Something Woke Up (dragon and flowers)

Something Woke Up (dragon and flowers)

花は振る Hana wa furu 

ヒビ、雨を待つ Hibi, ame wo matsu

なぞ覚めた Nazo sameta

The flowers wave. (or move or undulate as one)

Cracks wait for the rain.

Something woke up.

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It's not a traditional haiku as it lacks the mention of a season (although cracked earth implies a season). It's not traditional Nihongo. It does follow the 5,7,5 rhythm.  However,  Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), the father of this poetry, often used non-traditional Japanese and often did not mention seasons in his beautiful in-the-moment nuances.

Also Applicable:

“Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

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Those are safe interpretations of ProvokoLoko's illustration. It should avoid being rejected and deactivated by the thought police on FB and IG.

Shall we dig deeper?

From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ”Wake up to something” phrasal verb; to start to realize and understand a danger, an idea etc

This illustration is more an observation about denying something powerful that is’ sleeping in a bed of flowers.

Most centrists and common-sense folks are in fact in a bubble of information. Centrists and moderates filter out and ignore extreme opinions and conspiracy theories. Extreme views are triggering (haha) and not desired and thus ignored. Here is an extreme example, most centrists abhor the actions of Timothy McVeigh. The ex-Army soldier and security guard parked a rental truck in font of an Oaklahoma Federal building, started a bomb, and drove away killing 168 people, including 19 children. It’s the worst homegrown act of terrorism in US history, following the Civil War. The World Trade center bombing two years earlier was not homegrown (later realized it was rehersal for 9/11). 

Most centrists/moderates/common sense folks abhorred the violence and focused on news that reported the details of this violence. However, our news bubble did report the reactions within the federal prisons. There were cheers of approval of Tim McVeighs bombing. It was a big finger to a deep resentment towards the federal repression felt by many extremists. McVeigh was a hero to these extremists. Centrists who ignored this truth, didt make it go away. Ignoring it was like starting at a bed or roses, not realizing something slithering was oozing out of the cracks forming in the hidden ground beneath the flowers.

These extremists have been here in the United states growing, festering. Prior to McVeighs bombing, Timothy McVeigh’s hatred of the federal government intensified in 1993 after an armed standoff in Waco, Texas resulted in the deaths of 76 people. McVeigh went to Waco during the standoff and handed out anti-government literature.

 

[excerpts and editorial from “The Waco Tragedy Explained” By Tara Isabella Burton]

For many people, Waco is a lurid story about a cult — a story that has lent itself to decades of sensationalist media coverage. It’s the story of a maniacal and apocalypse-minded cult leader, David Koresh, whose delusional stubbornness led to the deaths of 76 people. The 1993 media coverage of the Waco massacre — which depicted Koresh as a single-minded genius exerting power over his fellow Branch Davidians via mind control — has by now become the defining story of the siege. The prevailing narrative, in other words, presumed that all inhabitants of the Branch Davidian community were crazy, and that therefore, any violent means used against them would be justified.

Another view: For 51 days federal agents camped outside the compound, paralyzed by their own ineptitude, while this notorious liar and con man was permitted to broadcast his incoherent message to the world. The authorities must have known that it was all a sham ... but Koresh had given them no choice. The feds were the hostages, the ones who were surrounded without hope. They kept assuring [the public] that they weren’t about to be drawn into a firefight, then permitted exactly that to happen. ... What happened at Mount Carmel was not suicide; it was Holy War. Just as Koresh had prophesied.

In his book Waco: a Survivor’s Story, David Thibodeau writes: “So many of the Davidians have been demonized by the media ... I felt it my duty to tell the true story of a group of people who were trying to live according to their religious beliefs and the teachings of a man they all considered divinely inspired.”

 

The Branch Davidians didn’t start with David Koresh

While David Koresh is the figure most commonly associated with the Branch Davidians, the story of the group begins several decades before his ascent to leadership.

The group began as the “Davidians” (also known as “Shepherd’s Rod”), an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists, a Christian religious movement that flourished in the late 19th century in America and that boasts about 19 million members worldwide today.

The Davidian movement was spearheaded in 1930 by a Bulgarian immigrant, Victor Houteff, who dissented from aspects of standard Seventh-Day Adventist theology. Houteff believed that the Messiah prophesied in the biblical book of Isaiah was not Jesus, but was yet to come. Houteff argued that he and his supporters would help bring about the future “Davidic kingdom” — mirroring the empire of the biblical King David — during the apocalypse. That apocalypse, he taught, was imminent.

It was Houteff who first purchased the compound in Waco, Texas, that he called Mount Carmel, after the biblical mountain of the same name. There, Houteff led a small Christian religious community that believed Mount Carmel would be the center of a new divine kingdom following the apocalypse.

After Houteff’s death in 1955, one of his followers, Benjamin Roden, claimed to be hearing messages from God telling him to continue Houteff’s work. Roden’s claims split the group, as did the claims of Houteff’s widow, Florence, who had prophesied that the world would end in 1959. After the world failed to end, Florence Houteff abandoned the Davidian group, leaving Roden’s followers — by now known as the Branch Davidians — to take over part of the Mount Carmel Center.

Only in 1981 did Vernon Howell — the man who would soon change his name to David Koresh — join the Branch Davidian community. A troubled child from an unstable family background, Howell had become a born-again Christian in the 1980s. He joined the Southern Baptist Church, then switched to a Seventh-Day Adventist Church, from which he was expelled after aggressively pursuing a pastor’s daughter. Only then did he encounter the Davidians. According to rumors repeated in Thibodeau’s memoir, Howell may have had an affair with Benjamin Roden’s widow, Lois, by then the de facto leader of the group.

Claiming the gift of prophecy, Howell gained increasing power within the Branch Davidian community, something that brought him into conflict with Lois and Benjamin’s son, George. When George Roden went to prison for murdering another rival, Howell — who changed his name in 1990 to commemorate biblical Kings David and Cyrus (Koresh) — assumed complete control of the group. [End Excerpts] 

In 1854, the Republican Party emerged to combat the expansion of slavery into American territories after the passing of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. The early Republican Party consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and after the Civil War, former black slaves. It is quite different now. It has embraced these festering extreme groups as the main voices. 

 

The left progressives are only the most recent target of the extremes. The dissenting voices of extremes have been here long before the left became captured by extreme, radicalized, progressive, tribalism, who embrace, autocratic, thought and behavior control. However, note that the democrats and independents elected Biden, a left centrist. This indicates the leadership of the democrats are not controlled by left extremists, only heavily influencing.  

 

In contrast, Trump brilliantly captured the support of the festering, slithering, dissenting, extremist, belief systems -sliding the Republican Party far to the extreme right. However, Trump is only the result of symptoms that existed long before his arrival on the political scene. His irrationality and ignoring facts tapped die-hard supporters who have long held fervent anti-establishment, paranoid, conspiracy, mentalities. 


Republican extremists are now in a post-factual world, legitimized by elected extreme republican representatives. No January 6th committee hearings, evidence of Trump’s con-man lies, nor treasonous attempts to overturn the elections will dissuade Republican extremists. Comparison of Hilary Clinton’s deleting emails and Trump's flushing evidence down toilets and illegally smuggling 15 boxes out of the White House will be ignored. Proving that Trump lied about election fraud is not relevant. If extremists results can lead to seizing the white house or McWeigh’s bombing of the federal building, then extremists love Trump's extremism. Facts really don't matter. His spirit matters. Trump will always represent their burning dissent, decades in the making. Thankfully, the extremists don’t represent all the Republican Party. The centrists and independents will determine the next presidency, as they did with Biden.  

 

[Excerpts from: “How the Republican Party came to embrace conspiracy theories and denialism.” By Terry Gross]

This is FRESH AIR. I am Terry Gross. In his new book, "The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-Up Of The Republican Party," my guest, Dana Milbank, writes about how we got to where we are today. Some members of Congress and some of this year's Republican primary winners are election deniers that subscribe to conspiracy theories. One of Trump's major lies backed by conspiracy theories is that the 2020 election was stolen. His attempts to declare himself the winner led to the insurrection. In May of 2021, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 23% of Republicans agree that, quote, "the government, media and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child-sex trafficking operation," unquote.

REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION

Milbank's book looks back over the past 25 years, tracing the roots of today's political lies and conspiracy theories. He begins in 1994 with Newt Gingrich, then a Republican congressman from Georgia, leading his party to a landslide victory in the midterms with Republicans taking over the House and the Senate. It was known as the Republican Revolution…described as…the worst show on earth - the crackup of the Republican Party and the resulting crackup of American democracy.

GROSS: Dana, let's get to your book, "The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-Up Of The Republican Party." And let's start where your book starts - in the mid-'90s when Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich of Georgia became the House speaker and took the House in a more divisive direction than it had been. In fact, you describe him as having pioneered savage politics. What do you mean by that?

MILBANK: Well, when people first heard Newt Gingrich speak, you know, during the run-up to the 1994 Republican Revolution, it was - in a way, he was replacing Bob Michel, who had been this genial World War II veteran, a leader of the House Republican minority for 14 years. He shepherded Ronald Reagan's agenda through the House, through Congress, with some success, but he was all about making deals, about compromise. And then, here came Newt, this bomb thrower, and he spoke with an entirely different language. And he - in fact, he recommended to his congressional peers, Republican peers and candidates, that they need to start talking about Democrats as traitors, as liars, as cheaters. So this was an entirely different way of talking about your opponent, your opponent as your enemy, as opposed to just being your opponent. It was a revolutionary, really, way of speaking in politics, certainly at the high level of politics. And after Republicans won in 1994, he became the speaker of the House and certainly never had a speaker of the House talking this way. And then suddenly this man was second in line to the presidency with a whole different language. And he actually said, the problem with Republicans is they haven't been nasty enough. That was Newt Gingrich's quote. And he said, we need to raise hell all the time. And that's exactly what he did. And today we are sort of living in that world that Newt Gingrich birthed in 1994.

NEWT GRINGRICH & TRUMP

DANA MILBANK: Yeah. It's really ominous, Terry. This is a dangerous time, and I am fearful for the country right now. It's even a step worse when you look at the pro-Trump social media channels. They're saying things like tomorrow is war. They will cry out in pain. When does the shooting start? And you have Fox News echoing these themes of police state and tyranny and regime and third-world authoritarianism. This has ominous reverberations from - as I've written in the book, going back a quarter century in this case. This is very similar to the rhetoric we heard leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 on conservative talk radio from members of Congress talking about the government coming to get them with tyranny, imposing a new world order, a revolution, black helicopters - very, very similar rhetoric.

It's also similar to the rhetoric we heard from the Tea Party in 2010 - you know, the famous don't retreat, reload from Sarah Palin that - talking about, you know, throwing bricks through the windows of Democratic lawmakers, again, talking about the tyranny and of what the government is trying to impose going after people, images of candidates shooting off guns, much as we're seeing now. So it doesn't take a whole lot where we are right now for things to get out of hand. We've seen rising violence from right-wing extremists. We really need our leaders - opinion leaders and lawmakers to step in and calm things down. But they're doing exactly the opposite, and they're pouring gasoline on the fire.

GROSS: You're referring to Republican leaders?

MILBANK: Yes. That's what they're doing right now. It's reckless rhetoric. It is turning people against the government, turning people against the FBI and the Justice Department. And it is only natural to expect that this is the kind of thing that will lead people to desperation and to take matters into their own hands. We've been in a dangerous period of time for some time now. But, you know, the people who really track the pro-Trump social media saying - are saying this is really the most ominous time since right before the Jan. 6th insurrection.

GROSS: So if you haven't been following the backstory, of course, you'd be upset that the former president's home was raided by the FBI. But the backstory includes that he had taken 15 boxes of documents home which he was not legally allowed to do. There were classified documents in there. They were confiscated in a previous raid. The assumption is that this raid was looking for more such documents that Trump mishandled, and that could possibly be a criminal offense.

MILBANK: Well, of course, you would be. And if you are watching Fox News and reading Breitbart News and you're stuck in a social media silo where you're only getting highly filtered views, you probably haven't heard a whole lot about Trump's abuses of classified information. It's really in the Justice Department and the Biden administration's interest to get out more information right now. It's in the public interest to know what's happened here.

You know, we generally operate on some presumption of good faith that the government doesn't do things willy-nilly. But there is no good faith among the Trump Republicans right now. And it's really - the onus is on Merrick Garland to get out and say why this was important, why this needed to be done. So they need to do their part to erase some of the mystery. Now, will that get through the filters at Fox News and Breitbart? Perhaps only to a limited extent. But it definitely is in the public interest to get more information out.

GROSS: What are some of the political tactics that you think he pioneered that are still being used today?

MILBANK: Look at our politics today, a series of government shutdowns, a series of showdowns over debt default, this whole notion of defeating the agenda to prove that your opponents have failed, there have always been, you know, obstruction and disagreement in politics. I don't want to pretend that there was a golden age when everybody got along. But before the 1994 revolution, there really weren't such things as shutdowns. Or if they'd happen, it would be over a technical issue. It would happen for a few days at a time. You know, Ronald Reagan said it's ludicrous to talk about jeopardizing the full faith and credit of the U.S. currency. So this was an entirely different thing.

Now, more recently, we've heard Mitch McConnell talk about the most important thing we do is make Barack Obama a one-term president, talking about building up a whole library of failures for Obama, one after the other, and those build upon it, and that's how you defeat him. This is very much what Gingrich pioneered, the idea that you just bring one failure after another and the voters will reward you, the opposition party, for that. It wasn't necessarily wrong.

Who is advising Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans in the 2022 midterms? Newt Gingrich. His wife was the ambassador to the Vatican during the Trump years. And now Newt is on the board of an America First think tank that's close with the Trump Organization. We're very much living in Newt Gingrich's world now, and the rest of the party has come around to his way of thinking.

GROSS: And on Fox News, Gingrich said that members of the January 6 committee - of the House January 6 committee are going to face a real risk of jail after Republicans take over Congress.

MILBANK: He did. And this was actually right after The Washington Post reported that he was advising Kevin McCarthy. So we can only imagine what kind of advice House Republicans are getting right now. But think about that, the idea that you would threaten people who are running a legitimate congressional investigation with arrest and jail. That doesn't happen in a democracy…how did we get to a point where you can make such a threat at such a high level and people even take the whole notion seriously? And that is because at various stages along the way, people were pulling at the threads of democracy and the rule of law. And a key one of those was Newt Gingrich.

FUTURE OF TRUMPISM

MILBANK: I think the more important question is Trumpism is in and there is no threat to that within the Republican Party, so if it's not Donald Trump, it's Ron DeSantis or somebody else who has modeled himself after Trump. So in a sense, either way, Donald Trump wins.

GROSS: So one more question for you. In a few years, the U.S. will no longer be a white majority country. And that demographic change is likely to affect politics. What do you think the effect will be?

MILBANK: Well, I think that demographic change is already affecting our politics. It's a backlash against the rising multicultural America that is bringing out white evangelical Christians to vote in extraordinary numbers, non-college educated white voters. You know, that is very much the backlash that drove Donald Trump to power. In the long run, this will be resolved. We will be a multicultural country. You can only defy gravity for so long. So in the long run, I am optimistic that we will overcome the current strife that we are dealing with. The problem is it's a long time between now and then. And unfortunately Republicans, in order to hold on to power, are basically destroying the fundamentals of democracy (for) one man… to sustain power over the near term.

GROSS: Are you concerned that by the time we're no longer a white majority country, that democracy will be sufficiently destroyed, that the multicultural nature of our country won't register at the polls?

MILBANK: Well, I'm very concerned about that. And that's why I've written this book. You know, in the very long run, it becomes undeniable that this will be a multicultural America. But if we are not - if we reach that point and we are no longer a democracy and we've turned ourselves into a North American version of Hungary, where there is no longer a free press, well, we have to just keep fighting so that we don't reach such an eventuality. And that's what I'm going to do.

CONCLUSION

MILBANK: …If one thing we've learned from Trump, it's to be truthful. [End Excerpts]

BE TRUTHFUL. TRUST THE CENTRISTS TO MAKE THE RATIONAL CHOICES

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