Sekhmet Visits the White House
By Underground Panther in the Sky, Democratic Underground and Unknown News
Sekhmet is my favorite Goddess.
In Ancient Egypt there was human corruption, so bad Ra and the gods left Earth, but before they left Ra sent for Sekhmet. Sekhmet is the lion-headed goddess of war, pestilence, and healing. It was for her the arts were made. She heals broken bones. Boneset is her sacred plant, as it can be made a gluey gel, and with cloth strips it sets up and is good for casts.
Sekhmet was as feared in Egypt as the
fierce hot midday sun. She is swathed in red linen, made red from the blood of
slaughtered humanity. Sekhmet means, in translation, power. Sekhmet is power.
Sekhmet, in one of her legends, almost
destroyed humanity because Ra could not stand all that human corruption. She
went out on his call as his fiery eye and slaughtered tons of people to teach 'em
a lesson. Ra saw the devastation, he saw mothers crying, kids with their arms
chopped off, scorched orchards, demolished homes... and Ra felt guilty and
demanded Sekhmet stop it.
But she didn't stop when Ra commanded
her to. And Ra, being an old infirm god, was not able to subdue her. In fact
none of the Gods could. She is, after all, the goddess of raw power.
The story goes on to say someone got an
idea to brew up a big batch of beer colored with hibiscus to make it red. At
night people filled the lake full of this red beer. When Sekhmet started her
rampage again in the morning, she saw the frothy lake of blood, and quivering
with bloodlust she paused to drink, and it was so good she drank it all,
thinking it was blood. And because it was beer she got seriously
smashed.(Picture those photos of lions lounging around on the savanna, belly up
snoring in the afternoon shade)
When Sekhmet awoke, she was mortified at
what she had done. She was so embarrassed she ran to the desert, ashamed,
refusing to go near people again because she had done such harm. Ra couldn't
tell her to do squat, so Sekhmet stayed in the desert. The people missed her,
but she didn't care. She felt like a monster
So Thoth went out and persuaded her to
return he told her people missed her, the gods missed her, and they loved her.
And when Sekhmet did go back, she went as a cat(like her sister Bast) instead of
a lion.
But Sekhmet is still a lioness, still
full of terrible power even when she's a pussycat. She isn't like her sister
Bast, until she is shown first-hand through shame how horrible her unchecked
power is. How power makes you drunk, wild, cruel, and thirsty for more.
Sekhmet's legend in old texts speaks of
her asking mankind to keep her image close, that it be placed everywhere. Why
would you want that? Because it's not for her to check on you — her statues are
there for you to check her power — to keep her manageable, to keep her humble,
to keep her true to your cause, keep her justice pure — to keep her honest.
Sekhmet is not in service to Ra, she is
in service to Maat — the principle of truth. To keep power true to the will of
the people you must have a way for the people to watch it, to see what it is
doing. That is the lesson Sekhmet left us: We must always have our eyes upon the
holders of power, lest that power spring upon you like a red lioness seeking
blood to satisfy its lusts.
It is interesting how we have accepted power's intrusions in our Kitten-sized lives. We have all sorts of regulations, taxes, ID numbers ... We let the demands of work interfere with the way we live, dress, and act. We let corporations decide for us how our food is prepared, processed, and grown. We let corporations run pretty much everything in our lives. We are filmed at red lights, filmed at stores, our membership ID checked at Costco when we go in, again at the checkout, and again at the door out. We get probed by scanners at every mall store exit and entrance. We let stores install radio tags to track our purchases, we have 'loyalty cards', the FBI knows the books we buy and borrow from the library ... We are checked and re-checked so much that the founding fathers must be spinning in their graves. Hitler would cream his jodhpurs, yet we allow it all in the name of 'national security'.
I ask, whose security?
Being filmed as I change in a dressing room isn't ‘security’ for me. It's all for the store, to keep profits from five-finger discounters. It has nothing to do with me, but some jackass can sell my ass on the net or get off on it. My body is no longer private. My medical records can be read by any insurance yahoo, and any jackoff from homeland security can peruse my therapists’ notes on demand. Or yours.
Yet what have we done as "the people" to
watch what those with power do? We have not investigated anything. We have given
our government obscene privacy-piercing and spy powers to use against us. Why?
Why do we let government spy on our neighbors for fear of Arab “terrorists" when
GW Bush grounded all planes after 9/11 except for the plane taking Osama bin
Laden's family out of the country.
The freedom of Information Act isn't
information, and it sure isn’t free. You have to go through tons of red tape,
pay a wad, and still we get papers full of black magic-marker lines over the
information we wanted to see in the first place. How’s that investigation of
Cheney going over the energy scandal? What investigation? The Plame case is
being obstructed.. The 9/11 investigation — What investigation? The people
appointed on the commission are in the Bush administration’s back pocket!
Meanwhile, there is a big new steel
barrier, 15 feet or so tall, all around the White House. Bush is carefully
directed away from all possible confrontations with protestors and the public.
Hecklers are arrested at his appearances, and cameras stay away. Protestors were
brutalized in Miami during the November protests and that wasn't news. Worldwide
protests about the Iraq war were just focus groups. The White House looks like a
fortress on partial lockdown. Congress passes devious bills like the Medicare
bill and PATRIOT Act II in the dead of night, or the president just signs it
without any oversight.
The Iraq war? Did we the people go for
that? Or did they the elites and they the media paint an untrue picture? There
is a "Shadow Government" now and nobody knows who or where it is.
What are "we the people" doing to keep
our "servants" accountable with the power they wield? The shadow of a ravening
lion waits. What are we the people doing to watch what the blood lustful lions
drunk on power do, as they go send little lions to feast on the blood of any
nation Bush wants to preemptively attack abuse and dominate? All as the real
lions feast upon the blood of the Earth itself, oil and the natural resources
stolen from these other nations.
What will be the equivalent of the lake
of red beer for the Bush Administration and his neo-conservative cohorts?
The White House being directly
responsible for 9/11? Cheney proven to rip off California for millions and not
pay it back? A bush staffer outing Plame and not getting in trouble for it? Bush
getting a case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and it being just the kind of
tragedy that greedy cattlemen can exploit? A mass rejection of Christianity
because Falwell, Robertson and the Neo-con fundamentalist set turns too many
people off to Jesus? A massive swing to the left because the right is a band of
religious freaks with a tendency for corruption, criminality, insanity and
failure? Bush never getting elected ‘again’? A massive stock market collapse
because workers finally revolt over the 'jobless recovery'? Widespread Riots
over a billion different issues caused by Bush's biggest campaign contributors?
All out nuclear war because Bush acted like an arrogant fool to the wrong
nation? Bush getting busted for having sex with a bunch of teenager interns?
Bush admitting he has sex with men too?
Seriously — what kind of embarrassing,
horrific event could make the sociopaths in this administration want to exile
themselves to the desert in shame? Would it take a whole lot of people trying to
arrest Bush for treason?
Does this administration and it's
neo-con set full of philosophizing Strauss-spewing arrogant elitists have no
shame? Do they think they are above all accountability and can do no wrong even
when they do horrible evils? I wonder who let the "powerful" get away with
thinking they are so unstoppable like that?
The corporations and government have us
all on camera as we shop at their stores. They see our eyes dilate over the
chocolate bars and sexy models on Cosmo covers. They see us at stop lights, ATMs
and banks, gas stations. They have our home, cell, and other phone numbers, our
addresses, our medical and psych records, bank records, car registration and
insurance info, our social security numbers. They know what we’ve been reading,
which tile cleaners we like best, and which type of tomato soup we prefer. They
know what we say on the phone, what we type on the web. They know where our kids
go to school, who they are, how many pets we have, our parents’ names and
addresses and such. They know when we are sleeping ...
Do we know this kind of extensive
personal information about what Bush does? Can I look at George W. Bush's
psychiatrist’s notes, and his medical records, and watch him on the security
footage at Toys'R'Us? Can I see Cheney's bank deposits and find out what brand
of toilet paper he prefers or how many fleet enemas he bought last week? What
about Condoleezza Rice? Can I watch her eyes dilate big over the chocolate bars
in the candy aisle? Can I see what kind of tampons she never gets? Can I look at
these people's bank records and call them on their cell phones at 2:00 AM, and
find out what books they bought at Barnes & Noble over the past six months?
Something is seriously wrong. I do not
have the power to declare any war, I can't make laws, I can't even introduce a
bill to Congress. I can't afford to push useless at best, possibly unsafe
products on the populace of this country. I can't decide who gets to be the next
pop star icon for the pre-teen set. I can't change the line-up on Cartoon
Network's Adult Swim. I can't afford a plate at any of the candidates’
fundraiser dinners. I can't make gay marriage legal (or illegal). I can't force
the RIAA to grow the fuck up. I can't make the USDA require ranchers not to
raise baby calves on cows’ blood, or stop the cattle feed manufacturers from
mixing road kill and animal shelter corpses and chicken shit, feathers and offal
and calling it food and selling it. I can't make Aberdeen Proving Grounds stop
polluting my groundwater.
To me the government and the reach of
corporations into my life is like a shadowy bloodthirsty lion, taking away bits
of me. It bites into my joy, drains my lifeblood, steals my hope.
But I do not have these people's
personal contacts, their Social Security numbers or bank transactions or psych
records. Truthfully, I have no clue who ANY of these people that make decisions
that affect my life ARE. They are far away, unreachable, distant. I have no idea
whose face watches my every move. America’s corporate government is faceless,
unmanageable. It is arrogant and intrusive, controlling and deceptive, like a
shadow. It is unaccountable to me or you, so their justice is impure, and
because I cannot see what is coming in this slaughter, I feel so small, so
unable to stop it.
How did our Country get to be this way?
Is it human nature? Stockholm syndrome? Child abuse? Is it society playing Who
Wants To Be A Millionaire? Why are people with less power watched everywhere, as
if they are ravening lions on a lustful rampage? Who feels that way about their
own neighbors (gangs aside)? I don't. Do you?
Most of us are just too tired to rampage
anywhere for anything anymore. Especially after a long day at two minimum wage
jobs, with no benefits, in debt, with dinner to cook and dishes to wash, the flu
to get over, and rent to pay. A lot of us are too depressed to care anymore,
after so much of what makes life worth living has been drained away by these
profit-seeking power lust assholes, after tussling though red tape and the
assholes’ loyal servants, just trying to survive.
So I gotta ask, why is it that this
administration — so full of sociopaths, on a rampage in Iraq and a bunch of
other places, people who live in mansions courtesy of taxpayers, who get twipped
at the doctors office relieved of the bill, who get new car perks, handsome
payoffs and golden parachutes — why are these people allowed to have such
unprecedented secrecy, lack of oversight and public unaccountability?
Why do these wealthy indigent parasites
and master manipulators get to have a huge blank check of our tax money to blow
or to bail out their buddies’ corporate misadventures, while our public schools
are a joke and the infrastructures of our cities rot? Why is it only a
misdemeanor if a corporation kills an employee by neglecting safety regulations,
yet if I shoot an abusive CEO for stealing my 401k and commenting on my tits
it's felony? Why is it Wal-Mart can take out a life insurance policy on my
'behalf' and my family will never get the cash benefit even though it's MY life
that was insured and I wasn’t working for Wal-Mart upon my demise? What kind of
ghoulish scam is that?
Why does AWOL Bush get preemptive war
powers, get his PATRIOT Acts 1 and 2, but if a soldier refuses an immoral order
from a superior he is court-martialed? How can these government men tell a woman
in a severe gynecological crisis that she has to die if a fetus isn’t dead but
won't come out of her vagina because it's stuck, because removing the fetus
would be a “partial birth abortion” ... even though none of the signers of that
law even have vaginas, and they'll never have a baby die because it's stuck in
transit.
How can the USDA tell me beef is safe to
eat while they haven't bother to ban cow cannibalism, despite the World Health
Organization saying cow cannibalism is unsafe? Why can't I go call up some
corporate rancher CEO on their cell phone in the middle of a meeting and scream
at him, tell him how he’s a stupid crazy asshole? Why can't I tell the FDA they
are too fucking greedy to make food safety policy and take that job out of their
grubby hands? How come nobody like me can walk up to the White House and make a
law to force Cheney to release the minutes of his many meetings with the energy
people and Enron executives? Or how come I can't go in there and grill everyone
in the Bush administration to find out why it's OK Aberdeen Proving Ground is
poisoning my drinking water?
Isn't it a little SICK that these 'corporate elites' won't let people like me undress in a dressing room at a store without company camera eyes on me because I might steal a 6 dollar T-shirt and somehow make a dent in their multi billion dollar profits?
Sekhmet asks that her image be
everywhere across Egypt. Sekhmet understands that her power MUST be checked
constantly, and it seems some of our founding fathers understood this problem
with power too. Cheney hides in a spider hole underground in Washington DC, like
Saddam Hussein. Cheney probably has a nicer hidey hole than Saddam had, but it's
the same sort of secret hidey hole nonetheless.
What are they hiding from? Us?
What if Bush had to see some of us
average people every day in his Office? What if we could choose to come to the
White House, as supervisors — to keep the government clean, accountable, just,
and sane? Some days there would be a few people, other days hundreds, but every
day some average people from wherever in the USA would be sitting in on Bush’s
day, watching him and his cabinet, listening to all their discussions, debates,
FBI briefings, deals, visits from diplomats, lobbyists... Just watching and
listening, maybe recording or videotaping the government’s actions, they would
witness all areas of power every day, every morning, every night. Imagine the
public up close and personal, watching the President, the Supreme Court, the
Congress, watching and listening, sipping our coffee as the White House does its
routine.
What if the White House was never
allowed to hand-pick the observers? Whoever shows up is today’s watcher.
What if there were White House cams,
Pentagon cams, Army base cams always recording the goings on and broadcasting it
all online? Cameras that must not be tampered with by law, unable to be shut
off. Imagine broadcasting every deal and detail in our government, putting it
all on-line and on TV, showing every waking moment of this presidency, exposing
every deal, every law, every meeting?
How much corruption could there be in a
government run like that? There would be no place for it to hide!
Thanks, Sekhmet.
© 2003, by the author.
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