DREAM: There was an organized convention of some kind. It was in a fine dining room and the food was well prepared and delicious looking. The dream centered on the man who was president of the organization. He looked like Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the house. I had found what in the dream that it was a common thing for a man to have what was like a sealed pre-tomb. It contained the will and other desires of a man of prominence. It would be opened only after he had died. I had disrespectfully managed to unseal 'Newt's' pre-tomb. I had pulled out a colorful rock that filled in much of an exposed cavity in his sealed tomb. I came to him before the ceremonies began. I held up the rock asking if this looked like something that belonged to him? The look on his face was of a man whose deepest personal secret had been revealed. He did not deny where it had to have come from. He seemed to know I knew more about him than he wished and that this meant his time of power was over. I also asked someone else to drape a black velvet banner over his lectern signifying the death of this dangerous kind of immoral will to power.
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| Ancient Cave Likely Used As A Tomb |
It is as up to date now as the daily news but it is anchored in ancient archetype. The whole idea of a sealed tomb enclosing powerful secrets and precious colored rock is very archetypal. Our present day abuse of power is just a new version of an eternal archetype. Even Jesus is described as heroically entering the bowels of the earth to set things straight and of overcoming all kinds of political and social injustice in high places. So the dream brings us to our present experience of such need and solution.
I can only think it is speaking of a kind of illegitimate self serving power that is prominent in American politics, and that threatens to disturbingly shape America's future.( This is a true rational threat but I do not see how such ill-willed power can prevent consciousness raising legitimate power from having its present way with our cultural situation. That is my hope.) Such a grasped for illegitimate power gives its type of leader a kind of 'godlike' approval of themselves. I do not know Newt Gingrich. The dream is not about him personally but the kind of self aggrandizing power that his image represents in the dream. This kind of untoward power today is 'self righteous' and is often blatantly religious. It can be found in either major party but is more and more openly prevalent in parts of the so called 'conservative movement'. It is conservative in the sense that it seeks to keep America stuck to the past, including the shameful aspects of it's past. It often does not acknowledge these facts about our country and calls anyone who owns up to them unpatriotic. It claims that it is always seeking to be loyal to the 'founding fathers' and to the 'original documents' as if such historic resources do not have to be continually reassessed and interpreted by rational thoughtful present day people. This is simply a front for wanting the country to be one that favors the power structures, especially of white male men, of the pre-modern and modern eras.
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| Banjo Lesson by Henry O. Tanner |
This painting I think beautifully pictures the correct use of human power. The older man is seen as genuinely empowering the youngster. The one with power is not the center of what was happening but he recognized that it was the young boy who was. The only motive of the one with power was to do 'right' by the one he was to serve and empower. When such a sense of power is lost (in any and all levels of hierarchical structures) then its use becomes for self benefit rather than for the one(s) it is to serve. It becomes harmful and costly to all involved. It is a most subtle form of serious evil.
Much self serving political power claims for its authority conventional shallow minded popular Christianity. It would claim to use biblical documents in a similar way it professes to be faithfully using the national documents. Not realizing that all ancient documents , including scripture, must be reassessed and more thoroughly understood in the present than they ever have been in the historical past. Some present social issues that drive this self willed power the strongest is the desire to prevent the natural evolution of the practiced human rights of people of color, of modern immigrants, and of gay -lesbian people. A good number of congressmen of this leaning have lived together in a Washington D.C. Apartment called C-Street where they apparently fortify their unholy views of power with their version of Bible Study and Christian Fellowship. Several of the congressional 'marriage scandals' of recent notoriety have come from this group of men. These same men have used 'family values' as a major part of their appeal to their political base. ( I have no doubt that these men are sincere in their thought that they represent true Christian values. It just shows how 'unconscious' and hypocritical people in power can become without a serious self critical personal life and an open minded value system.) Anyone in a troubled marriage deserves the empathy of caring people. But when men have made their political career based on judging the personal moral lives of others, including those who have been unfaithful in marriage, it brings hypocrisy into sharp relief. This is the type of hypocrisy that Jesus so strongly warned religiously inclined people about.
This evil underbelly has become quite exposed in such power brokers' efforts to undermine the presidency of Obama. With only mild attempts to conceal racial motives they question the President's legal right to a be citizen much less to be President. This is through the continued questioning of Obama's legitimate birth place. A good number of republican congressmen refuse to tell their racist minded followers that such is absurd and is steeped in racist sentiment. Unfortunately, for the many healthy people living there, much of this thinking is rooted in the South. It seems that where slavery most took place and had such an immediate value in local economy and social status is the place where the seed of racism continues to be the strongest. But there are like-minded people no doubt in every part of the country.
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| Justice Sonia Sotomayor |
Some of these same congressmen used the Hispanic- American Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the supreme court by the president to show the same kind of nearly open racist viewpoint and disposition. Here, with the help of several radio talk show hosts, they actually (no doubt unconsciously) ended up charging Obama with reverse racism. The very expression of 'reverse racism' should be taken as veiled reaction of genuine racism. It is against anything that raises the fear that America will indeed, if she takes the moral road before her, eventually become a nation that is not dominantly white. This seems to be the ultimate fear that all of these actions and reactions is a futile effort to curtail.
Obama's recent response, which I see as an objective statement of 'reasonable' judgment has fueled this kind of flame. He said the police responded 'stupidly' to the Cambridge incident of the black man being arrested after only entering his own house. The man reacted with some rage at being arrested for only being in his home. To me this was clearly, though unintended and consciously only doing his job , an officer's action that was steeped in and under-girded by a system of unconscious racist judgment.
White Americans still have a huge difficulty having an understanding of what such frequent actions mean to people of color. For a black person to not react with some rage would be a further sign of how far we yet have to go before the 'color of skin' does not not affect how the law is carried out. It was very appropriate and positively symbolic for the president to have a 'beer moment' with the two involved and himself who had given such a pointed assessment of the situation. Only a white person or one who has bought into a prevailing kind of racism would not be sympathetic to and 'understand' the 'need' of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to react vociferously when treated as if he were a burglar.
This is the way that injustices that are being swept under the rug by powerful Politics must be reacted to if change and justice are to have their chance to happen. Humans have to speak up in ways that may appear to be 'over reactions.' There was no way the professor could have been a 'gentleman' about the situation and retain his own personal dignity and reputation as a teacher about the present nature of Racism in America. I doubt it was just chance that the police happened to make their mistake in this black man's home. Professor Gates was especially prepared to react with full human dignity just as Rosa Parks, in her own quiet way, once did on a Birmingham bus. I would guess this 'Gates incident' will go down in history as another turning point of raised consciousness regarding the receding of racism in the American legal system.
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| Professor Henry Louis Gates |
But at his very moment many white Americans do not come close to viewing this incident the way I have described it here. My guess is that most blacks would understand what I have said but know that you can only push justice so far in any given situation. It is sad that most white's are concluding that the President misspoke. That is the only way they can 'handle' it. He did not misspeak. He spoke a much needed rational judgment in the midst of a racist minded power structure. He spoke as not only a social leader but as an ethical leader as well. His words are another needed blow against the the kind of power structure that people like the central figure in the dream are determined to keep alive as their 'kind of America.' Jim Hibbett
