Ding Dong! The King Is Dead!

"But we have to verify it legally to see...If "he" is morally, ethic'lly, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead." Wizard of Oz, Munchkins

(My apologies to lyricist, Harold Arlen, for altering the "she" to "he" but it is hard to improve on perfection when extrapolating the wicked witch's death in the Wizard of Oz and relating it to what is happening on today's world political, economic front.)

This song has been running in my head ever since the stalemate 2000 U.S. presidential election of Gore vs. Bush.  That is a long time to have an "earworm" but it was apparent to me as I sat glued to the TV watching all the players act their parts that what was really at stake was not who was to preside over the United States for the next four years but whether or not the prevailing paradigm of the old white king was to survive.  I watched the opening act of the staggering death scene as the old white courtiers, James Baker and Warren Christopher, presented the case for their respective candidate and realized that regardless of the issues, they both served the old white king model that the world has languished under for way too long.  While the rhetoric varied, the power structure was the same - the ruling elites would continue to gain and the rest of us would continue to serve.  This time however during the courtly proceedings, I noticed that the majesty of the court was tawdry and thread worn and we, the people, were weary of the same old, same old.  The fact that this scene was being played out in the first presidential election of the new century made it all the more significant to me.  A new day was dawning.

In the thirteen years since that election, I have seen only evidence that confirms my original assessment.  After King George ruled for 8 years, an African American king ascended the throne.  While still a male, the white part of the equation had finally shattered.  One more fatal blow to the old king.  Economic upheavals, wars and meltdowns have occurred as the king continues to stagger mortally wounded across the stage relying on old parlor tricks to keep us distracted as our country and the rest of the world falters under a system that no longer works.  For it is not just the gender or ethnicity of the king that is in rigor mortis but the entire system that he presides over: a system that uses might as right; a system that exists to serve the elites at the expense of the rest of humanity; a system that exploits the environment for temporary financial gain; a system that promotes "phantom wealth - money disconnected from the production or possession of anything of real power" over "real wealth from real resources to meet real needs."*  It is broken; it does not work; it is not sustainable. unstable economy

"Wake up - sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed,"*** Munchkin land, the wicked king is dead!  The illusion that has kept this system in play for so long has been exposed.  Scarcity is not the problem; greed is.  And our fear keeps us marching in place. Truly, there is enough to go around if we all decide to move beyond our fear, and decide to connect, cooperate, collaborate AND SHARE.  "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"**  So rejoice Munchkin land: "This is a day of independence for all the Munchkins and their descendants."***The wicked old king is dead and is soon to make an exit.  And you thought as you watched the 4th of July fireworks that Independence Day had happened in 1776.

As with all deaths, there is messy scary stuff that lies ahead and needs to be cleaned up before we can move forward unencumbered by the old model.  That brings up yet another "earworm" of mine.  "If there is somethin' strange in your neighborhood, Who you gonna call (ghostbusters.) If it's something weird and it don't look good, Who you gonna call (ghostbusters)"**** (Love this connection - the movie, Ghostbusters was released in 1984 and George Orwell's book of the same name is one of the hottest reads around now that Edward Snowden has confirmed that Big Brother really does listen in.)  So, who are we really gonna call to clean up this mess?  Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis in their hazmat suits with their flamethrowers to get rid of the ghosts that continue to haunt us?  Or is it time that we don our own hazmat suits and dig deeply into our own psyches to rid ourselves of the ghosts of systems of thinking past and our ungrounded fear in the boogie man?  By this time in reading these blogs, you know where to find your fears - they are where the lemons occur in your life.

The old king is mortally wounded like the Fisher King; he cannot and will not recover.  To continue with the old system of "Empire" thinking (bigger is better, Wall Street generated pseudo wealth) rather than a sustainable Earth Community (smaller, localized Main Street real-wealth economy)* will not revive the king.  He is dead.  We need to evolve past that paradigm.  It no longer works and to continue avoiding that fact will guarantee total collapse.  

The future lies in such radical thinking as producing only environmentally friendly products and services that serve actual real needs instead of wasting our precious resources on artificially contrived wants.  It is time to return to Adam Smith's vision "of local-market economies populated by small entrepreneurs, artisans, and family farmers with strong community roots, engaged in producing and exchanging goods and services to meet the needs of themselves and their neighbors."* Interestingly, the "father of modern economics" would not find pleasure in having his name attached to this modern form of capitalism.  He was opposed to "corporate monopolies and those who use their wealth and power in ways that harm others."* 

In 2004 as the old king lay mortally wounded, Mark Kurlansky's book, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World, was published.  He provides detailed accounts of the various dissident movements around the world that happened that year from the Chicago riots at the Democratic National Convention to the Paris riots, the Tet Offensive, the Prague spring and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.  In this global conflagration, the people of the world were fed up with the established order and disgusted with authoritarianism.  They were tired of the old white king and in riots all over the globe were serving him notice. It was the year that the world sounded his death knell. Kurlansky writes, this was the year that Walter Cronkite, the white TV grandfather, came to understand that "television was playing an important part not only in reporting of events, but in the shaping of them.  Increasingly, around the world, public demonstrations were being staged...for television."   Danny Cohn-Bendit of France said of these times: "We met through television, seeing pictures of each other on television.  We did not have a relationship with each other, but we had a relationship with what our imagination produced from seeing pictures of each other." 

In the years that have followed since the beginning of the tolling of the bell, the world stage has hosted a parade of conservative leaders who have tried without success to take us back to the nostalgic world of pre-1968 revolutions, where "Leave it to Beaver" skipped to school knowing that Ward was industriously at work and June was at home in her pearls simonizing everything in sight.  It has not worked, nor should it have.  We cannot go back; we must go forward.  What happened in 1968 as Kurlansky postulates is that a global village was born - one where everyone gets to be heard and seen.  Television was the medium to birth it but not sustain it because of the nature of its transitory flickering images and its limited ability to truly connect people.  As Cohn-Bendit said, "We did not have a relationship with each other."  Today, the technology that brings the world to each of our doorsteps does connect us instantly.  It is time to recapture the "sense of hope" that was Kurlansky's objective in writing of that pivotal year.  He postulates that the idealism that marked 1968 lives on today: "all over the world people know that they are not powerless..."

The question for each of us is "Has the answer blown away in the wind?" or are we at a point of history where we are ready to take the responsibility for ourselves and move beyond the old paradigm of the court of power, elites and toadyism that has kept us enslaved for so long.  For you see, we are our own jailers and the key that keeps us locked up is our fear.  

To those who were born in the optimism of post WWII and who came of age during the turbulent 60s, I say put on your hazmat suits for we are the toxic waste generation.  The task of cleaning up the spoils of the old court age falls to us.  Why else would Mother Nature have made sure there was such a glut of us born during those years but to ensure that there would be enough of us left at this stage to move forward?  We have the vision of  where we have been, who we are at this point and where we need to go.  

The answer, my friend has not blown away in the wind. Ironically, it was given to us at the end of that year of global unrest - the pictures of Earth from a lunar orbit that were taken in December 1968.  Astronaut Michael Collins put them in perspective for us: "an Earth as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied."

As catchy as the two "earworms" of the "Wicked Witch is Dead" and the "Ghostbusters" theme are, it is time that we all implant a new "earworm" - support local/ Main Street, not Wall Street - in our brains.  It may not be as sexy as the other two but it is essential if we are to survive.  In the event, you think I exaggerate, do an Internet search for "devaluation of the dollar" and watch some of the YouTubes that come up.  The party is over and as is the case with all good parties, it is now time to clean up.

Ding Dong! the King is Dead! That system is broken.  Local Lives!  Together, we can build strong inclusive communities for all.



 In case you need an example of the old white king mentality(more for me and less for you):
http://money.msn.com/now/post--charles-koch-dollar34000-puts-you-in-the-top-1percent


*Agenda for a New Economy, From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, David C. Korten
**Mark 8:36 King James Bible
*** Wizard of Oz
**** Ghostbuster