Yesterday in the afternoon, ripples without crests
began the stirring. It did not arrive all of a sudden but a sense of what the
wind can do whispered sonic guises low and temperamental. I sat down listening
for the outside and the wind began her rise. I sat down inside on a windy day
in October in Australia. I was rather ready. We all expected a showdown of
sorts. I even went so far as to imagine the scene, all in the middle of a great
golden Bonanza set on horseback with complementary gun-smoke at the Ponderosa
theme park. And we all got an invite! The whole world. After all America’s such a long way from here
and it’s easy to see everything from afar as a flat pack you never get to
assemble properly. At times there’s that feeling you arrived to a film after
forgetting to bring three dimensional glasses, don’t you think? I even went so far as to savour the moment at
first. What’s not better than a great antipodes in point of view while a
raging, fight to the tooth and nail and down to the wire, kind of deliberation
blazes wild. I suppose, contextually speaking, it was perhaps always going to
feel this way. You know, all of it was brewing for so many long months and all
of it different to the politics of home where I live. Days upon days, upon
weeks, upon months of achingly expensive campaigning. It all seemed, in part, to have become a microcosm of war itself , in
all its seedy revolt and sad divisions. You know I expected a show down but I
never expected to feel so very sad.
The wind seemed to hear me too, on the roof turning
home into a child’s rattle, at the windows like blind memories escalating,
smudging the borders between music and noise. I love the wind – restorative and
an experience worth going far to see, as the naturalist W.H. Hudson, once suggested.
The wind also seemed to feel the depths of a tiny rectangle in my living room
where Hillary and Donald would fight to the mistral of a most fierce and rather
frightening battle and I have to say, in my lifetime, the most divided of all
political debates. I’m quite certain that kind of politics is not what the
world needs right now.I’m a woman-once a girl, many times privy to the
double standards my sisters (and brothers and others) have faced and fought
against in the road towards gender equality. I love history. I absolutely love
history. History is like the ultimate scholar. History has been there. History
knows. History has given us the keys to our future. History has taught us about
love and history has made a lot of mistakes. We need to listen to history.
History has opened us up to opportunity and choices. History has told us that women
do better, as all human beings do, where choices are available and free to
make, where shaming and blaming is removed from the dialogue and where decision
making is seen as an individually important and complex process with loving
arms at the ready. History has taught us that any person coming at politics
with fundamentalism and a “blanket rule” on deeply emotional and seriously
psychological issues surrounding a woman’s body, will cause harm within, what
is, in fact, a very socially irresponsible and forcibly religious
approach. If we are to go back in
history it is to see where this kind of doctrine suppressed women, had women’s
health placed at risk, had children born to a cruel fate (google F.A.S for a
start) where traditionally the bucked stopped at them and still does in fact!
History tells us that the rate at which young women are left as the primary
caregiver to an unplanned pregnancy (or even one that is planned!) is grossly
disproportionate to the rate at which a man takes hold of his responsibilities
in love and equal care. This is a fact. Until Donald Trump has conceived a
child, given birth, raised a child as a sole parent on the poverty line I do
not want to hear another word form him on this issue.I say this in the context of where the debate reached cyclone proportions.
The twister arrived for sure as though Dorothy was up on the top looking down
for a birds -eye view of a place much bigger than Kansas, building momentum and
funnelling this way and that through the Middle East. Yeah and if Dorothy had
of been there she would have realized her kind of displacement paled into
insignificance then. Sanctity of human life? Wowsers, tell that to the many
thousands upon thousands of human beings who have lost their loves, their life
force, their reason to be here on Earth, while a war rages in the belly of a
dogs guts, determined in the darkness of everything futile. And Mr Trump wants
to return with troupes ready for combat? What Trump seems not to understand is
that ISIS exists, partially as a consequence of young angry Iraqis renouncing
the intrusion of American forces into their country. So sending US troupes back, in the way he seemed
to be suggesting, will only again further inflame the situation, not to mention
his deamonizing of the Muslim faith. He will almost certainly make America and
it’s allies a greater target for Muslim extremism.
In the buffeting gale, the back and forth between a
woman who is already working in a related field of expertise, that being in
foreign policy as the Secretary of State to a man who isn’t, when pressed on
his feelings about Mr Putin the response seemed rather casual and congenial
where I myself began to cry on the lounge-room floor. I write from the
truest place without feeling over-bloated with sentiment. Did he forget? It
seemed to me Mr Trump was running into very dangerous territory here, not
realising the seriousness of Syria’s plight in which Russia supported the Assad
regime whose blanket bombing of Aleppo is causing a humanitarian disaster,
endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Remember this,
thousands of innocent civilians are trapped in this warzone. People are
starving, people are without electricity and water, people are mourning the
loss of life and the loss of love. No mention of human life and emotion and the
ache of loss was documented in these moments. It should have been!
I’m sure pitting Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton
served western economies very well. In his, to the very right alliances with the
gun lobby and christian pro lifer’s and border control extremists, it was clear
a media circus could prevail and bolster the coffers for those in the business
of owning the news. But It wasn’t in the best interests of peace. We need
peace. We need togetherness. Hillary speaks of this. She has also has the
experience from the community out to understand how to be a peacemaker.
Make America great again? Let’s think bigger than that
please. Let’s come together to find peaceful solutions from home to far and
wide and everywhere. All of us. It’s not an easy suggestion in a globalised
world, but it’s possible. It’s everyone’s job and we can help in our own ways
by practicing love, peacefulness, togetherness, understanding and inclusive
practice, by talking, by putting our weapons away and finding fair solutions.
We need to keep trying. Even Yoda makes mistakes. There is a try and it’s ours
for today and tomorrow. The answers are blowing in the wind. Let’s find them. NOW…
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