Regeneration

We are here. It is 2012, the Final Year, according to the Mayan calendar, of this Magnum Annum; the end of history. Or not. I don't generally put much stock in such New-Age prophecies or astrological cycles, even though many of my friends do. It seems likely that all the prophetic speculation--all the astrological and apocalyptic fears and hopes--about 2012 will end up as empty and silly as the various "End of the World" or "Second Coming" or "Harmonic Convergence" or even "Y2K" hysterias of the past, and we will muddle our collective way on into 2013 right on schedule...some eminent people dying along the way, as always.

But then again, whether connected with astrological cycles or not, there does seem to be a quickening these days, a sense of things swirling toward a chaotic and increasingly unpredictable state throughout the world. The Glomart Economy is in a tailspin, and an inchoate, mass popular revolt is brewing worldwide--the "Occupy" movement--connected and reinforced by the Internet, against a political, military, and economic status quo that has clearly become dysfunctional, morally bankrupt, and depraved; the words of Bob Dylan spring to mind again and again:

"Come writers and critics who prophesize with you pen

Keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again,

And don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin

And there's no telling who that it's namin'...

For the losers now will be later to win,

For the times, they are a-changin'!"

Somehow, the keyword that keeps tugging on my consciousness these days is "regeneration." Not "revolution" (a word tainted with too much violent and repressive connotative baggage left over from the days of Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao), nor even "redemption" (since I do not think our once-great nation can be redeemed) but "regeneration" in the sense of a phoenix rising from the ashes. And as Octavia Butler mordantly suggests in her "Earthseed" verses from her powerful dystopic novel Parable of the Sower:

"“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.”

In short, we can no longer go back to what we once were as a nation. We are already too corrupt for that--the United States of America lost its soul--died--on that horrible day--December 12, 2000--when a corrupt and shamelessly partisan Supreme Court authorized the theft of an election by the criminal fascist Bush regime, and Congress was too cowardly to object. Since that day, we have become nothing but a zombie nation, murderously stalking the world while muttering empty platitudes about "freedom" and "democracy" that nobody else believes anymore...

And since the Great Hoax of 9/11, we have all been living out a nightmare of endless war and paranoia about "terrorists" based on a massive, consensual lie--an unchallenged, self-contradictory narrative that completely violates the known laws of physics, but that has nonetheless become the cornerstone--the enabling myth--of the so-called "Global War on Terror." So the America envisioned by Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and Roosevelt is dead and buried, while its zombie double, Glomart Fascist Amerika, the land of greed, ignorance, denial, despair, and lies, is doomed...and right now, they are rattling sabers at Iran (and vice versa) in the Strait of Hormuz, threatening thereby a nuclear holocaust that could engulf the whole planet.

Or not. Perhaps all the fist-shaking will pass, Obama's cool hand will prevail, and the leaders will find ways to save face and come to their senses, and we'll all muddle through, yet again. Let's hope. But one way or the other, "the Old Road is Rapidly Aging..." and so we all need to "get out of the new one if we can't lend a hand/for the times, they are a-changin'!"

For me, then, "Regeneration" is not of "the United States of America" per se, but of Thomas Paine's original vision--"the world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." If we must burn, literally or figuratively, in order to rise from the ashes, so be it. May I therefore become, in this new and epochal year of 2012, an agent of Regeneration--a seed of Gaian renewal among the ashes of the corrupt and degenerate old Glomart order. America is dead. And though Gaia herself is dying, may we Gaians of all nations arise! May the 99% awaken to our true nature as Gaians--as fellow citizens of the only living planet we will ever know!