All of my instincts tell me to stay out of this conversation taking place about the American election among Facebook friends largely connected with Yoga. But I just cannot.
The emotional pitch has been high for many months, now, and I guess rightly so. The American public has been traumatized by the election.
Edward Bernays
During World War I, the American public had been dead set against entering the Great War, until the warmongers hired Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, to change the public’s opinion, so that the United States could also enter that great carnage. Bernays has been called the father of modern propaganda, a master of crowd psychology and public relations, and began in earnest what Chomsky would call “manufacturing consent.” Bernays’ book, “Propaganda,” published in 1928 became the bible of Joseph Goebbels and many others.
Torches of Freedom
His success was so great in swaying public opinion, that shortly after WWI he was approached by the American tobacco industry with the complaint that 50% of their potential customers didn’t smoke cigarettes mainly due to social taboo.
His answer manifested in the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City, in which he had women marching for their equal rights holding lit Lucky Strike cigarettes, which he called “Torches of Freedom.” He had this event filmed and photographed from every angle, which then played in cinema halls around the country as “Newsreel” and published in newspapers and popular magazines as “News” of a new women’s movement of liberation and equality.
The tobacco industry boomed as women’s smoking habits became socially acceptable and further a sign of their social equality. This was convincing to many leaders of American industry, that the best way to carry their message to the American public was through News, not advertising.
Drawing on Uncle Sigmund’s theories, his genius was to sway American opinion based on emotion. Emotional reactions based on carefully managed and often staged news. Consumerism today is largely based on this mass psychology.
What strikes me today is that this election as presented to the public was based on a referendum to the sexism, bigotry, and xenophobia of Donald Trump. And while I certainly don’t doubt that he is all of the above, and that he may very well be a really disgusting human being, this is far from the whole picture, and certainly can only distort the meaning and causes of what has just happened.
And those who are not able to see beyond the narrative of 5-6 mega corporations producing our “news” are condemned to be continually manipulated and emotionally traumatized.
To think that people voted for Donald Trump because they resemble him is frankly absurd. He’s a billionaire, a member of the elite and privileged class who has not suffered financially like countless millions around the country have, but has most likely seen his fortune increase.
He was elected largely by voters in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin who have seen their jobs and financial security disappear and would traditionally look to a “workers party,” what used to be the Democratic Party, as a savior.
They, along with the true progressives of the Democratic Party who showed up in the tens of thousands at the Bernie Sanders rallies, wanted change. Bernie Sanders told his millions that the establishment was corrupt and the system was rigged against them. The mood of the electorate on both sides of the aisle was “change” and a repudiation of the establishment.
The Clintons
Under the leadership of Bill and Hillary, the Democratic Party moved away from their traditional base of support, the working class, already in the 1990’s, to embrace Wall Street, Big Pharma, Fossil Fuel Industry, and the War Machine. They figured the left had nowhere else to go.
Bill and Hillary began the deregulation of Wall Street, from which they and the DNC filled their financial coffers but eventually led to America’s great financial collapse and the alienation of the American voter. The Clintons also gutted welfare and filled America’s prisons (and new private prisons) with African-Americans, a further move to the right.
If we are to assign blame for a Trump presidency, I would lay it squarely at the feet of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, not the American voter. Bernie Sanders articulately laid out the problem to his throngs of supporters and re-installed ideals and hope not seen since Obama’s campaign in 2007.
Millions of new voters registered to vote, entering the electoral process for the first time. He proposed change which was clearly what the American people wanted.
Whether one agreed or not with his policies, he was a candidate of ideals as opposed to the two flawed and scandal-ridden candidates the American people got.
The DNC and Clinton campaign did their level best to marginalize his appeal, and, as we can see clearly from Wikileaks, threw him and his support base under the bus. The Wikileaks’ emails were so clear that the chairman of the DNC and 4 others had to resign. And yet, they figured, as they did in the 1990’s, this support base had nowhere else to go. They were fatally wrong. Instead, they chose to manipulate the American people through the corporate media. Because, after all, they ARE the establishment.
Hillary’s appeal to women.
Hillary was not the first female Secretary of State. That honor went to Madeleine Albright, a longtime Clinton sycophant. who previously was Bill’s ambassador to the UN. The same woman who described a “special place in hell” for those women who don’t support Hillary. In a television interview on “60 minutes,” when asked about sanctions on Iraq by Lesley Stahl, “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And – and you know, is the price worth it?” She answered, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”
Where are the tears for the 500,000 women who lost a child? Is there a greater tragedy for a 
woman than to lose her child? Do these women not count? Where is our outrage? Where was Hillary’s outrage?
In 1999, Bill and Hillary were responsible for bombing our brothers and sisters in Belgrade 78 days killing 1000’s of innocent people, killing and maiming 100’s of children, destroying 20 hospitals, 300 schools and libraries, and destroying or damaging 40,000 homes.
How would you feel if it was Philadelphia that was bombed for two and a half months with air raid sirens roaring through the night? These are people who are very culturally similar to you and me, many of whom also practice yoga. Was their suffering acceptable? Their infrastructure and economy were destroyed and they have been forced to live in poverty since then. Is this OK?
Everybody I know knew there were no WMD in Iraq. Of course, I wasn’t addicted to the corporate media. Why didn’t Hillary know? She had much better sources than us. She did know. A million people died there. Countless women and children killed, buried under rubble. Where are our tears for these women? Where are our tears for an entire nation whose lives and futures were destroyed. Where is our 
condemnation of the politicians and their complicit corporate media who did this to so many innocents?
I made a tour of Yoga Studios in the USA in 2005 when I controversially said that anyone who doesn’t cry themselves to sleep at night over the suffering caused to the Iraqi people is not a yogi.
Iraq, unlike Hillary’s friends and benefactors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, was a secular Arab country with much greater opportunity and equality for women than any of those countries that so generously filled Hillary’s coffers at the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton campaign. It was also a country had much greater religious freedom than Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and exported its abundant agricultural output around the Arab world. The institutions and infrastructure of Iraq were destroyed and a once prosperous country turned into a living hell.
Once Hillary was appointed Secretary of State, learning absolutely nothing from unnecessary suffering that was created for the women of Iraq, she did the same in Libya, another prosperous secular nation, in what’s now referred to as “Hillary’s War.” Even Obama wasn’t on board for this travesty.
She gleefully exclaimed, “We came, we saw, he died,” when Gaddafi was gruesomely impaled on a bayonet by Islamic terrorists. A man, by the way, who was loved by his people, and gave educational opportunities to Libya’s children and whose women were not treated like animals like they are in Saudi Arabia.
Now Libya’s institutions and infrastructure are destroyed as they were in Iraq, and as we well know is a haven for Islamic terrorism. The scandal of Hillary’s emails arose out of the investigation of the why’s and how’s of the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.
On to Syria. Yet another secular Arab nation, in which again women enjoyed much greater freedoms, and religious minorities enjoyed much greater freedoms than those in Saudi Arabia. Hillary was again the leading War Hawk, with even greater implications. How many women and children have suffered and died there?
Not only has this created a refugee deluge which threatens the political stability of Europe, but she publicly stated on numerous occasions including the last presidential debate that she wants a “no-fly zone” over Syria.
When questioned in Congress about this “no-fly zone,” General Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that this would mean war with Russia. Excuse me? You can watch this testimony on You Tube. I don’t know how much coverage this has had in the corporate media. But I believe this is something that all Americans should be acutely aware of. Do we really want to risk the possible annihilation of our planet? This is existential, my friends.
In Ukraine, the Hillary cabal was responsible for the coup that overthrew their democratically elected government, largely carried out by Neo-Nazi maniacs.
I have received numerous requests for protective YANTRAS from women in Eastern Ukraine that fear for the safety of their families, and yes, their children, from more bombing from the air, attacks from the ground, and the absence of food and water.
The related sanctions placed on Russia have caused the collapse of the Rubel, high prices, and shortages in Russia among regular people, brother and sisters who also practice yoga, who are also spiritual, who also have families and children. Recently, 40 million people went through drills and exercises designed to protect them against an American nuclear attack. Is this the kind of world we want to live in?
NATO is placing missiles and hundreds of thousands of troops on Russia’s borders, the same borders that Hitler’s troops crossed in World War II resulting in the deaths of 28 million human beings in Russia. How many women and children does this threaten?
Anyone who claims Hillary is protecting or wants to protect women, children, and minorities needs to have their heads examined, or, at least, get better informed.
I shed my tears for the millions of women and their children and their husbands and brothers who have lost their lives, liberties, and happiness to the lifelong ambition of a woman who has wanted to be the first female President of the United States, and her greed for money and power.
If it’s protest that fills your hearts, then hold your tears and fill your cars with family and friends and drive to Standing Rock. There, the traditional peoples of North America, the American Indian tribes with their Water Protector Shamans are in an existential battle for their families, children, cultures, their water, and, in fact, everyone’s water.
Mother Goddess bless and save you all. –Baba Rampuri
Baba Rampuri, author of “Autobiography of a Sadhu, a Journey into Mystic India,” and frequent commentator on Oral Tradition, Sacred Speech, and post colonial analysis, is an American expatriate, the first foreigner to be initiated into India’s largest and most ancient order of yogis, the Naga Sannyasis of Juna Akhara.
He has lived in India since 1970, where he practices and teaches the oral tradition of the Sanatan Dharma, conducts sacred ceremony and rites, and hosts workshops and retreats. He is now a guru with a number of disciples within the order. At the Maha Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, 2010, he was honored with the title, “Shri Mahant,” for his 40 years of practice and service, and given a permanent seat in the Council of Juna Akhara.
