DIALOGUE

While most ever one criticizes the debate debacle in Washington as everything from a clash of ideologies to political posturing to a game of party brinksmanship, the underlying psychic condition is a conflict between opposites. If we can put aside the terrible consequence of holding the country as economic hostage, there is a terrible beauty that can be seen in the dueling bills: the Republicans could not get their bill through the Senate and it remains to be seen today whether the Senate is any more successful in getting the bill through the House; a sort of yin-yang that is suspended in disharmony. In the background is Obama waiting to reach for his veto pen, his 14th amendment pen or putting his signature on a compromised piece of legislation. In any event, one wonders what happened to the visionary leader we voted for because at this critical point, no pen will repair that lost image. Contrast this situation with a similar one that held the Australian people in a headlock. Being a British colony, the stalemate was broken when the Queen (and her emissary) stepped in and asserted the supreme authority to decide the matter. Whatever your position, this situation offers a study in how psychic energy, on a collective level, moves and can become fixated. It is an enantiadromia that's been either swinging wildly from one opposite to the other, or not at all. What's needed is a transcendent third position but as yet I do not see anyone rising about the fray, invoking an archetypal position. And in the meantime, the public has been relatively silent, paralyzed, transfixed, waiting, waiting as the clock ticks down...