Category: Society & culture

Money doesn’t buy everything

Hopefully today marks a turning point in American politics. Of course there have been many in just over 70 days since the Trump government was elected and most of them…not good. Today was different.

I could point to the seemingly endless ways Trump is trying to upend democracy and the rule of law, or the callous and arrogant way he is dealing with [former] allies, or the cutting of foreign aid that saved lives, including the lives of children in poverty stricken nations that rely on American dollars in life and death situations.

Or we could discuss the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who were, and will be, tossed aside on the scrap heap by DOGE, mocked and ridiculed at the maniacal chainsaw wielding, clown show, put on by Trump mega donor and oligarch Elon Musk who just happens to make billions off taxpayer funded, government contracts. The irony is deep and rich indeed.

Just last week we all witnessed incredible and unprecedented security breaches by Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Security Advisor Mike Walz who posted strike plans on commercial app Signal hours before the attack, putting pilots and field agents in grave danger.

Perhaps threats to invade neighbours and sovereign countries, abandon Ukraine and Europe or make Taiwan pay for defence against behemoth China is all in a day’s work for this current US government…constant drama, headlines, fear mongering…all in the short span of just over two months.

But today was different. Today was a turning point when we witnessed voters disregard Maga populist rhetoric and the lure of millions of dollars, to cast their ballot for the candidate who couldn’t be bought and send a powerful message to the oligarchs that democracy is not for sale. In Wisconsin, state Supreme Court judge Susan Crawford won her election against Brad Schimel in a race awash with big money donations that shattered spending records.

This included Elon Musk’s donation amounting to $20 million to Schimel and his attempts to repeat his 2024 election ‘lottery’, a thinly disguised attempt to ‘buy’ a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. Why?

According to the New Yorker Musk’s company Tesla filed an application with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to open four dealerships in the state. The State denied the application due to a law which bars car manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. “A week before Musk first posted about the race, Tesla filed a suit challenging the law.”

Just before the election Musk appeared at a rally for Schimel, appearing in a triangular cheese shaped hat, apparently invincible, sure that his status as the richest man in the world (apparently), meant he could do anything he wanted with impunity. He was attempting the unthinkable, trying to buy a state Supreme Court seat seemingly to influence his own affairs.

However the electorate had other plans. In unprecedented voter turnout, the Liberal leaning judge Susan Crawford won election despite Musk’s money and influence. The voter turnout was so strong, they ran out of ballots at one point.

”Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,‘’ Crawford said in her victory speech. ‘’And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale,” judge Crawford said.

Wisconsin, a swing state, also sent a message, loud and clear, to the Trump government which has been surrounded by Musk and big money since election day: hands off our democracy.

It’s the tip of the iceberg of course. Money in politics is the norm regardless of Musk…indeed every country has its oligarchs closely aligned with governing power. Nevertheless today in Wisconsin marked a shift and showed a glimpse of awareness that populism is often the oligarchy revving up the masses only to profit themselves off the people they’ve conned.

Let’s hope this is the start of something big, a groundswell that enlightens and inspires rather than disappoints and deflates. Democracy depends on those willing to vote for it.

Overplaying their hand

The poll released this week by the Washington Post may surprise some who are drawn to the high numbers that support authoritarian moves by the incoming president. They would be wrong to focus only on this…what I saw was something different.

The poll results surprised me, not because there was hardcore support for the incoming president’s more fascist-like proposals like investigating his political rivals (40%), rather, I was heartened by the lines drawn in the sand by a majority of Americans.

Unpacking the poll, we learn that 42% support using the US military to deport undocumented immigrants, 54% oppose it. That the figure supporting it is so high demonstrates why the incoming president’s campaign was so successful; he constantly hammered and demonised immigrants on the campaign trail and has done so from the time he descended the faux, gold coloured escalator at Trump Tower in 2016. He knows how to plumb the depths of human bigotry.

However sanctioning the use of the military on American soil is a very dangerous precedent. At least a majority of those polled realise this and would oppose this move. Others who see the reality of US soldiers arresting immigrants might reassess their positions. If it can be done to the undocumented, then how long before those same soldiers come for you?

Worryingly, 38% of respondents thought he should go after his political rivals, yet 60%, a good majority of Americans opposed this move. Here we begin to see the lines that Americans are willing to cross, or not.

The results on pardons for Jan 6th offenders (he too faced charges for his role in the attempted insurrection), was clearly another red line with 66% of citizens against the pardons. If inaugurated, I wonder if the incoming president will proceed with this threat. Early in his term, this would create a perception of criminality and that, combined with a failing economy, would likely hinder the remainder of his term like a bad apple on a bough. There’s no defying gravity once the rot sets in.

Respondents were strongly opposed to using police force against protestors (72%) and overwhelmingly against putting reporters in jail for stories unfavourable to the incoming president (88%). It seems there are some places even the majority of his own MAGA supporters won’t go.

There has been much soul searching since the election by Americans feeling shame such a man – a convicted felon – and previously facing multiple indictments for Jan 6th and for taking classified documents and obstructing their return, could be re-elected a second time. That the majority oppose his worst authoritarian tendencies is something that we can all ‘cling onto’ as we watch the tide undoubtedly turn on the incoming president.

I posted a video this week urging viewers to be open to all possibilities and the unexpected. Life can do that…the incoming president is precariously placed at this time, and in coming months, if he’s inaugurated. We should take nothing for granted in such times of global conflict, foreign governments interfering in democratic elections, highly partisan politics, and the rise of the oligarchy with their own agendas and plenty of cash to see they’re enacted.

The WaPo poll is, therefore, somewhat comforting. No majority supports any of the incoming president’s fascist proposals of retribution and cruelty. Perhaps all they wanted was the ‘billionaire’ celebrity to bring back the good times and deliver them from their financial and class struggles. They won’t get this of course, and so we must traverse this well worn pathway a second time while others learn the hard way they’ve been conned again by the ‘would be’ president.

The Collective rises

I have spent the last few days listening to international authors talk about our world…as it once was and as it is now. We reflected on the rapid changes we have undergone this century and, particularly, in the last decade or so. The constant theme in all the discussions, was the impact of social media.

Yesterday a panel asked the question: Do books still matter?

Authors agreed they did, however all spoke of the downgrade in discourse, language and literacy and the rise of populism resulting from ‘social media’. Prominent UK author Alexander McCall Smith gave a fictitious example in a recent short story of the taxi driver who was reasonable and pleasant to his customers and then had to ‘go to taxi driver school to learn how to be confrontational’.

Other panel members spoke about the reactive and ‘angry’ discourse on social media. People were always reacting to something yet it was initially thought social media would help build positive interactive communities. In some ways it has fulfilled its initial reason for being, yet we cannot ignore the damage it has wrought on our civil society when AI generated militia pages are circulated to contest a free and fair election if the result does not go the way of a particular candidate, and where violence is threatened and organised, and activated.

When Pluto moved into Aquarius on November 19, 2024 we all breathed a sigh of relief. Surely now the power was in the collective hands. What we failed to realise is the extent we would have to wrestle power back from the all pervading oligarchy that has been built around social media…the so called tech billionaires, among them the reported richest man in the world Elon Musk (yes I did nearly forget his name after calling him Leon Musk for so long).

Ironic indeed that their fortunes have grown on the content ‘we the people’ provide them with daily, free! Ironic isn’t it that this free content we provide empowers them into positions where they become unelected officials in a government with the power to take away our social security pensions, and our cries fall powerlessly on their social media. If it seems like a giant con, it’s because it is and has been.

And when we consider all of this, we realise why Pluto in Aquarius will uncover corruption and, with effort, return the power to the collective. Already we are building new social media less prone to oligarchical takeovers, and using and nourishing independent media while rejecting legacy media.

After the US election I felt the energy of revolutions of the past, not the American revolution but the French Revolution. Yes, a revolution is coming, one where the people will stand up to the privileged and the obscenely corrupt profiting from power. They should watch themselves. As we’ve seen in Syria and are witnessing in Georgia, people power is a force that can overturn corrupt regimes and, with persistence, be a rallying cry that would curdle the blood of the tyrant and his armies.

Time to reflect. My break away with authors, writers and journalists on the ocean and traveling to Tasmania, has been good for the soul. New perspective has altered my bitterness and cynicism post US election, into a healthy realism that has new insight and purpose. This is a time for collective power to rise.

Why we’re under the astro weather

It’s an odd time, confusing, unbelievable. Most of us are apprehensive at best; filled with anxiety and dread at worst. When it appears there’s a way forward, it seems to lead nowhere. It really does feel like there’s scant hope at times.

What if I were to tell you the present-day astrology is reflecting our discombobulated state post November 5th US election. Many of the major planets are retrograde, except our old friend Pluto which has only just gone direct in Aquarius (the collective) after 15 years in Capricorn (money, wealth, oligarchy). The other forward motion can be found in Saturn in Pisces (boundaries, commitment & hard work meets the need to create and rebuild).

However retrogrades take us back over old ground to learn the lessons. They can catapult us into the past and we go inward, not outward, as we attempt to reset. Retrogrades also bring opportunities for rebalancing and refocusing of our goals and, for many of us, that goal is how we move forward managing the president-elect.

Let’s do a headcount of the retrograde planets, Mercury (communication), Jupiter (luck and good fortune), Uranus (sudden and unexpected change), Neptune (inspiration, dreams, psychic receptivity, illusion, and confusion) and Chiron (our wounds and healing). Is it any wonder we feel we are stuck in a 2016-early 2021 Groundhog Day, contemplating ‘how on earth did we get here, again, and how the hell are we going to move forward)?

There are some clues in the current astrology. We see how destructive the election of the former president has been on relationships. For almost half the US 2024 voting population, there is a real need to break away from anyone or anything remotely associated with the former president. Personal relationships, business dealings and patronage, social media platforms…and it appears there won’t be any let up in this process of cutting away what you can no longer ‘stomach’. The Moon (feelings) in Scorpio (endings and new beginnings) is making a trine (harmonious flow) to Saturn in Pisces. People really are considering their options, from moving countries, to moving states, to boycotting businesses and Thanksgiving too. This trend will continue when Saturn moves into Aries in 2025. Something new is brewing and people are working out right now, how to launch this new and necessary pathway forward.

Adding to this is the mighty Sun (I am) in future oriented Sagittarius, in a grand trine to the North Node (purpose) in Aries (new identities and beginnings and a new cycle) and Mars. The North Node (purpose) makes this trine to Mars (assertion and action) in Leo (leadership, perseverance, drive).

It seems going back over old ground and making definitive decisions on how we move forward, and importantly, the way we move forward and why, will eventually bring concrete and solid plans for the future. The planets will not be retrograde for long. Neptune (confusion) retrograde moves forward on December 7 and Mercury (communication) ends its retrograde on December 15. Uranus moves forward on January 20, 2025 and, importantly, Chiron (the wounded healer) ends its retrograde on December 29.

Believe it or not, this period of inwardness and regression is actually a necessary reset. There is no doubting the reelection of the former president carries with it tremendous lessons for all. What emerges after the chaos and volatility will be something new. As to what that is, look no further than Pluto in Aquarius. It both exposes the underbelly and corruption while putting the power in the collective to act for the future. Through seeing and experiencing the truth of what is no longer serving us, we get to decide how we move forward. Many assume they will be powerless in the future, however Pluto in Aquarius assures us we won’t. There is real power in the collective…history proves that suppressed people take back their power eventually. It’s often through a revolution.

Aquarius is the sign of the innovator, the humanitarian and the visionary. Pluto will help clear away what no longer serves us, personally and collectively whether we like it or not.

Remember it is in times of great change and challenge that the best of humanity emerges. Resilience, stoicism, innovation, drive, talent, ideas, motivation and commitment. We will learn the lessons well, as we must, and create something new.

Pluto in Aquarius will eventually bring the reset we need, even though there is a need for commitment and hard work in the coming days. Even now, there are new communication channels forming on new social media, alliances for the future being built and old partnerships are ending. Remember that faith is not something that miraculously drops out of the sky, it is something we hold to in desperate and hard times.

No wonder we’re confused

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Photo by Soulful Pizza on Pexels.com

About a week ago I recorded a podcast regarding the slippery slope we create when we try and justify the mass slaughter of 34,000 innocent civilians in Gaza…13,000 of whom were children. This death and destruction was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response to the brutal attack by Hamas on Oct 7 which killed 1200 innocent Israelis. Two hundred and fifty two hostages were also taken that day – some have been released in a trade off to free Palestinian prisoners, some have perished including being mistakenly killed by the Israeli army, and many are still being held some six months after the October massacre.

I also raised the growing anti war cries of students across the world, and especially the US. I maintained that despite nefarious elements infiltrating student protests many, many protests were peaceful and focused on one theme: peace not war. Life not death. I spoke about the US female professor standing peacefully during what was a calm protest who was knocked to the ground by police, forcefully held down despite her pleas of “I can’t breath”, and zip tied. Distressing, terrible images.

In Israel over the weekend tens of thousands are protesting for release of hostages, ceasefire and removal of PM Netanyahu. Signs displayed saying “enough”, are mirroring how we are all feeling. We are desperate for the end of suffering…and peace. Israel’s Opposition leader has called for an election during ‘wartime’ such is the desperation of citizens who blame Netanyahu for the failure to secure hostage release despite the unprecedented killing of innocent Palestinians and the destruction of much of the GAZA strip.

When I recorded my podcast, I expected a barrage of criticism, a raft of allegations of antisemitism and downright abuse. Rather, I got only rational and compassionate calls for the end of suffering in GAZA and the release of hostages. A very small number accused me of antisemitism. Of course I pulled them up on that one. With the current US Congress passing a bill that would outlaw antisemitism, it’s important to remain calm about populist, politically tempting and far reaching legislation. I quoted Jewish author Sim Kern who had an excellent Twitter post on the meaning of antisemitism.

Firstly, the word semite is both Jew and Arab. No amount of arguing will change that meaning. Antisemitism is a modern day term “coined in the 1860’s by Wilhelm Marr, the original redpilled, alt-right racistbro,” says Kern. And Kern goes onto say that the word morphed again with “the violent, colonial creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Because Zionists, at this point, start claiming that any criticism of their Jewish state, is antisemitism. (A conflation that’s always been contested by antizionist Jews).” So antisemitism has undergone many meanings depending on the politics at the time and Jews themselves disagree with the actual meaning.

It is illogical to infer that the meaning of antisemitism is the criticism of Israel…that would result in an unchecked moral right to colonise/conquer no matter what, how, when and who. This would also mean jewish people protesting against Netanyahu’s government in Israel are antisemitic. Kern goes onto say that if you’re looking for a word that means hatred of Jews then Judanhass would be that word. Hatred of Jews would suffice for me, and anyone that has a hatred of Jews is not welcome within my orbit, nor are they tolerated if they harbour an explicit or implicit hatred of Muslims.

Politically, it is a very confusing time. Many find themselves abhorring the actions of Hamas on Oct 7th, followed rapidly by a disbelief and growing shock at the death and destruction in GAZA. Democratic Party members are also split on the continued funding and weapon supplies to Israel without conditions that such use of the weapons must be in accordance with international humanitarian law. (Israel has been accused by the International Court of Justice of plausible genocide). Meanwhile the spectre of another disastrous term of the former president Trump looms in the middle of an unprecedented attack on women’s rights in America.

Much is at stake in the coming months…freedoms, life and death, and absolute clarity that voters must reject at every level, the possibility of failed coup leader, Trump’s return. If the world is perceived as volatile at this time, throwing open the doors to the current MAGA iteration of the Republicans and their despotic leader Trump, would be disastrous for us all.

As a starter, many of Trump’s MAGA policy advisors want GAZA “cleansed of Palestinians”. Trump recently said he would not prevent Russia from invading NATO countries, and incredibly alarming, that US states would be allowed to monitor pregnant women to ensure they do not obtain an abortion.

Clarity, not confusion, is required at this time. We must all agree on that…

Postscript: Three important stories in the media emerged this week. Axios reports the Biden government may have stopped a shipment of ammunition to Israel. This comes amidst President Biden’s warning against laying siege to Rafah, where over a million Palestinian refugees are sheltering. The second story is Netanyahu’s rejection of hostage release and ceasefire and mass protests within Israel calling for his removal. The third is the release of a 2018 secret letter from Netanyahu seeking Qatari payment to Hamas of $30m a month from 2018 onwards. Here is the Axios story. I believe Rafah is a red line in the sand for President Biden.

Supercharged intuition

An early morning ride on this sunny, autumn day, in my hometown in regional NSW Australia, reminded me yet again of the richness of connecting with intuition. Around me the birds either sang their greetings or flew into the clearest of skies…blue with hues of soft sunlight only a morning in autumn can deliver.

Many said hello as I passed. The magpie with its warbling song, the crow with its oftentimes eery caw, the cheeky cockatoo wanting to be the loudest…and succeeding. I thought a lot about my father on that ride. A farmer, gifted in stock handling and especially horses, he spent most of his life outdoors amongst nature and with animals. My early life was spent with him and he passed onto me that connection with the land. Once it was a horse I rode, nowadays, I ride my e-bike every day.

As I rode down rural Forbes Street today, I was struck by how in-tune I was with the animals I encountered from the birds to the racehorses…all bringing memories of my childhood and my father’s love of the farm and its animal inhabitants.

I spoke to these animals, bowed and greeted them as I had been taught in my old Shaman classes, and received respectful and special communication back. I always ask the cockatoos to fly close and over my head…they always do as I celebrate their uniqueness. This is the way I roll, deeply connected to the animal world. Aside from my father giving me opportunities to grow up with animals, my Chiron (the wound) is in Pisces (psychic flow, the collective and spirituality). I literally feel healed when I am in nature and I know many of you do too.

The chart in this post is cast today over Washington, though we are very close to a new moon in Pisces no matter where you’re located. On March 10, the moon is new at 20 degrees Pisces at 5:00am ET. New moons are about beginnings. They are a time to set intentions, goals…a time to dust off your dreams and imagine their reality, to take concrete steps toward them if possible. As this new moon is in the psychic sign of Pisces, you have the opportunity to dig deeply into your intuition. What are your deepest hopes and dreams? Are you living in a way that honours them?

Last night we heard the US President Joe Biden deliver one of the best speeches I’ve seen from him (I make this judgement as a former speechwriter for government Ministers). It was a slam dunk, knock out blow to his opponents. The best headline is reoccurring across social media: “Joe smoked ’em all”. And he did. It was a good time astrologically for this speech. Look at the stellium (multiple planets) in Pisces in the Washington chart, in the 10th House (public, government). Everyone in that room, and many watching on their screens, knew he spoke the truth. The MAGA Republicans could not deny his strident points on consensus v hate, freedoms v imposition and loss of rights, real action and results v gaslighting and inaction, political violence v civility…I could go on. I imagined many were squirming in their seats. They looked and felt like losers, and those lost without the brazenness of unchecked power.

No one could argue with Biden last night. They ‘knew’ what he was saying was true. The evidence was there and the intuitive knowing as well. He really did ‘smoke them’.

I am convinced it is a finale that is unfolding now in the US. These turbulent times will be settled and settled well for a foreseeable future at least. Joe Biden, while imperfect as many politicians can be, is a strong and able president for these times and, as I have long seen, he beats his opponent, the criminally indicted ex president trump, hands down. He will well and truly ‘smoke’ him too.

Joy and spiritual evolution

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Photo by Bekka Mongeau on Pexels.com

I had intended on posting a New Year’s message, a bright chit chat post about intentions, hope and self responsibility…however I held off due to a pneumonia-like illness I developed between Christmas and the new year which kept me struggling physically and mentally until the last few days.

I am a lifelong asthmatic and the last 6 months have been rough as my preventative inhaler of 30 years stopped working. I’ve been on and off antibiotics and prednisone since last July, and a raft of different inhalers which all made the situation worse. I had given up on easy solutions and was waiting for a referral to the respiratory specialist. For those who don’t know my history, harsh cancer treatment in 2015…is there any other sort…worsened my auto immune issues. This has meant a necessary and dogged focus on my health and boosting my immunity since then.

I digress. Back to the inhaler problem. When I’m presented with a health challenge I rarely give up. I research and use my intuition to solve the issue. Sometimes I am successful. After seemingly being without options, I flagged one last dual inhaler they said would not work, so why try it? I persisted and got the script, albeit from a reluctant and cynical GP. It turned out to be the right move. This particular inhaler worked and was the least draconian intervention. I had known that it would. I guess the message is: it’s your body and your health. Use your voice, inquire and ask questions and make your views known. Doctors are not God-like. They are human beings with all our flaws and strengths, and expertise. They are also overworked and the medical system often, imperfect.

It pays to be your own health advocate.

Along with health issues, I have been contemplating the meaning of joy – not some fantastical, whimsical and passing ‘happy feeling’…rather I’ve been thinking about deep and abiding joy. Often after tough times (and let’s face it a lot do struggle around Christmas and New Year), we contemplate our circumstances with honesty and I have found myself realising that it has been ‘a minute’ since I was last ‘joyful’. Whether it’s the state of our troubled world, or personal circumstances, I remember now, that feeling of deep joy that goes with spiritual contentment and I know that is not how I currently feel. Rather than external events and people providing passing happy times, the deep joy of contentment is unwavering, consistent and not easily won.

This deep feeling of joy, takes real inner focus and meeting your own needs. It also takes self value and reflection. To reconnect with the deep joy which reaches all the way into your spirit, firstly takes awareness and acknowledgment of its absence.

I can hear you asking: well how do you get it back? You understand that you’ve only ever needed ‘you’. So start by getting back in touch with the essence of who ‘you’ are, and when you find that, value and nurture ‘you’. Leave the rest to Spirit. Once the process has begun, the right people and events will meet you.

Take that step. Deep joy and meaning await you on your journey.

A handful of sunflower seeds

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As I sit listening to the rain on my corrugated iron roof, I have one eye on my Washington Post subscription feeding through my email. On the one hand the rain…the wind howling a little at the corner of our home and the late afternoon sun on green grass, are worlds away from the tragedy unfolding in the Middle East. I am waiting for what my intuitive senses tell me is coming; an acceleration of the violence and bloodshed and the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza right now.

As I write this…from the safety of my Australian home and the gentle sound of that rain on my roof…I cannot comprehend the suffering that is occurring right now.

So much of the world is like a tinder box. Do I need to say one spark and the fire will ignite and grow? I don’t think so. We all know what’s at stake. We feel it and sense it.

In February 2022 we watched helplessly while Russian soldiers and tanks crossed the border into sovereign Ukraine, intent on a blitzkrieg and toppling its young democratically elected leader. The Russian Emperor proxy Vladimir Putin had longed dreamed of reuniting the former Soviet Union borders under his authoritarian reign. We then witnessed the courage and sacrifice of the Ukrainians, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, Ukrainian and Russian, on the fields where once sunflowers and blades of wheat grew.

I still have the t-shirt sold in a Ukrainian fundraiser, of an old woman standing in front of the Russian tank in defiance, hand outstretched and giving the enemy soldier a handful of sunflower seeds. “Put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.”

A simple scene highlighting the pointlessness of war, death and destruction.

Unfolding now is yet another tragedy which the world of humanity could not stop. A terrorist organisation trained by the Russian Wagner mercenaries (most likely somewhere in Africa) and financed by Iran, with weapons from Russia, stormed into Israel and viciously killed hundreds of Israeli’s, taking some of them hostage in Gaza, holding both the innocent Palestinian families and the Israeli’s hostage in what some describe as an ‘open air prison’…the Gaza Strip.

Bombs are dropped indiscriminately now on both sides, no hope for a peaceful settlement, and nearby Arab countries like Egypt, Iran and Lebanon one step away from joining the fray. US warships are anchored at the ready, as a deterrent against escalation.

In the US, the opposition party is actively discrediting the current President of their country, spouting Russian talking points on Ukraine, and its leader, the former US president Donald Trump talking up the terrorists. One chamber of its Congress is paralysed, held hostage by the extreme wing of the GOP, unable to function. The US at a time when the world is on the edge of the precipice, is legislatively neutered and leaderless.

What hope have we got when the world has gone so terribly wrong?

In times like this, when the darkness obscures almost all of the light, I focus on hope. I focus on what I know…that the world is changing and that old myths, tokenisms and narratives that suit the very people that led us into the darkness, are being exposed.

I focus on the light of truth and I know that truth-telling leads to justice, and justice leads us to balance. Perhaps this balance is the gift from God, to peel away the layers of detritus to reveal the truth because when we have truth, we have clarity, decision-making and a way forward.

I made this video a few months ago, using the Angel Tarot. It is relevant to this blog and for this time. I hope it provides some comfort.

I choose for me

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Across Republican held states in the US and in other ultra conservative governments we see a common theme emerging…moves to restrict personal choice and erode democratic freedoms. It is a movement doomed to failure, not just because it is foolhardy for democratically elected governments and courts to remove historic rights, nor that it is a time when ‘people power’ is fated in the stars…it is simply because I choose for myself. I have always chosen for myself and I always will, one way or another.

Whether it is pro-choice v right to life, the ‘Voice’ referendum in Australia, trying to ban TikTok or expelling young black lawmakers in Tennessee, bipartisan leaders will reap rewards while extremist policy makers will ultimately taste defeat. You cannot hold back the future.

Many are afraid of these authoritarian moves but the evidence is there that the critical mass…the voters, will not stand for any erosion of rights. So why do they do it, or try to, choose for us? They do it because they think they can, until they find out they can’t.

I am convinced that electoral defeat will dog the US Republican Party until it begins to reform. Many already know that governments disconnected from the people lose elections. The Conservative Party in Australia is on its knees with the Australian Labor Party in power federally and in every state of Australia other than Tasmania. They saw the signs of defeat, yet in their arrogance they persisted in courting extremism for fear of losing their base. It cost them federal and repeated state elections.

The Republican Party in the US has arrived at the same destination…repeatedly defeated until they connect again with the will of the people and until they protect freedoms, not subvert them.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about freedom of choice, and governments accountable to the people, as well as a channeled reading on the beginnings of a new civil rights movement in America, which took its first steps into reality with the expulsion of two young, black lawmakers in Tennessee.

https://revealinglighttarot.podbean.com/e/choice-our-voices-the-tennessee-three/

In hindsight…

US President Donald Trump (L) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin arrive to attend a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. The US and Russian leaders opened an historic summit in Helsinki, with Donald Trump promising an "extraordinary relationship" and Vladimir Putin saying it was high time to thrash out disputes around the world. / AFP PHOTO / Yuri KADOBNOVYURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images

Just how much damage has ‘populism’ done to democracies across the world. It has played to an adoring crowd of conspiracy theorists, divided nations and, worse, given rise to a type of fascist thinking we haven’t seen since before the Second World War. Yet here we are again almost a century later, flirting with the adrenaline rush of emotive and reactionary politics at the expense of unity, stability and common sense.

In the US former President trump is under multiple investigations and potential indictments, while in the UK former populist leader Boris Johnson is before a Parliamentary Committee for apparently lying and misleading Parliament. In Australia, just after its recent election, it was discovered that trump ally Scott Morrison, had secretly been sworn in to multiple ministeries (along with his Prime Minister’s responsibilities) without his own Ministers knowing about it.

These leaders had many things in common…all have been accused of lying…the Australian Prime Minister falling foul of French President Macron who famously replied when asked if he thought the Australian Prime Minister was a liar…”I don’t think; I know”. The other commonality was they all came from conservative parties.

In the US, they stopped counting former President trump’s lies. They are many and well documented…too many to list here. The former reality television star and self confessed ‘billionaire’ and ‘populist’ leader, left the US shaken, exhausted and unstable. Yet all of these leaders have been removed from power, whether by election loss or by their own parties. We are now only starting to pick up the pieces of their disastrous tenures.

Never again we say…flirting with unqualified and self absorbed leaders who stretch and strain our democracies…that’s in the past. Or is it? My latest podcast, Random Sage with Maryann from Revealing Light, tackles this question.

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-sd7y3-13c55f4