in paralysis, when, face it, there are good people doing good things every day who are every bit as smart and in the know as you or me. Because they are not apocalyptic revolutionaries like I was, they are content to do what is in them to do, and not expect miracles. There are plenty of voices interrogating imperialism. They have not succumbed to cynicism and despair.

I don't think Obama is a phony, I don't think his wife is a phony, I don't think the election was rigged. THERE I've said it. Plus I think they know a lot of what we know. Maybe I'll have to eat those words. That's okay.

Nothing is solved, nothing is saved, nothing is healed. But I think there's a window. Maybe it's my personal window. But I think there are a lot of people like me who are feeling it's time to come in out of the cold and fight for the world we want. With little hope of success. Which is also okay.

Symbols are important. Symbols matter. But in the end, it's our good faith efforts that are going to matter. Nothing else. My endless spinning and endless furious critiques have been betrayals of people who are looking for relief from the madness being unleashed on them. If we know better, we must demonstrate it.

I'm sick of being on the outside screaming in. And speaking for myself, this is a whole lot easier than actually getting involved, risking my coolness, risking being called a sell-out or whatever. There are times for revolution. But using some nebulous idea about the need for revolution as an excuse for doing nothing?  For me, it's a pretty revolutionary thing to allow 'compromise' into my vocabulary, to actually look at history to see how things actually get done in this world, to contemplate putting my two cents in where I can.

It's not like I have forgotten all the things I know, or any of them. I'll tell you something. If the bastards have any intelligence, where the deep-cover operatives are is on the extreme left, fostering paranoia, paralysis, and arrogant cynicism.

So this is where I'm at. I'm not asking anybody for permission or trying to convince anybody of anything. This is about taking the guy at his word and bringing my best fruits forward. Maybe we'll be able to look back at this moment of history as the beginning of a turn-around. Maybe not.

I don't believe the great mass of people on this planet are just ignorant sheep. What this election clarified for me is the incredible yearning in people, some of them voters in the U.S. but by no means all, for decency and community. The horrors of these years, all of my adult life...I have never known different.

It’s sad and ridiculous that a dark-skinned black could not be where Obama is sitting. It’s absurd that the political discourse is so skewed that you can’t be elected president in this country unless you evince a great love for Israel. We have the opportunity now to engage these issues in context because of the very fact of Obama, the potency not of what he is perhaps, but of what he represents. I think he knows this.

Because we can't see absolute goodness descending on the earth should not stop us from working for better. Just better. I feel that my cynical take on everything has been incredibly arrogant, and talk about absolution…I put myself in an ideological position where action and hard dirty work are meaningless, where I could just sit back and watch the whole thing fall apart, with the self-satisfaction of feeling right. Layers and layers of privilege.

You are a black man. I have no right to lecture you about what you should do or not do, feel or not feel. I just know what I have to do, which is to gain a better sense of how stuff gets done, and do it. We need everyone’s voice right now. Rave on.

[three_sixty]

Rootsie.

From knowing you - you have ALWAYS been putting in the work to match the rhetoric - above and beyond what many others have. So I am wondering - what does your epiphany mean in relation to the work you put in? Is it a matter of more fully engaging areas which you thought were fruitless pursuits given your previous mindset(i.e. its all a sham, so why bother?)

[discipleofmaat]

Hey Rootsie, is it not fair to say that this Obama fever is but a neo-hippie fallacy like you spoke about a few years back?

http://www.rootsie.com/articles/070820032.html

-peace always

[Rootsie]

Hi 360.

I am exploring options from getting a degree that would put me in a policy arena to getting into local politics to getting a lot more serious about my writing. Right now I'm thinking the first two ideas are a way of avoiding the third.

Hi Disciple.

Honestly, I may be in the clouds of neo-hippie fantasy, but things feel clearer for me rather than more cloudy. All these years I've thought about what privileged whites should not do or can not do: my orientation is shifting to what we realistically and morally can and must do.

I wouldn't say 100 year-old black ladies in wheelchairs are indulging in neo-hippieism. You could argue that they're brainwashed. I would rather believe that a lot of people are intuiting a shift, and going with it.  In a male-supremacist world, things like intuition are severely devalued.

[discipleofmaat]

Greetings Rootsie:

I offer my words to display MY personal resistance to the popular "carnival" that everyone is having such grand ol' euphoric time with hope that either I may put into your midst a thought that may help you develop OR you may have a response that would help me develop.  Either/or is a win-win achievement.

I give thankhs for the opportunity to voice on your forum.

*******All these years I've thought about what privileged whites should not do or can not do: my orientation is shifting to what we realistically and morally can and must do.*******

That is fair and understood but my question is when and how does what you must do involve acknowledging and the tearing down the pillars that gave those whites their privileges in the first place?

To my knowledge, white privilege derives from the concept of there being a privilege ranking order sanctioned by God in the first place (hierarchy).   And this hierarchy posits a male in an authoritative pedestaled position instead of a communal encompassing relationship.  As long as that universe-view remains intact, how can there truly be a change or reversal?

It actually whitewashes the ills because if a moral wholesome NON-white person is placed in the figureheaded position, it must be OK.  (its like a rapist having a female defense attorney)

How does placing a black man in charge of white/male supremacy implementations trigger the resistance to said structure by whites...or blacks?

*******I wouldn't say 100 year-old black ladies in wheelchairs are indulging in neo-hippieism. You could argue that they're brainwashed.*******

Indeed but let us agree that the ATTITUDES behind the Obama phenomenon are WHOLESOME.  Let us make that clear.  Just as many white missionaries had prudent attitudes and wholesome intentions as the worldviews of indigenous people were being altered.

*******I would rather believe that a lot of people are intuiting a shift, and going with it*******

Of course there is a shift (psychologically) but as long as the ELEMENTAL ingredients of destruction and dissonance remain in place, how can the fruit contain anything different from the soils of the planting.

What real change is there if capitalism which needs classism which utilizes racism and sexism as pacification and placation for the middle ranks, still exists.  In fact, a black and female face now strengthens the illusion by making it appear less threatening compared to a white/male.

It is not white/male supremacy because the visual leader is a white male.  It is white/male supremacy because the implementations were initiated by AND benefit AND pedestal whiteness and maleness by whatever means.

Queen Victorian or Elizabethan England was still a white/male supremacist society.  Queen Hatsepshut Egypt was still a male supremacist society.
Chief Wilie Williams' LA Police Department was still an imperial/fascist police state entity.

*******In a male-supremacist world, things like intuition are severely devalued.*******

Well, let us sight that it is deemphasized for sure but it has ALWAYS been known and utilized.

Obama is like Christianity.  The spiritual instincts within us harmonize with the appearance and lip-service of those entities.  But the HISTORICAL and FACTUAL basis come up similarly false and destructive.

As you realize, the key is to seek and grasp our consciousness of self/truth.  Please tell me how Obama, as head of America for which it stands, would catalyze or indicate to the suffering masses, any form of self/conscious awakening?

No matter the president, it is still the EMPIRE of the Earth.

Were the artillery shells landing in Fallujah less painful or more steered away from civilians because we had a black female Secretary of State?

Were the Israelis softer/kinder to Palestinians during the time of Golda Meyer?

My argument is that Obama represents the PINNACLE of egotistical deception that will give the strength to OVERTAKE the entire globe.

CAPITALISM - CLASSISM - ECONOMIC MANIPULATION - NATURAL RESOURCE EXPLOITATION - GREED - GLUTTONY - WESTERN SOCIETAL ARROGANCE - MONOTHEISTIC SUPREMACY  - INDIGENOUS/PAGAN DEMONIZATION - NATURE TAMPERING/IMBALANCE...on and on...

How are ANY of these things to collapse because of the President-Elect of the United States of America?

Sharing the wealth means sharing the complicity.

__________________________________________

Rootsie, if I may say, you are displaying HUMANITY.  It is humane to WISH and WANT and HOPE and PRAY and HAVE FAITH for betterment and peace.  But we MUST have fundamental rooting out of cancers before we can call the world benign.

The malignancy of white/male supremacy is now even stronger by deception and the preying on the good-spirited wholesome energies of the masses.

-always

[Rootsie]

Maybe you could elaborate on your vision of 'collapse'.

[discipleofmaat]

Collapse: the erosion of the integrity of the support which causes a downfall.

What we will be apart of from Tuesday forward will NOT be collapse.  It will be galvanization.

In your opinion, in what way would this new chapter DIMINISH this white privilege you mention?

In what way would this new chapter cause CONSCIOUS CHANGE, not to mention active change in the implementations of maintaining a capitalistic regime?

It is plain and simple, this society/nation is dependent upon the exploitation of lowers.  That is how capitialism works.  There is no vanilla or sweet way to operate an empire other than to serve the higher tiers and to bleed the lower tiers.

We will still have hierarchy.
We will still have class.

The only possible result will be ones gaining a sense of resurrection from the economic death that has been placed upon us.  That way, we (most importantly, BLACKS) are on board and with minimal resistance as a smiling "son of an Afrikan prince" returns home to open arms as American bloodsucking corporate interests exploit the natural and human resources of Afrika.

He will get the Red Carpet.  Let us overstand that the red carpet ritual comes from when the conquering nation's emperor would walk a path (parade) littered with the bloodied dead and dying enemy's soldiers.

YES, we need to appear united.  What better way than to slip a "roofie" into the psyches of sleep sheep.

What better new age way of perpetuating white/male supremacy than by the faces of a BLACK and a FEMALE.

What better way to soften up the minds or Afrikans than to broadcast CNN and show hugging and hand-holding blacks and whites...crying 100 year old women...MLK and Obama portraits fused together...a BLACK MAN BEING CROWNED AS KING OF EARTH in living color for the world to behold.

What better way to appease someone than to give them what they want to see...themselves on top.  Once someone has bought into hierarchy, you can control them by their externalization of their own egos.

THE IMAGE OF OBAMA AS PINNACLE IS EUPHORIC FOR ALL DOWNPRESSED.

OBAMA for blacks
HILARY for women

By 2012, they will concoct a similar carrot for Latinos.

What has REALLY changed except public deception/perception of a false peace?


BLACK LIBERATION is liberation for ALL.  Please tell me what indicates this?  Even enthusiastic and Obama worshiping blacks cannot look you in the eye and state that Obama represents LIBERATION.  They just want the high of the drug,  They know it is an illusion.  Its just that truth does not hold much value when the ego dominates.

Its Aquarian new-age deception.

Pisces = age of external dictation and control
Aquarius = age of internal egotistical control.  You are ruled by the indoctrinated mindsets of the previous age.  No physical shackles needed.


Rose colored glasses only change perception, not reality.

 

[Rootsie]

I know what collapse means.

What I'm asking is how you envision that might play out in real life.

Capitalism in itself, as the idea that people have a natural right to the proceeds of the work of their own hands, is not bad. Wage slavery and monster capitalism, on the other hand, is.

Even in hunting-gathering societies, class and hierarchy are there to be seen, though in a much more humane form. 

What will diminish white privilege first is willingness to engage it.

The only way this new chapter can promote conscious change is for conscious people to engage and try to move things along.

You can talk about new-age hippie crap, but what about utopian idealism, the idea that at some unspecified point in the future 'it' will 'collapse' in some unspecified way and usher in a new heaven and new earth? Sounds pretty far out to me. Although I freely admit that for many years that was exactly where I was at. And in the meantime, what is to be done?

I think the best thing for people of good will to do is to get in there and change the discourse, change how the game is played. They can only do that if they're willing to get in there. The alternative is unacceptable. To me. I don't feel a need to convince you about that.

I actually think that after all these years of the right-wing media sowing fear and paralysis, it's pretty refreshing to see some very media-savvy people using it to sow a far more affirmative vision. Neither you nor I can foresee how this is going to play out.

I believe the oppressed people of this earth are a lot smarter than you give them credit for. We are way beyond the time when a mere 'sense of resurrection' will count for anything.

[starshyne]

In some ways, I may stand in the middle of what you both are saying. I feel ok with that. I have my opinions, but yet don't know much with certainty. Rootsie is tapping into a very important, basic thing in regards to what this is all about. There is indeed something just as whimsically Armageddon about waiting on an “apocalyptic collapse”. Even more so, a one-dimensional stance that “it is all a sham” actually gives power to the symbol you proclaim. To me, there is little difference than those who you sight as “obama worshipers” and yourself. You are just as frantic in proclaiming him the pinnacle of whatever. I don’t believe that…nor have I read Rootsie say that… and most of all I feel that there are many that feel the same way.
The end of supremacy comes in tangible work and yes, maybe boring, hard work. I mean look at all the Che memorabilia for ex…to be “down in the struggle” has come with its etiquette and fashion and sensationalization. I think that what Rootsie speaks of is actually addressing privilege… In this day and time, there is a privilege stance mirrored in the sensational revolutionary or all-star activist hippie with a blow horn chanting it’s all a setup. Most genuine work I have seen comes with little parade and fanfare… but is like lava circulating underground and erupting in spurts which may get mass attention do to the effects… but is only concerned in doing true to purpose in being a part of the natural force of the universe....rather than saying I know how the mystery of the universe works. 

Now to speak to the symbolism, I do see it. Yesterday’s ceremonies illustrated the ideas of what we have come to know as symbol-rich freemasonry that designed this nation. Biden’s whole speech was centered on the architecture of the location…he used the symbolism of the architecture to speak to the history of the US and the people whose vision built it, the puppeteers of a nation… Obama, slightly contradictory to Biden, spoke about the people standing between the monuments that are the real root of the US… I felt that this part of his speech was a response to Biden’s and as such,  I can’t help but feel it was an off-script statement. I do feel that Obama is not fully aware of his designed role in this and I think as he sees it fully… he will be assassinated and maybe that is the plan. I also can’t help but recall the Y2K celebration in DC and Clinton’s seemingly “out of left field speech” about a post-racial society (one of the last in his admin.). It seems that this now was priming for what was yet to come through the next Dem. Prez. But still, I know all I have to say is pure conjecture… just like Rootsie said we don’t know how this will all go.

Do we really need to? Is the power in one man or the ideals of the designers? Like Rootsie said … we can’t underestimate the intelligence and power of the people. Today, Obama is urging people to volunteer …to do real work in our society… I don’t think that is pretty curtains on the windows of the “illuminati master plan”. Instead I think that is a necessary move. Experience is a true life teacher.  Most of what I have learned that I find valuable has been through experiences. Now, I do know the double-edge of this… on the flip side of the experiences of volunteerism is the do-goodism…missionary vibes… which exactly points to the work everyone must do in engaging in the dialogue. Ones who see this as an ineffective demise to supremacy would seem to be concerned about what is going on in their backyard? What is the tangible work we should be doing?

What we do know… is where we are. The discussions should be about how we continue to work within this new structure… or outside of it? Is working outside the structure possible? Truly, we are tied in it no matter how much we hate it. I think it requires savvy and fully knowing you don’t have to compromise and being willing to engage ideas. Infiltrate the infiltrators if you so say.
 The work is there to be done like it has always been… it almost seems that the ones who think Obama a set-up are just as disabled as the ones they accuse because they give Obama the head position, give the power to the fever. We have to remain proactive rather than reactive. The course of work in dismantling supremacy thus far, cannot and should not be changed but furthered. Not everyone believes that we have arrived… actually I think the ones I encounter in my day to day tend to think the opposite. Sure this affects neo-liberal hippies and appears to be of their design. But how does this affect conservative or borderline conservatives/liberals? Have you had conversations with any?

I have found the real-everyday-work-dialogue changing, even slightly…Like “oh my, we are going to actually live up to diversity, we actually have to face those brown and black skinned people, what do we do?” The change Obama speaks about has been sort of ambiguous. I think this makes the ones I just spoke of uneasy and thus open to the directions people suggest change takes. I usually also don't tell people what to to do, but it requires ones like you, that share similar thoughts to be there saying what that change really means in dismantling supremacy. We have not arrived. Oakland, this New Years, broadcast it to the nation.

How do we work?… how do we utilize and further the dialogue rather than raving on symbols and set ups?  That doesn’t feed or free people. Self efficacy frees people. There is tangible every day ways we can impact. This may be the necessary step to further the sight of the ones you sight as being wrapped in the symbols of illusion, by in some way leaving the room open to hope and tangibly utilizing new opportunities to tap into social changes Obama has said he wants to see open up. I don’t think “change” was solely the part of the ploy to get him elected. That dialogue is on the table and it will stay there as long as people keep urging for a better way… this may be a necessary step for the pressure to be lifted from people and thus be in the position to sight the tentacles/implementations of supremacy.

[discipleofmaat]

OK guys point taken...sorry to spoil your buzzes.

BTW Rootsie, thanks for the opportunity to speak on your forum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqsT4xnKZPg

[three_sixty]

people have to be organized to affect change. other than that - it is empty rhetoric and it becomes a political tool preying on people's ineffectual "hopes" for change and places the burden of change on the symbolized "changer." i wouldn't say this is the sole plan/plot of the power structure though - as the interaction between the government and the governed is always a back and forth exchange, but many people have forgotten this. the level of consciousness and willingness to take steps in a better direction, the work on the ground is a responsiblity that is always on the people - there is not one example of meaningful change that benefits "the people" without the organization and groundwork of the people - this is how it works. government and vested interests will ALWAYS take advantage of a non-organized/lacadasical populace, that is its nature. i think it is up to "conscious" ones to recognize this and work recognizing this law regardless. the liberating thing about this recognition is that we realize how much power we DO have - something that "they" would have a lot harder time "governing" if more people realized it. and you watch how quick "they" try to contain the "change" when the "change" gets out of their hands. it is indeed a crisis of perception to a certain level. this is an avenue that needs to be fully explored.

i think the call for volunteerism is something that was in fact set in motion by the outgoing administration and i think it would be mis-informed to think that the incoming administration's calls for it have something to do with anything other than political expediency. we are going to NEED to do this more as things become "tighter" - we will NEED to recognize our resources amongst ourselves as the economy is changing. this DOES however open up a crucial space for us to recognize how much we can organize locally and make better, more active decisions about our lives and our communities. just as the bush administration opened people's eyes to the utter corruption of our system, the obama administration may open our eyes to our own power of not needing "them" to effect the change that we want.  an empire is a full time job, and EVEN with all their surveillance and obama's "black widow*"(btw - how f'd up is THAT name for a big brother operation?), etc. - they can't control all the people all the time.

http://www.truthout.org/010709M
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9VGZjBQHr0s/SRbkAVNUtoI/AAAAAAAACU4/D_V698VmEo8/s1600-h/BlackWidow.jpg

they - the dominating ideology, the "philosopher-kings" want to take the credit for change, that is why they frame this "evolution" in the language of their symbolism. that is why there are ritualized "events" that occur at pre-determined times which then crystalize as focal points for "change." we however are no less than the stars - we are no less than "them" no matter what ideology they hold onto and try to make us feel different. reality is not what they say it is!

[three_sixty]

http://counterpunch.org/libby01192009.html