United In Name Only, Divided We Stand.

The people of the USA provide an easy soft target for those bent on creating and maintaining a division between them. A comment on a piece by David Sirota this week "Actually, Obama Does Support Perpetual War", criticising the President's second inauguration speech brought this home to me again.

Snip from Mr. Sirota's article~~

Four years into his presidency, Barack Obama’s political formula should be obvious. He gives fabulous speeches teeming with popular liberal ideas, often refuses to take the actions necessary to realize those ideas and then banks on most voters, activists, reporters and pundits never bothering to notice – or care about – his sleight of hand.

Whether railing on financial crime and then refusing to prosecute Wall Street executives or berating health insurance companies and then passing a health care bill bailing out those same companies, Obama embodies a cynical ploy – one that relies on a celebrity-entranced electorate focusing more on TV-packaged rhetoric than on legislative reality.

Never was this formula more apparent than when the president discussed military conflicts during his second inaugural address. Declaring that “a decade of war is now ending,” he insisted that he “still believe(s) that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.”

The lines generated uncritical applause, much of it from anti-war liberals who protested against the Bush administration. Living up to Obama’s calculation, few seemed to notice that the words came from the same president who is manufacturing a state of “perpetual war.”

The piece appeared at Salon and Common Dreams, perhaps elsewhere too. I agreed with what Mr. Sirota put forward, but was also in accord with many commenters, especially those at Common Dreams, when they pointed out that just weeks ago Mr Sirota was encouraging readers to vote for Barack Obama in November's presidential election, rather than leading an attempt to bring the Green or other party further to the fore. One comment at Salon rang particularly true and managed to put, in a nutshell, the whole dire situation. The highlighted (by me) portion relates to the rest of this post, and to the ease with which the population of the US can be herded into two camps.

....The entire Obama m.o. is "Liberal speeches, Conservative governance," and it is not only the unbelievably gullible/scared/misguided Democratic base that helps him, and the media sycophants (MSNBC) that shill for his narrative and sweep his hypocrisy under the rug, but it is the lunatic Right that helps him also. The more they call him Stalin, the more the Obama Left rushes to his defense and ignores that he is actually Mussolini. The more extreme they sound about policy (and there is no shortage of this, of course), the more the rest of the country is trapped into supporting the unprincipled failure who at least isn't batsh*t insane. It adds up to a perfect system of misdirection and endless partisan bickering among the citizenry in sports-fandom for a completely phony "fight" in Washington that isn't actually happening at all.
("Benga" 25 Jan 2013 11.32 AM)

I've written along these lines before......

The states are united, the people never will be. Their destiny, and their desire, it appears, is to remain passionately divided, with more than a little help from their "friends". In the past, the extent of it wasn't as easily noted by the average person. The internet has provided a viewing platform unavailable until recent years.

I'm drawn back to the astrological chart for the USA known as The Armistead Chart, set for 2 July 1776, the date on which Congress adopted a resolution of independence. Most astrologers choose one of the US charts set for for 4 July - Independence Day, when the resolution was proclaimed. I believe that the time when Congress adopted the resolution, was the time the die was truly cast. I've copied the chart from the collection at Astrodatabank, and taken the liberty of further highlighting a relevant division.

Normally, I'm skeptical about astrological charts for inanimate entities such as countries, but this one could convince me there's value in them. Just look at that opposition between Mercury (communication, mental processes) and Moon/Pluto. Moon represents the public, Pluto = powerful passions. As I see it, that opposition dominates the chart and symbolises the dichotomy.

I'm not surprised to find that Washington DC itself has been described as a city of dichotomies:

Washington was a city of dichotomies, contrasts, and striking inequalities. It was the capital of a major democracy that lacked local democracy. It was a citadel of power whose residents lacked power. It was a city with an excess of multimillion dollar office buildings and a shortage of housing. It was a city that was wealthier than most in which a sizable minority lives in great poverty. It had a 70 percent black population but the major decisions were still made by whites. It was a city in which the American dream and the American tragedy passed each other on the street and did not speak. It was, finally, a city that had suffered a form of deprivation known primarily to the poor and the imprisoned, a psychological deprivation born of the constant suppression and denial of one's identity, worth, or purpose by those in control. Washington to those in power was not a place but a hall to rent. The people of Washington were the custodian staff. And the renters were as likely to visit the world in which this staff lived as a parishioner is to inspect the boiler room of the church. The purpose of Washington's community was to serve not to be.
POCKET PARADIGMS
FROM THE WRITINGS OF SAM SMITH.

Image credit: http://www.theslpress.com/dichotomy.html