Democrats in my Shower--Fallout from the Senate All-Nighter

The dream was absurd, as dreams often are. It was the type of dream that makes you sit up scratching your head in puzzlement, trying to figure out what on earth you ate last night: I was standing in a bathtub. I was wearing a white terry cloth bath wrap. Suddenly, the shower curtain was thrust aside, and my husband shoved someone into the tub with me… At this point, as I related the dream to my husband, his primary concern was whether the person was female and if she was also wearing a bath wrap. But I digress.

The person was…Nancy Pelosi. Yes, that Nancy Pelosi. I had barely recovered from the shock of having the Speaker of the House shoved into my shower (fully dressed, actually, wearing a very nice suit and a pearl necklace) when Harry Reid came tumbling through the shower curtain. Then came John McCain, wielding a loofah in a vaguely menacing fashion, and Joe Lieberman, looking extremely bewildered (I should note that everyone was actually wearing very nice suits, although Speaker Pelosi was the only one wearing a pearl necklace). One after another, senators and representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, they were being shoved into the tub with me. Just as Joe Biden stepped gingerly through the shower curtain, bearing bath salts (or maybe it was smelling salts,) I awoke.

Democrats in my shower? Republicans carrying loofahs? What on earth had I eaten last night, and why wasn’t my Pepcid AC taking care of it? The dream lingered as I climbed out of bed and headed to the bathroom, carefully peering around the corner for any politicians still lurking about. I kept wondering why I would have dreamt something so patently ridiculous, so wildly ludicrous. As I sat down and opened the morning paper, I spotted a headline that eased my fevered mind considerably: "Senate Democrats in All-Nighter on Iraq". Beneath the headline was a picture of empty cots, awaiting their erstwhile occupants later that night. Ahhhhh. Now I could see the possible origin of those absurd images: it was all that talk of a congressional sleepover that did it, not the chicken fajitas.

It became evident to me, that, although I had not consciously paid all that much attention to the hype about the overnight debate on Iraq planned and staged by the Senate Democrats, my subconscious mind had plenty to say about it. Now that I had the roots of my dream fairly well identified, I tried to understand what it was about the all-night Senate escapades that had so resonated with me that they had entered my dreams. Was it sadness at this group of powerful men and women being reduced to using publicity stunts to get the attention of the American public? Was it the incongruity of these lawmakers planning a "sleepover" for something as grave as a solution for an end to the war? Was it the desperation we all feel, whether Republican or Democrat, Politician or Innocent Bather, over the situation in Iraq and our apparent inability to find a way out? As I mused, my mischievous mind was helpfully uploading apparently unused images from my dream, images of Speaker Pelosi doing Senator Biden’s nails in one corner of my bathroom, while in another corner a group of senators in footie pajamas debated over whether to play "Truth or Dare" or "Spin the Bottle". I could almost smell the popcorn popping. To me, the message of this dream was starting to become clear.

The famous psychiatrist Carl Jung "…saw dreams as a way of the unconscious communicating with the conscious part of ourselves in order to bring something to our notice and restore our equilibrium." Clearly, the unconscious part of myself was trying to bring something to my notice, just as the Senate Democrats were trying to bring something to our notice by pulling this "publicity stunt" in the first place.

Do I think that the All-Nighter was an effective move on the Senators’ parts? After all, it didn’t really change a thing. No, I don’t. But did their stunt get my attention? Absolutely. My conscious mind paid their stunt no heed, but in my dreams, my mind made me pay attention, made me take notice, forced me to try to make sense of what is happening in the Senate with this endless debate about Iraq. And that is just what the Senate was attempting to do with their All-Nighter: to make the American public pay attention, to make us try to understand what is happening in these debates over the war, and why we are still waiting for a solution. Perhaps if we all pay closer attention, our politicians will feel us watching them, will hear our voices, and they will find their way back to equilibrium—back to a balanced, reasonable, non-partisan debate. Perhaps then, they can find the solution to this mess, and the need for publicity stunts such as the "Senate Sleepover" will disappear.

I don’t know what the answer is. The debates will, and must, continue until a solution is found. Until then, I can only hope that Democrats and Republicans alike will all stay out of my shower—in the meantime, I’ll be watching them, very closely.

Source: PsychicsConnect.com