The Zeitgeist of Obama

"HAPPY OBAMA NEW YEAR!"

Try yelling that to friends and strangers, it feels good and true. We are transitioning to a new era. The Bush Dark Ages are over! Humanity pivots and races into the Obama Age of Light. Personally, I am gleeful and at regular intervals dancing around the room.

Zeitgeist is an useful German word that means roughly "the spirit of times" or "the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation." There is a lovely zeitgeist afoot right now. There is a national mood that's new. I've seen optimistic and idealistic pockets of Americans, but I've never seen gleeful, idealistic national unity as a pervasive pop phenomenon. In the collective emotional body of the nation, there is an exultation and healing and relief! There is a sweet joy and gratitude and hope. America is back, baby!

We are experiencing the literal spiritual Rebirth of America. Everything eternally good and true about America is being brought forward. America stands for some powerful ideas that humanity needs: national unity from ethnic and racial diversity, religious tolerance, progressive inclusion of all for equal rights, the Rule of Law, and a fair legal system to administer Justice. And when a person or country stands for Good ideas, we are aligned to that great moral force that guides the universe. And so America is being plugged into the Divine again.

Obama is also asking us to expand our sense of identity beyond our ego to a greater identity as Americans and as humanity. Transcending ego is essential mechanism of a mystical spiritual experience. That unidentified spirituality lurks beneath pundit commentary. I heard an CNN commentator striving to overcome embarrassment as she said the mood on the DC mall had a flavor of the 'Brotherhood of Man." Go with it, sister, because it's a relief to not have to live inside the tiny prison of the ego, and to be released from the narcissistic self-absorption of the ego. It is joyful to start caring about our larger identities, like the country and the planet and the Brotherhood of Man.

Something died in the America during the Bush years. I, like many, was embarrassed by America's Imperial wars. America was torturing and abandoning the Rule of Law. Democracy became Corprotocracy and Kleptocracy. America became aligned to historical forces that need to opposed. The Bush version of America is not an America I love, but that I loathe! I am against the America that sends a War-Machine to other countries to steal the oil that we shouldn't be burning anyway.

They say that "Patriotism is the last refuge for a scoundrel." The Bushites wrapped themselves in the flag and the name and the symbols of America, and then totally abandoned the deeper meaning and purpose of America. In doing so, they turned the American flag into a phony-baloney fascistic propaganda tool. America isn't great because we have a nice flag. It's great because Jefferson's Bill of Rights guaranteed so many human rights that our political arrangement is an evolutionary leap forward.

America is great because we have traditionally been aligned to a great forward march of history towards greater liberty, dignity, distributed justice, and freedom. Bush has taken us two steps back, but now Obama has realigned the nation's moral compass on that great march. For example, in the inaugural speech, Obama said that we won't sacrifice our sacred ideals for expediency. He has promised to close the gulag prison at Guantanamo Bay. This is Good America returning.

America died and been born again. On Election Night '08, Norman Lear had an epiphany on this subject and eventually created some art about it at www.bornagainamerican.org.

So if we are Born Again Americans, then now what?

Well, first of all, this country is a bit of fixer upper and needs work.

Luckily, Obama and friends seem to have pretty good bead on where to go.

So how do we become allies of Obama?

How do we become Good Americans in a time of a Good America?

I don't know, but I'm willing to learn.

May humanity learn to be cooperative, supportive allies in the effort to heal the planet.

Happy Obama New Year!