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The choice between President Obama and former senator Mitt Romney is clear. Mitt Romney believes in tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization, and outsourcing. President Obama believes in healthy capitalism and fair taxation. He said today that people who make more than $1 million (PER YEAR) should pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as the middle class. Further, he presented lists of where that extra money could go: education, taking care of our citizens, and infrastructure. It is clear that if we work together, we can make America great again, better than ever before.

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Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I never imagined we would be debating women’s rights again in the twenty-first century. American women fought for equal rights since the 1920s, and probably longer. I grew up thinking the war was over. But here comes the bawdy right wing, digging up old issues.

In 1920, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, wrote:

The basic freedom of the world is woman’s freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

Now, I would like to add that all this enforced prudery over on the right reminds me of one of the symptoms of child abuse: low level of appropriate touch.

In the most toxic incest families all touching is considered taboo. Parents do not hug, caress, or cuddle their children, as normal families do. This is perhaps the most telling symptom of incest.

Right wing zealots have  made it clear they are against all forms of sex not meant for procreation. Maybe they are so uptight about it because they need to cover up for sexual exploitation happening (or having happened) in their families or institutions. To learn more about sexual abuse, go to the information page at this site—click here.

I would like to add a paragraph about why I am pro choice. As a woman who has had hundreds of female friends (many of whom are mothers), I want my say on this issue. Women have a built-in system to create a new human life, which is a miracle and full of magic. However, it wrecks the happiness of the creation process if the pregnancy is forced and unwanted. Creating life draws all the woman’s natural resources–physical, emotional, and spiritual. Some women simply do not have the strength to go through an unwanted pregnancy. It can break their spirit, and destroy a woman’s dreams for one day creating a child at a time of her choosing.  It should be a woman’s own decision whether and when she will create a new life.

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Where does the culture war take place? Where are the battlefields? They are everywhere. The family living room, the office break room, and anywhere people get political. Not everybody is consumed with hate, but everyone senses at least some of the systemic induced hatred. Following is an illustration.

Tuesday night we had our annual homeowner’s association meeting at the condominiums where I live. It was a pleasure. Lots of people attended. We talked, laughed, applauded each other, watched a slide show, and held our election. It was full of good memories, up to the end, waving goodbye to everyone and walking home.

Wednesday night was the homeowner’s March meeting for the larger association, which controls a 320 acre development. The people at those meetings are angry, have taken sides and see each other as enemies. They have strict standards for how to do your gardens and what colors you can paint your house. Everyone bullies each or flouts each other, possibly to make up for childhood deficits.

At the greater association meetings, what I see is a lot of people who deep down inside love each other. However, they have built up stereotypes, profiled each other, and closed the doors to love. I have been a witness to the contrast between the dual associations for several years now. Our sub-association gets better and better, while the other one becomes more tense.

The point is that it is within our power to cultivate love and work together. Strife is not inevitable, it’s a bad habit. To break a bad habit, think about the good habit you want to develop to replace it. Perhaps we could build the good habit of getting to know someone as an individual, reserving our judgments.

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In my books, I have tried to prove to the reader that the unbearable truth about the world is good. There is much pain involved in reality, and the truth is often unwelcome, but it appears eventually even if everyone in the world tries to hide it and keep it down.

One of the most powerful shocks I had after leaving the religious cult was when I realized that the very things I wanted to escape in the cult now permeate our culture. I didn’t notice it as much until after 9/11, so I am not sure if it is getting worse, or if it has always been as bad as a bad-ass religious cult in the mainstream world. Specifically, it seems that society is eating itself up from inside. Right now one side of us is trying to mutilate and destroy civil rights, women’s rights, and the commons. One of the Republican candidates said he wants to rip government up by the roots. Essentially, he wants the Union to secede from the Union.

In times like this, one of the best defenses is easy access to a peaceful place inside oneself. If we can look inward and find peace, then we can also look at the world. Anyone who lives in the world must suffer grief observing the collective problems. We need to acknowledge the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and abuse, even when it comes from powerful people who could retaliate. Sometimes the darkness seems to surround us and isolate us. However, truth is stronger. Love is real and has been the main thing to see us through so far. God’s love, our love for the savior, for the benevolent higher power, for the inner consciousness. It is up to you how you name it.

The pocks of dark must be there for whatever metaphorical or metaphysical reason. How to cope.? Look squarely into the darkness with compassion. Then trust that truth/love is stronger. Go to the forest, read a book, meditate, tackle your new project. Whatever it is that connects you with what is good, go there and leave the world’s burden behind for a time. Join others who acknowledge the dark side, but choose a better future. That is the meaning behind Dreaming Peace. Your thoughts can change your own personal life; our thoughts together can change our world.

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“With the Internet, we weave a web of love to replace outdated and tangled webs of fear.”

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Thinking this morning of Trayvon Martin, the seventeen year old slain in Florida yesterday. Each detail of the case is more emotionally painful than the fact that came before. My thoughts and prayers to his girlfriend, friends, and family.

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Back to my favorite subject. But you know what it is like to be in a cult and to be abused, or to have a dear relative wrapped up with a cult. It is painful to watch. I was in a cult from 1978-1988; members of my family are currently in the cult of Rush Limbaugh. Not sure of how they justify his most recent outrages. But then I think back to when I was in a cult. It was easy to think of rationalizations, even if your guru killed somebody. It is inexplicable, but also more common than you know.

So let’s be liberal and focus on making it easier to communicate, easier to forgive, and naturally more accepting and tolerant. How to do? Focus on your own life. Once you get healthy emotional boundaries, you may decide this abusive person is something you need to distance. Then again, you may decide having the person in your life is acceptable.

One thing I would like us to communicate about better is the issue of sex. Anyway, just to open up the conversation, your voice of surrealist would like to put it all out there up front. I am a slut. I am a witch. I am an old bitty. Any of those choices would be accurate, yet I can live with myself. In fact, I love myself. My sluttiness and evil are minor parts of my personality. Plus, I have done my level best to be a better person.

Since I forgive myself, I also forgive you your sluttiness and anger. However, you may not have done that work on yourself yet, so I try to keep it to myself. You have to be the first person to love yourself before you can accept love from others. Still, this is my love to you, inviting you to look into your own darkness. You will come back humble, grateful and sure this is a sweet world we have been given, and only our embarrassments and addictions keep us from living more fully in it. Our own unacknowledged emotional pain is the thing that sentences us to life in a cult.

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The State of Hawaii is considering a bill to recognize an official State microbe, the Nesiotobacter exalbescens. If HB2079 passes, Hawaii will be the first of the fifty states to acknowledge beneficial microbes. According to a report in the Hawaii Reporter, Dr. Stuart P. Donachie is the scientist who discovered the Nesiotobacter exalbescens microbe in 2000. He is a supporter of HB2079 because it will help reverse people’s “negative feelings about microbes.” In favor of friendly microbes, he said they “created and sustain our environment” and their “contributions to our health and the environment are often overlooked.”

To read the Hawaii Reporter article, click here.  To find out more about friendly, beneficial microbes, visit the Organic Cures page, click here.

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How sad that the 2012 presidential campaign is infested with religious cult behavior. Lately, it has been a campaign to return to Puritanical moral codes. The book, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was a nineteenth century glimpse into Puritan fundamentalism of the 1600s in Boston. In the story, protagonist Hester Pryne was forced to embroider a red “A” on her dresses as part of her punishment for adultery.

On the other hand, we have a candidate whose grandfather fled the United States rather than give up his extra wives. Mormonism itself is not a new age cult anymore, but the polygamous Mormon groups definitely fall in the coercive mind-control column. The candidate himself has not done much to address people’s uneasiness on the subject.

So what will it be America? Is everybody ready to join a cult? Two new books advise otherwise. Adults may suffer consequences, but it is the children in a cult who are most vulnerable to exploitation. Check out Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment, by Janet Heimlich. Her book examines child maltreatment (abuse and neglect) in religious authoritarian cultures in the U.S., whether they are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim-based.

Child of the Cult, my latest book, traces the lives of five people who grew up in coercive new age groups: the Unification Church, Transcendental Meditation, ISKCON, Aesthetic Realism, and the Children of God. It is available as a Kindle edition. The conclusion offers suggestions for reducing violence against children and lowering the volume of cultish behavior in the mainstream.

It is time to get out of the seventeenth century. Consider these two books road maps for healing our society. Find  Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment Amazon.com (paperback or Kindle edition)   Visit the author’s website:  http://janetheimlich.com and find Child of the Cult at Amazon as a Kindle edition (click here to preview the book at Amazon.com) or visit my website: http://norimuster.com.

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When you think of America, say God bless America. Our people are waking up. I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see. We are a nation united, including women and minorities.

If your r-wing loved ones begin to awaken, just bless them. Assure them that our country is strong and we will heal the rift. You can go a long way toward planetary healing if you are loving. Don’t start an All in the Family-style argument in your living room. Visualize peace in the culture war. There will be time to talk things out later.

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