Standstill

I guess that I should finish up with the politics stuff. The race is incredibly close and anything could happen and whatever happens we are going to be miserable for the next four years. Or somebody is. Perhaps it would be better if Romney won, the repubs were so damn nasty and intransigent from day one of their defeat last time, vowing to obstruct and ultimately doing a great job of it. The Boehner/McConnell shuffle. The right couldn't bear ceding power so they mucked things up as good as they could.

They say that Obama was divisive but my recollection is that he didn't start the class war, he just helped bring it to a few people's attention. The other side did. And they have been winning most of the battles for several decades or at least since Reagan's tax law change.

We are at a standstill and it's no way to run a republic. Smack evenly divided. The nation waits with bated breath and the knowledge that like last time, if things get too close, the Supreme Court will step in and stop the vote count for the good of the nation and award the whole thing to Mitt. It has happened before. Get ready and don't be shocked. Of course karma and payback is a bitch and the dems will put the brakes on too when they get the chance. Heading for the fiscal cliff, or is it the mayan apocalypse?

Perfectly even is a terrible condition in this world. Symmetry is the bane of good composition, the golden section veering more towards thirds or .618 to 1. In paintings, evenly divided panels tend to fall apart in a visual sense.

In politics of course, it is even worse.

The ancient sage Fu Hsi brought us the divination oracle, the i ching. The i ching, a taoist and confucian book of wisdom, has some interesting text concerning times of standstill.

This hexagram is the opposite of the preceding one. Heaven is above, drawing farther and farther away, while the earth below sinks farther into the depths. The creative powers are not in relation. It is a time of standstill and decline. This hexagram is linked with the seventh month (August-September), when the year has passed its zenith and autumnal decay is setting in. 

 THE JUDGMENT

 STANDSTILL. Evil people do not further
 The perseverance of the superior man.
 The great departs; the small approaches.

Heaven and earth are out of communion and all things are benumbed. What 
is above has no relation to what is below, and on earth confusion and 
disorder prevail. The dark power is within, the light power is without. 
Weakness is within, harshness without. Within are the inferior, and 
without are the superior. The way of inferior people is in ascent; the way of 
superior people is on the decline. But the superior people do not allow 
themselves to be turned from their principles. If the possibility of exerting 
influence is closed to them, they nevertheless remain faithful to their 
principles and withdraw into seclusion.

 THE IMAGE

 Heaven and earth do not unite:
 The image of STANDSTILL.
 Thus the superior man falls back upon his inner worth 
 In order to escape the difficulties.
 He does not permit himself to be honored with revenue.

When, owing to the influence of inferior men, mutual mistrust prevails in 
public life, fruitful activity is rendered impossible, because the fundaments 
are wrong. Therefore the superior man knows what he must do under such 
circumstances; he does not allow himself to be tempted by dazzling offers to 
take part in public activities. This would only expose him to danger, since he 
cannot assent to the meanness of the others. He therefore hides his worth 
and withdraws into seclusion.

The two principal forces in taoism are heaven (chien) and earth (kun), the elementary trigrams of this hexagram, standstill. When heaven is below the earth, we have the hexagram #11, Tai, Peace. When heaven, whose natural direction is upward, is moving away from earth, we have the unfortunate and precarious position of standstill. The two sides are simply not communicating.

Charles Krauthammer, a brilliant psychiatrist turned democrat turned republican operative, was on O'Reilly last night and I was listening in the car. He had the temerity to say that Obama was the most partisan president in the last 50 years, with the reasoning that not one Republican voted for Obamacare. Hey Charles, name one law of Obama's that the House Republicans did vote for? The aim from the start, as Senator Mitch McConnell said, was to make the muslim from Kenya a one term president. And they were very effective in their thwarting. Boehner has just announced that he still won't flex on the revenue side, even if the President is re-elected.

Four more years of gridlock. Or we can vote for the other guy and rend and destroy entitlements and the safety net. Perhaps a dose of tough love might help the children, poor and the elderly get their miserable little act together. Romney can then "harvest" whatever's left of everything. Smite the apostates, outlaw contraception and  bomb whoever's available, all the while drilling our way back to, if not energy independence, at least major ducats in a few choice contributors pockets. Sunny Day.

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Anybody catch this one? Kansas conservatives are after poor Brandon Whipple because he doesn't have children. Heck, poor Brandon and his wife are trying to have them!