Today is the 177th birthday of Emma Lazarus, who wrote The New Colossus, the sonnet from which the lines, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free” come. It is a poem of contrast, of choice between destinies. It advises us to choose to be “Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land…”. The more famous lines lose their power without those which precede them.

People and groups lose our way. That’s why The New Colossus is SO good. It says, to America (and to many, maybe all, people and organizations), “Seek to be a light. You’re capable of being a power. Don’t settle for that. Don’t be seduced. That’s not what people need. It’s not what we’ve EVER needed. We need a light, a welcome, a safe harbor. Food for our bellies. A hot drink for our nerves, our psyches. People don’t need us to be exceptional; they/we need us/them to be humane.” Less flashy, and more necessary. Indispensable.

America has gone for power instead of light, ignoring her advice.

The Christian church in America has also sold itself for power, at a time when its virtues are sorely needed. The Church Original and Universal gave in to that temptation long ago, with Constantine. They forgot Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness: Satan showed him all the power he could have. He passed, but his church could not resist the temptation. Still can’t. They claim that America is a Christian nation. If that were true, we’d be seeking to be a light, whoever was the power. We’d be emphasizing the State Department, not the military. We need a military: at times people also need to be physically strong, or to have a strong parent or friend. A Christian America would be an America that serves. That attracts rather than compels.

The strength of liberalism/progressivism isn’t that we’re right about everything, though we are. ;-) It’s that we are compassionate. A Little Exercise for Young Theologians talks about the danger of using one’s erudition to lord it over others. It’s so common, people on social media sneering at those who disagree with them. Rare is the expert (or wannabe expert) who functions on social media as a loving, beloved teacher. Experts must not only be right, but also know why something is true, must also understand the opposing arguments and be able to answer them. Knowing the truth (as best we can) is a much more limited accomplishment than putting it to use for the benefit of others.

Click and Clack of Car Talk fame never made anyone feel dumb. They made asking even simple, uninformed questions safe, even USEFUL, because C&C used them to entertain and inform EVERYone, not just the questioner. They knew more than anybody, and made everybody happy about it.

This is why superhero films won’t last: at some point we’ll realize how little in the real world is accomplished (and how briefly it lasts) by those capable of overpowering others. Most of the time, we need family, friends, and neighbors, rather than people swooping in and away. We need a woman with a torch – and her foot on the chains that bound us.

Since before the Industrial Revolution Westerners have wanted to conquer Nature. Instead of partnering with Nature, we imagine profiting by extracting parts from the whole living system. We lessen that of which we are a part, and imagine ourselves its master. We’re blowing out our own candle, and thinking that makes us conquerors.

Young men – and their fathers – need to understand this choice between power and light most of all. We have great potential for harm – to ourselves as well as others – when we choose badly. We think that throwing our power around is what we’re here for. It isn’t, and our fathers and other men should have told us that. (Not only men can teach boys to be good men, of course. But we should do our part. That is one of the things men should grow to be capable of doing.)

So on this 177th birthday of Emma Lazarus, let us consider that being strong is only a virtue if we are first welcoming. Not of the strong and accomplished, but of the outcasts, the underestimated. Anybody can make a great country out of those who are already great by some limited measures. What would make us different, special, and meaningfully great is a demonstrated ability to build a compassionate, helpful, strong, and enduring society with the people others have underestimated and discarded. (“The stone the builders rejected…” – remember that bit?) That is the mortar that would hold our diverse bricks together and make a shelter for any human in need of a place.

The New Colossus is American canon, along with the Gettysburg Address, Langston Hughes’s poem, Let America Be America Again, and many other wise words. An America that heeds the advice of Emma Lazarus would be a place where all these others could kindle their own lights.

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Data Centers and AI are like The Force: they can be used for Good or for Ee-vil.

E.g, I’m on the board of a community health center, and have heard hints of the good uses to which AI is being put in healthcare. But these entities are reproducing like viruses in a business environment that tolerates the co-existence of billionaires with the hungry, under-educated, and sick; an environment that is collapsing from the accelerating rush into climate change; and an environment that gives preference to short-term profit over every other concern.

This is true of every industry, business, and undertaking, not just AI and data centers. There are about 5000 data centers in the US already, and you can search high and low – use AI to do so if you like – to find ANY community that’s glad to have them. When one is proposed, we’re told about the jobs and revenue that a data center will bring. But away from such sales pitches we hear about how good AI will be for every Fortune 500 company – precisely because it will allow them to reduce labor costs. In other words, as data centers employ dozens, they will UN-employ hundreds, or thousands. THAT is where the ROI will come from. THAT is the benefit being touted away from the sales pitches. Which is great for you if you’re at the top of the heap of a country running on Social Darwinism instead of one with a social contract.

We need a temporary restraining order until a couple of things are in place and given time to work the kinks out before proceeding.

First, institute a Universal Basic Income. This will send a message that we are moving on from a business policy of predation. EVERY person, without exception, should know that they live in a country in which they will never lack for the basics of life: food, shelter, education, and medical care. It’s not about who you are as a person, or what you deserve, but about who we are as a people, and our commitment to leave no one hungry, homeless, or sick, period. It’s not about weighing your worth, but insisting on our basic decency.

Second, require that every company – not just AI- and data-center-related companies – transition to B Corp status. Most corporations are C Corps, which requires that everything else takes a back seat to profit and ROI for shareholders. (NOT stakeholders: share holders.) An economy devoted to C Corps creates an world where cooperation and consideration are simply not permitted to encroach on the demands of the highest possible profits. B Corps don’t deny the necessity of profit, but they give equal footing to the well-being of people and planet. Competition and cooperation need each other like breathing in and breathing out do, like birds need left and right wings. A B Corp that provides or benefits from AI will not do so at the expense of its community, employees, or customers, but in service to them. Shouldn’t every business have always been run that way? Data center sales pitches promise they’ll be good for our communities, right? They should have no objection to being obligated to living up to that promise.

If we were to ask 500 blue collar working folks for the top ten things they wish they had access to in their hometown, not one of them would say, “What we really need is a data center in this town.” They might talk about safety and good schools for their kids; dignity and security for their elders; some slim hope of getting out from under mountains of debt (credit cards charge 20%+ interest now; that used to be not just illegal, but universally recognized as immoral); maybe more parks, or places to gather with friends and family after work; stability of costs like housing and utilities; good, stable jobs that pay well enough to set some aside after paying bills. But not data centers.

Not one of those 500 would say that what they really need are a few more billionaires, increased surveillance of everything we do – and computers that can make rude cartoons or deceptive pictures or videos on demand. Especially when data centers befoul our water, raise utility prices, and generate a persistent, unending drone reminiscent of the industries of Mordor.

Banning the construction of data centers for, say, 5 or 10 years will not cost us anything we need – 5000 of them should hold us for now – while giving us time to see if those 5000 are needed in the first place, and time to take care of what we might call deferred maintenance. Let’s solve climate change, keep utility costs down, build a society that leaves nobody hungry, sick, or homeless, and change the business culture so it’s no longer illegal for companies to be good to their employees and customers as well as their owners.

I will return to Kermit Roosevelt’s book, The Nation That Never Was, later this week.

In the meantime, everyone should read this article by on Reinventing the Democratic Party and send it to their local and state candidates, saying “I want this. Not some of it. All of it. Other countries have it; time for us to remember how to lead, but first we have to catch up.”

Here is a preview of David’s points – after which I add some of my own. But read his whole piece: it will make your head spin, and you’ll grok how it set me off as it did.

• Tax millionaires and corporations

• Medicare for all (I would add healthcare for immigrants and visitors, too; what are we, barbarians?)

• Paid family & medical leave

• Double the federal minimum wage

• Make abortion legal AND available

• Prioritize climate change

• Fully fund Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid

• Affordable childcare and high quality education

• Background checks for guns

I would add to David’s list the following:

• No hunger in America. A nation as rich as ours, that still has hunger? Obscene

• Clean, safe, affordable, energy-efficient housing for everyone

• Massive prison reform. An overhaul. Where do I even start?

• Healthcare includes medical, dental, vision, brain health, pre- and post-natal

• End the Electoral College: make candidates campaign in the entire country/state, and make every vote count the same as every other

• End corporate personhood. Transition every corporation to B Corporation status

• End Citizens United

• Pass the Equal Rights Amendment

• Pass a Right to Privacy Amendment

• Credit card interest rates now average 20+%. It is extortionate

• Create a national service program: military, Americorps, Peace Corps, CCC, etc. Incentivize it, rather than making it mandatory

• Restore USAID and worldwide research cooperation

• Inheritance reform: no one inherits > $1,000,000. They’ll get by. Tocqueville was right: inheritance laws foster equality of condition (or don’t).

• Increase penalties for the rich and powerful who break laws and betray the public trust. Those with more potential for harm should face more dire penalties.

• Revoke licenses of businesses that pollute beyond strictly permitted levels, and hold corporate officers personally financially responsible

• No billionaires ever again. Apply tariffs to any country that harbors billionaires

• Reduce military budget to parity with the State Department. Prioritize diplomacy and international military cooperation

• Take care of veterans. For life

• Revisit relations with Native American nations with an eye toward correcting our long injustice toward those good people

• Indict and prosecute those implicated by the Epstein Files

• Consider proposals for reparations for African Americans

• Climate change, just to emphasize: this is a catastrophe already underway, along with plastic pollution and the rate of extinctions. This must be first priority, internationally. This should be like FDR going to Detroit and saying, “Guess what? You’re now in the business of making tanks and planes. Do good work. No, I’m not taking questions.”

• I could go on . . . you could, too. Feel free to add yours.

As for whether Democrats will listen . . . insert shrug emoji here. If the rise of Trump, all by itself, didn’t rouse them from their stupor, I’m not confident that even Mr. Rothkopf’s article, much less my little blog post, will. I dropped my party registration after party elders endorsed the sex pest, Cuomo, over Mamdani. At least one friend has withdrawn support from Dems because Kamala didn’t distance herself from Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Others have just tired of voting for candidates because they’re not the GOP/MAGA candidate.

No, the two parties are not the same. But Dems are not meeting the moment, to say the very least. If they won’t reform, we need another option right now. Lots of good writers are trying to help, like Rothkopf. But perhaps Wormtongue has sedated Theoden past the point of revival. If so, we need new leadership.

Last chance, Dems. Shake your chains to Earth like dew. We the many are done waiting for you.

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Let me rain on your July 4th parade and fireworks display. Our parents, our Founding Fathers, were not what we have enjoyed believing them to be.

If you think that a return to the Constitution and the Declaration, to our Founders’ original vision, will end this nightmare, and all shall be well . . . you have taken the Blue Pill. The Blue Pill in this case is what Kermit Roosevelt III calls the Standard Story in his frankly revolutionary book, The Nation That Never Was. The Standard Story is inspiring, familiar, and comforting.

If you have a stomach for some hard truths, take the Red Pill. Read his book. No easy answers follow. But the truth enables us to see why the changes that need to be made have been delayed for so long, and Why We Can’t Wait any longer to Let America Be America, this time for everyone.

Roger Taney (pronounced TAWnee) was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court which issued the infamous Dred Scott decision. It interpreted the Constitution as saying that Black people could never be US citizens and had no rights that citizens are obligated to respect.

Roosevelt says that the Dred Scott decision was consistent with our founding documents. That’s not what we usually hear. We usually hear that it was unjust. It was. But we assume that implies it was also a misreading of the Constitution. Roosevelt wants us to learn that both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were, far from being threats to slavery, entirely and deliberately consistent with it.

There are four pillars of the Standard Story: the Declaration, the Revolution, the Constitution, and the Founders. The Standard Story is a tale of principled continuity from our founding until now, with the gradual growth of freedom and equality. America is an irresistible process set in motion by some of the wisest, most devout and principled men who ever walked the Earth. It is a story of slowly, fitfully trying to realize our Founders’ dream of an ever more perfect union. Roosevelt tears this myth to shreds.

Many of us were taught to think that the Revolution’s motivation was Freedom and Equality for all. Roosevelt painstakingly demonstrates that this is simply not true. He has to be detailed, because the Standard Story has long-enduring and bipartisan appeal.

Roosevelt is trying to get us to see our history from a different angle, with more context, so we can view a familiar but misunderstood object with fresh eyes. He is doing something like what Nikole Hannah-Jones accomplished by proposing that America was born, not in 1776, but in 1619, with the arrival of the first enslaved people. You can see how threatening this was to the Standard Story by how ferociously she was attacked. Those attacks suggest that the Standard Story deserves a closer look – or why was the Project considered a threat to it?

He credits Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project with discarding three of the pillars of the Standard Story. One motivation for the Revolution was to preserve slavery; colonists were the pro-slavery force in that war. The Constitution supported and preserved slavery. The Founders, including Jefferson and Washington, practiced enslavement until their deaths, their public pronouncements about it notwithstanding. But it retains high regard for the Declaration, which leads Roosevelt to call The 1619 Project an extremely progressive version of the Standard Story, which leaves that last pillar standing. Roosevelt is firm: it has to go, too.

For those who would like to read the above as a principle of universal equality, there are immediate difficulties. Three quarters of the Founders enslaved people. The colonists’ army fought to preserve slavery: the states’ economies depended on it. All, the states, not just the Southern ones. Additionally, there’s the genocide of Native Americans taking place at the time. And “the ladies,” whom Abigail Adams pleaded with her husband not to forget, were not included in “all men.”

We’d like to think “All men” meant all people. But it didn’t even mean all men. In fact, it didn’t even mean all white men. The one phrase everyone knows from the Declaration? It didn’t remotely mean what we believe it meant. Still doesn’t.

(Speaking of Native Americans, one flaw that I see in Professor Roosevelt’s fine book is his nearly total neglect of the Native American genocide that was being pursued from before the Revolution until long after the Civil War. He mentions it, to be sure, but only in passing. Including their experience would have strengthened almost every one of his arguments, so the omission is baffling.)

Chief Justice Taney saw no hypocrisy in writing “All men are created equal” while also enslaving hundreds of people, including one’s own children. Taney considered Black people to be less than human, and so undeserving of inclusion in the number of citizens. Dehumanizing Black people has always just been taken for granted in America. It hasn’t even needed explaining.

Roosevelt demonstrates that, for the Declaration’s “All men are created equal” to mean what we believe it to mean, we’d have to ignore its references to “merciless Indian savages” and the incitement by the crown of “domestic insurrections among us” – a reference to Britain’s policy of freeing any slaves who volunteered to fight against the slavery-addled colonies.

So many of our stories about the Revolutionary War are set in the North that I think we sometimes forget that the Southern states, and their slaveholders, had a powerful economic incentive in the colonies deciding to split from the British empire. The colonists intended to re-enslave any who were captured. Business interests were a main motivation for the Revolution. The colonies moved toward their revolution just as the Industrial Revolution was, er, gaining steam. Harriet Beecher Stowe makes clear in Uncle Tom’s Cabin that Northerners depended on profits from slavery, even while criticizing Southerners for perpetuating the practice. No, the Declaration was not intended to be a principled declaration of universal humanity and rights. You won’t find evidence that it is in either the text or the lives and practices of those who signed it.

The American Revolutionaries fought against the crown’s meddling in their affairs – and for slavery. Read that again.

Samuel Johnson wrote from Britain, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” Mr. Johnson would be stunned to hear modern Americans intoning the Standard Story, referring to our Founders as champions of Liberty and Equality, of whose legacy we are striving to be worthy.

How can we think that men who were committing genocide and enslaving people for profit wrote in defense of a universal declaration of human rights which they themselves would not have been willing to observe on the day they signed the paper? And yet listen for any such qualification of the devotion with which the Declaration is mentioned, on July 4th or at any time.

Understanding this obvious truth clarifies why Frederick Douglass wrote What to the Slave is the 4th of July? He is not ungenerous:

But he goes on,

If you don’t just outright reject Roosevelt’s findings, all of this could lead to sudden vertigo – even though we haven’t even covered the Constitution yet. We’ve relied on the Standard Story for 250 years now. What plumb line could replace it?

But we can keep the principles that we thought had their origins in the Standard Story. The principles are right, good, and just. They just didn’t have their origin where we thought. As we look to extend freedom, equality, and justice to all, we need not be limited by the flawed document and the hypocritical Founders who signed it.

At 250, it’s useful to be clear about what we have and have not accomplished. There are good things in the Declaration that we should retain. But let’s not give it credit for what it never aspired to. We don’t need to get stuck in regrets, but to be real and honest about how strong our foundations are if we want to build on them. The point, always, is to do better today than we’ve done so far.

We’re just getting started. The Constitution is problematic, too – but perhaps not entirely in the way we may be thinking.

* *** *

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Just today I saw

Rutger Bregman’s video on an unknown World War 2 hero which shows us the secret to real resistance;

a video about how Brad Lancaster broke the law in Tucson, resulting in the city following his example and beginning to tame its heat island effect;

a video of a young girl reciting Frederick Douglass’s What to the Slave is the 4th of July, from memory, on his front stoop;

an article about Christopher Armitage trying to get the DC bar to investigate John Roberts;

a piece about young new DSA candidates prevailing in primaries, sometimes following AOC’s footsteps and ousting longtime incumbents;

the book in which Kermit Roosevelt discusses the racist threads running through the Declaration and the Constitution;

wonderful, affecting essays in Jesmyn Ward’s new book;

that the Ponca tribe of Oklahoma is the first US tribe to endorse the Fossil Fuel Treaty on transitioning away from fossil fuels;

and I ate at a local restaurant that has been giving out free casseroles to the hungry in Dubuque, Iowa for the last 6+ years, and teaches locals how to grow their own food, in the practice of what the owner calls Radical Generosity.

Good work is EVERYwhere, just waiting to be watered by our attention. If you read Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s What If We Get It Right?, you’ll read about people in dozens of fields, all working on climate change. Even His Oleaginousness has accidentally given impetus to the transition away from fossil fuels by his murderous rampage in Iran. Heckuva job, Donald!

The main danger of social media, as I see it, is in luring good-hearted people who truly care about our neighbors and planet into a kind of cul-de-sac, like those WayMos circling in a kind of vehicular existential dilemma. Or like religious folks calling themselves “believers”, as if having right opinions about doctrines or policy is all there is to it. Or Americans calling ourselves “consumers,” as if we had internalized the perspective of the billionaires and corporations (which are persons in this country, unlike animals, rivers, and other actually living things and systems) which see us as existing only to serve economic functions. Social media threatens to make us amplifiers of what we hate, rather than forces for doing good. That’s one reason I left BlueSky a week or so ago.

There is nothing – absolutely nothing – wrong with tracking the crimes of this administration, especially as neither our government nor our media are doing a good job of it. Someone needs to keep track of the tens of thousands of people denied due process and deported. Someone needs to track the deaths for which Elon Musk and DOGE are responsible due to taking a chainsaw, gleefully, to the life-saving work of USAID. Someone in addition to Julie K. Brown needs to keep tabs on the pedophiles of the Epstein files – not ONE of whom has been prosecuted, all of whom are walking around as if they are pillars of their communities. And someone needs to figure out how to utterly destroy the economic system that makes billionaires at the same time it makes people indebted for life.

But, to turn to Jack Gilbert once again,

So I’ve decided that I’m going to celebrate July 4. Because you are doing marvelous, meaningful things against all odds, and my delight is in the opportunity to support that work in whatever ways I can, and point the way to you so others can help get ‘er done. Because, as George said,

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I’m sharing the Afro-Caribbean cooking video below for a similar purpose.

I love the Mediterranean Diet. I’ve lost 15 pounds in the last couple of months, and have begun to enjoy cooking. But as Roxanne Swentzell has reminded us with her book on Pueblo cooking, eating indigenously is appropriate for those whose ancestors grew up on indigenous diets. After all, food feeds us not only nutrition, but culture, heritage, and a sense of place. Remembering all the functions served by food helps us remember that we’re not just fueling an engine efficiently: that’s such a simplistic, mechanistic view of our relationship with the planet of which we are a part. It strikes me as being Puritan in its severity and lack of joie de vivre. That may be the biggest drawback to a culture focused on diet just for health and wellness. Dr. Steven Masley, in his book, The Mediterranean Method, touches on this when he names as part of his method the practice of sharing every meal possible with others, to help forge those communal bonds.

A friend back in Santa Fe is a forager, and author of many beautiful, useful, delightfully-written books on foraging. There is no more immediate way to put us in touch with food as a living experience of a sense of place. In a society that is as disruptively mobile as ours, the idea of knowing which plants in our home town are edible, when they appear and where, and sustaining a culture of taking no more than needed so our neighbors can also harvest, is utterly foreign to us, but essential to life in other parts of the world. Read A Sand County Almanac, and you may be gobsmacked by how thoroughly Aldo Leopold knew his community, including its plants. You can be sure our indigenous predecessors on this land knew what grew where and when. Many of their stories assume that their plant neighbors (e.g., the Corn Maiden, the Three Sisters) are as much a part of the story of their place as the humans – of which they are simply the most recent link in a long chain. Even our grandparents and great-grandparents grew their own food, knew what worked in their soils, and swapped seeds with neighbors.

So when I saw this video about an Afro-Caribbean interpretation of the Mediterranean Diet, all of this clicked. One size never has fit all, and never will. Centering European versions of diet, music, economics, or anything else leads to an impoverished view of those parts of life, flattening our sense of the richness of lived experience on this planet. Such a diet may best serve the imposed efficiencies of our planetary food system, but it doesn’t necessarily serve our health, our communities, or the environment of which we are a part.

It’s not that the European version is singularly bad; monoculture is singularly bad. The Irish discovered this when they relied on one species of potato; it made the entire nation vulnerable to a disease that spread like wildfire. Even just within the American diet, how many different kinds of tomatoes do you tend to see in grocery stores? Go to farmers’ markets and you will see more than in the supermarkets. But if you get into heirloom seeds, with Native Seed Search or Seed Savers Exchange, for example, or a local seed exchange, you may be overwhelmed by the variety. Our food system is a wonder in many ways, but diversity does not appear to be as highly valued as uniformity and predictability, which serve the system’s need for efficiency. “The hammer shapes the hand.”

The charming videographer and narrator strikes a perfect balance: she articulates the principles of the Mediterranean Diet, and what foods – olive oil, fatty fish, avocados, fresh seasonal veggies, etc. – embody those principles in Mediterranean nations. Then she describes how the same benefits can be, and have long been, enjoyed using foods indigenous to African and Caribbean cultures and cuisines. This must come as a relief to any who were raised on these cuisines but have been hearing that the most healthy diet in the world diverges from their comfort foods. Monocultures kill creativity. This video’s gift is that it reintroduces not only the familiar (and familial), but invites cooks and eaters to play with their food, with their diets.

Food is about relationships. It connects us with our great-great grandmother’s cookie or pasta recipe from the old country. It connects us with our friends and neighbors, with whom we share the food, its preparation, and the good health that results. It connects us with the seasons, the sense of anticipation for the first tomatoes of the year, the yearning for citrus season. It connects us with our local biome, where the celery is SO much more flavorful, the corn so aromatic, the veggies so particular to that town or even that part of town.

Politics. It can take over our lives like kudzu, like a monoculture that smothers everything else. We must resist, not only bad politics, but a monoculture in which all we read or concern ourselves with is politics, and especially the cruel and unjust national and international politics about which most of us can do little. Returning to Jack Gilbert, he says in the same poem,

We must have music. Unfamiliar music will remind us that we have options, and that we are surrounded by a gift of magnificent diversity that thrives even as the systems imposed on us try to make us uniform and efficient. Go to the produce section in your grocery store. (Yes, diversity sometimes intrudes even there.) Find an unfamiliar vegetable, herb or fruit. Try it. Try it again next week, until you know it well enough to share it. Build community like Robin Wall Kimmerer describes in The Serviceberry (I just planted two Serviceberry trees in my backyard this Spring). Doing so, and refusing the deny the joy of it; that, too, is resistance. Remember, while everything we grieve over is going on – someone, somewhere in the world, is dancing, singing, and eating with friends and strangers. That’s good.

Amy Goodman and Democracy Now did a 20+ minute segment on Graham Platner and the Maine Senate race which has been yet another occasion for liberals, leftists, and progressives to take umbrage at each other’s decisions and lack of character. These things probably always happened, allies being exasperated with each other, and wondering if they were really allies at all. What’s different today is that these conversations ALL happen, not in private, but over public bullhorns and permanent video, so it’s difficult to walk back things said in justifiable moments of passion.

Amy interviewed Kim Villanueva of the National Organization for Women PAC and of Community Change, Inc., who is based in Maine. Villanueva endorses Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign, but is still on the ballot. Stewart-Bouley endorses Platner, though she is clear that his scandals give her pause, and in other circumstances probably would have ended his campaign long ago. (She also graciously mentioned Andrea LaFlamme and David Costello, who are also running but have gained little public notice or traction.)

I loved Platner’s video announcing his campaign. Everything I’ve heard him say on the campaign trail resonates with my values and priorities. That said, if I was voting in Maine, I would either rank him third or not at all, as he’s introduced so much doubt about his character and about whether there are second and third shoes waiting to drop that might make him easy pickings for the Collins campaign. Writers whom I respect have come to a similar conclusion for their own reasons.

But writers and others whom I respect have come to a different conclusion. And there’s no good reason for me to cast aspersions on their motivations or judgment. None. We disagree.

I’d like to make a plea for a generous agnosticism that acknowledges that, while we’re making our best judgment about who a good person and candidate is, and who might best defeat Collins and help us win back the Senate, our best decision is based on necessarily incomplete information. The same goes for those who've come to a different judgment, but who share our goals. So we can give them grace, and request it in return.

It would be wildly inappropriate, IMHO, to cast aspersions on the motivations or character of Villanueva or Stewart-Bouley, or those who think as they do. We can disagree, and still hold that those with whom we disagree do so in good faith. In fact, our alliance depends on it.

We just observed D-Day’s 82nd anniversary. (And can I just interject that Pete Hegseth should never be allowed to sully holy ground again.) Ike and Montgomery disagreed in WW2 when they were united against fascism. Tens of thousands of lives were at stake. Ike talks, in this long interview with Walter Cronkite on the 20th anniversary of D-Day, about how one of his commanders came to him before D-Day to plead with him to call it off, because in his judgment, it was going to be disastrous for the paratroopers under his command.

It’s perfectly alright to disagree. Life and all our relationships are messy. Principles and values come into conflict because the situations we confront are immensely complex and we are called upon to make decisions based on the information we have as we view it through the lenses of our values and experiences. These things happen within the minds and hearts of individuals – you can see it happening in Shay Stewart-Bouley during the interview, and it happens daily in my own head – so of course they will happen between two people or groups of people – even when we agree on most things. (See: marriage)

Let's make our best case, then, and grant Maine voters the grace to make their best decision. Then let’s fight like hell, side-by-side, to defeat the woman who enabled another sex pest onto SCOTUS who dismantled Roe v. Wade and the Voting Rights Act. We have magnificent things to accomplish, and we need our imperfect selves, friends, and neighbors – they’re the only ones available – to get it done. May the best candidate win, and may their opponents unite behind them without reservation – as Brad Lander did behind Mamdani – through November and beyond.

I had HoLEP prostate surgery Thursday. Surgeon said it went really well. Friday was pretty easy. Awkward, with a catheter and bag, but easy. Was happy for the presence and support of a friend who’d had a similar procedure in recent years.

Today wasn’t easy. Spent from 8:30 AM to a little while ago in the ER. You don’t want the bloody details (literally bloody), especially what preceded the trip to the ER. I was exhausted. Worried. Really exhausted. The nurse at acute care got me apple juice. Perked me up. Took me to the ER. They checked vitals, ran blood and urinalysis, while my situation worsened . . . and then seemed to clear.

Even “routine” surgery is a big deal.

Grateful to my friends who pitched in, checked in, and prayed to their gods and goddesses for this agnostic. But mostly grateful for the calm caring competence and expertise of the doctor, nurses, the EMT-in-training, and other kind folks who make all this run smoothly in a crisis.

I’m reminded how poorly these folks were treated by people in this country 6 years ago, and it breaks my heart all over again. They do this for everyone, every day, while managing the difficulties of their own lives.

There are impossible things that can’t be done. One of those is saying thanks adequately to those who stand with us, calmly, competently, trying to do their best to help us traverse some of the most difficult and uncertain moments of our lives. But like any impossible thing worth doing, it’s damned important that we try.

Particular thanks to the Urology Department at University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison, including the after-hours phone staff and urologist; my urologist, Dr. Roewe, and the nurse at Medical Associates’ Acute Care in Dubuque on a Saturday morning; and the folks in the ER at Mercy Hospital, also in Dubuque. And all the support staff I didn’t see or interact with, who are as necessary to a good experience as those whom I had the good fortune to meet.

We all know of and have, I hope, participated in direct resistance of one kind or another: registering voters, talking about important issues, including with decision makers and legislators, protesting, calling and visiting legislators, donating to causes, even signing petitions and posting on social media. It’s all worthwhile, win or lose.

But there is another kind of resistance that provides a refuge, and helps rekindle a guttering fire in the belly if yours is in danger of going out. Jack Gilbert writes about the value and virtue in taking joy in life in his great poem, A Brief for the Defense.

Buckminster Fuller said that the best way to effect change is not spending energy pushing back on what is advancing, but to build a world, or a part of the world, that makes the thing you oppose obsolete.

Think of the great Emma Lazarus poem, The New Colossus. You may know it as the “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” poem. But it begins by defining America’s greatest strength, and it’s not to be found in the power we wield, but in the light we offer.

Voltaire advised us, in Candide, that we should cultivate our own gardens. Too often it is assumed that, like the parables of Jesus, this was a poetic flourish, a metaphor. And yes, we can read more into his advice. But really: we should, you know – cultivate our own gardens. Because we will not force justice, peace, and goodness onto a reluctant, proudly ignorant populace. We often think now of Christianity as a bunch of people trying to force on the world racial purities and sexual mores never obliquely alluded to by the religion’s founder – who was, you recall, not a king or general, but a radical of a different sort. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Go out of your way for the victim. Love your enemy. Basic. Fundamental. Radical. Nothing about economic or political models.

I’ve been reading a bit about violence recently: arguments for and against. It’s in the air these days. Trump has fomented it; a number of attempts have been made on his life; and others – political figures, private citizens, and at least one corporate CEO – have been murdered for political reasons in recent years. Adam Serwer writes in The Atlantic

The greatest delusion of all—one shared by both the would-be shooter and the president he targeted—is that violence is an expression of strength, and nonviolence a symptom of weakness. Now, I am not a pacifist. I do not believe that violence is always wrong. And I am not arguing that it is always ineffective. But the Trump administration’s greatest failures have been connected to its obsession with violence, and its opponents’ most dramatic victories have resulted from the organized and courageous use of nonviolence.

Concerning the use of power, George Leonard, in his book, Mastery, talks about Aikido, a purely defensive martial art founded by Morihei Ueshiba. He tells a story about a bully making a scene, threatening someone, attracting a crowd. An Aikido practitioner moved to the inner circle of the crowd and positioned himself within view of the bully, and assumed a ready stance. Just that. No Bruce Lee moves to declare his presence. But it was enough to make the bully understand that escalation was less advisable than de-escalation, and he left in a huff. He left. No fight, no harm done, even to the bully.

It doesn’t always work that way, and force is sometimes needed. But it seems wise to point out how frequently it backfires (as Serwer points out is the case with the Trump administration), and how infrequently it yields the desired results – all the Marvel and DC superhero films notwithstanding. Violence is an expression of impatience, frustration, and misplaced trust in its efficacy – none of which is cause for confidence.

It would serve us well, and keep us from misallocating our limited energies, to lower our expectations of power and violence. And to raise our estimation of light.

“All politics is local.” In spite of growing up in the age of the American empire (now ended) and being inculcated with the belief that each of us was born to be a Master of the Universe, reality as well as humility tells us that the sphere of our influence in the world is small. The great Native American sculptor, Roxanne Swentzell, has been a Permaculture practitioner for decades. The short video above shows the way she has used that Aikido-like philosophy to change her world. It’s what gave rise to this meditation.

Everything about Permaculture and Aikido is counter-cultural and in keeping with Emma Lazarus’s advice to embrace being a light, instead of seeking to wield or be a power. In our simplistic time, some will say that this is a “womanish” or unmanly way to be in the world, which is nonsense. Being a light is not the province of one gender rather than another. Aikido was founded by a man. Permaculture was founded by two. Hegseth’s reductionist view of masculinity is as insulting to men as his revanchist misogyny is insulting to women. What’s delusional is thinking you can bend the world to your will by the force of your manly physique and stern mien.

Please. The same is true of political activism. We are mostly not world-historical men and women. (Trump is, and that’s a bad thing for millions of people and other living things.) But we can, still, change our part of the world. The Stoics advise that one of our most fundamental responsibilities is to figure out what is within our reach to influence, and what is not. A good person is one who does good within their reach. That is our work.

Raise good children. Treat co-workers well. Give of your resources to those who have need. Be respectful and kind to the less fortunate, the young, the old, the poor, the sick.

And cultivate a garden. A real, not a metaphorical, one. Being in touch with the Earth and its rhythms is as radical as it gets, especially in these exploitative, extractive times. The planet needs those who love it in sustained, practical ways, like the protesters at Standing Rock, like the climate scientists, and like the gardeners.

How did the Irish save civilization? With monks, scribes, artists, and librarians. Not armies.

After all, what is a radical, but someone who gets to the root of things? The book of Genesis, Voltaire, Monet, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Wendell Berry, and Joni Mitchell were all onto something. Let’s give Emerson the final word, and then get ourselves back to the garden.

Today is the day following Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday. He is one of the most universally beloved humans of our time, up there with Jane Goodall, Dolly Parton, Muhammad Ali, and the Dalai Lama. He received many well-deserved accolades, including from King Charles, himself a longstanding lover of and advocate for the planet and all its creatures. I would like to humbly propose a fitting tribute to the man and his well-lived life.

Every nation should adopt the Sir David Attenborough Natural Rights Act, enshrining the rights of Nature – and all its creatures and life-sustaining functions and features – in every constitution, in perpetuity. They deserve it, and so does Sir David. It would be a fitting tribute to his lifelong love for all the many manifestations of the generous, good, and beautiful laws of nature.

Today, May 9, is John “Osawatomie” Brown’s 226th birthday. A friend of Thoreau, Emerson, and Douglass, he gave his life for the cause of equality for all, regardless of skin pigmentation. He can be considered a Founding Father of Reconstruction America, the America we aspire to be. Frederick Douglass wrote a tribute to Brown, his good friend, in which he said,

I’ve recently been reading and discussing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, with a couple of friends. It’s a truly magnificent book. There are well-known and valid criticisms of the Uncle Tom stereotype she uses in the book. Those criticisms notwithstanding, it is a devastating indictment, not only of the slaveholders of the South, but the hypocrites of the North who, like Pontius Pilate, were pleased to wash their hands of the crimes against the innocents. Most Northerners showed only tepid, verbal opposition to the cruel, exploitative, inhumane system from which they handsomely profited. Indeed, they supported – with a thin veneer of regret, of course – the Fugitive Slave Act, of which John Brown said,

In these days, as we are reminded that the Southern states have surreptitiously persisted in their allegiance to Confederate bigotry, we need people with Brown’s strength of principles. I do not condone violence against people, but have no objection whatsoever to the destruction of property (called “violence against property” by the owners of unjustly-acquired and -held property) as a last resort. In many cases, it is the same as disarming those who are committing actual violence against those they are oppressing. (It is a cause of persistent wonder and consternation that the infrastructure and offices of fossil fuel companies, whose locations are known by all, remain unmolested and continue to be used by the ecocidal mercenaries to extend their predations.) John Brown’s raid on the Harper’s Ferry armory was just such a disarming.

And now for an update from your inconstant blogger. The first thing they tell writers is to “write what you know.” Unless you are William Zinsser, who wrote Writing to Learn, wherein he teaches us that our ignorance can be a goad and encouragement, instead of an impediment, to our writing.

As many of you know, one of the things I know from long familiarity is depression. But there is always more to learn, especially if I want to write something that is useful to other people who struggle with depression. I want my writing to reflect the first, and not the second, half of George Bernard Shaw’s famous aphorism:

I began by thinking of writing a list of strategies for dealing with, enduring, and outlasting a bout with depression. It would be as much a note to self as a useful (I hope) manual for use by others.

But the book that wants to be written is more than that. As I’ve read about depression – and there are a lot of excellent books out there on the subject – and talked with friends, the project, and my enthusiasm for it, have grown exponentially.

One friend told me that a friend of hers, from Senegal, said that there simply is no depression in Senegal. Another friend told me that a friend of his, a psychotherapist originally from Syria, made the same observation about his country – but then reconsidered and reversed his opinion. And a third friend – my Acknowledgements section in this book may be half of the book! – said, “Have I ever told you what my Master’s thesis was about?” She wrote captivatingly 30 years ago about the question of whether madness (not just depression, but including it) was an individual’s personal phenomenon, or an experience that people have that may be caused or exacerbated by the society and culture in which they are having this experience.

So I am reading Maia’s thesis now, and thinking seriously about traveling to talk with people in other cultures about depression. One of my prerequisites for the project was that I didn’t want it to be about me, or only about the experiences of straight white male middle class people with depression. So I’m reading widely. My assumption is that depression is a universal human experience, with very few exceptions. I’d like to help those in the throes of it get to the other side, like Dante’s Virgil helped him through Hell. But I would also like to explore the potential benefits inherent in depression. Because I have the conviction that our depressions have something to teach us, about ourselves and our culture. As the irreplaceable Mary Oliver once wrote,

Years. Decades, in my case.

So I will be sharing some of my questions, ruminations, and conclusions as I make my way through this subject matter. It will be a bit like thinking out loud, and I encourage – nay, beg – you to engage and offer hints or ideas as I go. I’m trying to approach this with beginner’s mind.

I will also, from time to time, write about current affairs, and perhaps even write the occasional book review. Our nation is in terrible shape, and our resistance – unlike that of Gandhi or Dr. King – is barely even annoying the murderous, bigoted, misogynistic oppressors in charge. We have not yet begun to fight; unfortunately, we imagine ourselves to be in the thick of it. Race in America will be one of my main foci, as it seems America’s original sin, as Jim Wallis called it, is enjoying a revival in our time. Stay tuned, and thanks.

Welcome to my new subscribers. I’m honored by your presence and attention.

Some of the never-Trump conservatives I admire and follow are making me wonder if, rather than looking for the right positions on all the issues, we should be looking more carefully at character. Some Democrats like Eric Swalwell make me think the same.

It’s often hard to separate character and philosophy, I know. I want the next government to act decisively on climate, end the plutocracy, and reduce our absurd military budget (parity with the State Department, including a revived USAID, seems like a balance to strive for). Equality – not unity, equality – for all. Justice for all, especially the rich/powerful, who have the most potential for harm. And a renewed commitment to providing excellent educations, for everyone. Everyone.

But I suspect that, if we insist on someone who checks all of our issue boxes, we’ll reduce our pool of candidates while incentivizing the power-hungry to lie to qualify. (Like many Supreme Court justices and Cabinet officers have done, frankly.) I think, after a few cornerstone issues, we should prioritize character above all else. Remember that Obama was not in favor of marriage equality when he was first elected. IIRC, Biden nudged him in that direction. People can be convinced. Good people can. We should look for someone with the ability to inspire, enlist, and manage people in good projects. Someone who listens. Someone who walks their talk, and almost always has.

“Almost” is important there. We’re not looking for saints, but able and fair administrators. We have all learned, oftentimes by our mistakes. What someone wrote in their PhD thesis should only matter if they still hold to those views 25 years later.

Presidential elections feel like reality TV shows, and have for some time. Campaigns should be shorter, and publicly financed. The mainstream media won’t be happy about that – elections have become a HUGE cash cow for them – but that’s okay; as we’ve learned during the last umpteen years, we don’t owe them a thing. But that’s a topic for a different post.

We should also begin deprioritizing the office of POTUS, and elevating the importance of our Senators, Governors, and Representatives. And mayors. We have made presidents into kings. Or we have allowed it, permitted it.

We should withdraw that permission. Anyone who has supported Trump’s kinglike reign, and not had the courage to defend their own values, who has cravenly followed instead of leading, should be replaced, without exception, at their next election. That means Senators, Representatives, Governors, and more. It’s been disheartening, to see so few of our supposed leaders in government, business, and media be so obsequious and unprincipled in response to the most clownish person who ever had designs on the office. Their children will be so ashamed of them.

We have urgent work to do, and we will need a fundamentally reformed government – and electorate – to address our problems. We can do BIG things. Artemis II reminded us of that, as do the actions of leaders in other nations around the world. Let’s be better, more honorable people, and elect better people to represent us.

posted a short thought-provoking piece today that pointed out how long it’s been since a majority of white people voted for a Democrat for President. It was 1964, to be exact. LBJ won a commanding victory that year.

The Beatles had not yet released Sgt. Pepper or Yellow Submarine when white people last voted for a Democrat for POTUS. John Lennon and Yoko Ono had not yet met.

No human had yet set foot on the moon.

The National Organization of Women and the EPA had not yet been founded.

No one had ever heard of Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock.

Charlie Chaplin was still alive. So were Larry and Moe of the 3 Stooges.

Yale had not yet begun to admit women.

Melania Trump, Janet Jackson, Salma Hayek, and Kiefer Sutherland were not yet born.

Medicare did not yet exist. Neither did the Chevy Camaro. Neither did Elon Musk. Nor did Madison Square Garden.

Coincidentally, the last Democratic president voted for by a majority of white folks signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. In 2024 we re-elected – RE-elected – the most unapologetically racist president since Woodrow Wilson screened Birth of a Nation at the White House.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners Magazine, was right to call racism America’s original sin. It is important to note, by the way, that there have always been anti-racist Christians and evangelicals. It’s just that our media so rarely invites them on to counter the presence of racist Christian nationalists. But, famous or obscure, they’ve always been there, from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Benjamin Lay, John Brown, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Jimmie Carter, Rachel Held Evans, Clarence Jordan, Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, Brian Zahnd, Roger Gench, and John Fugelsang.

Sixty two years since white folks voted for a Democrat. Not since the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. Somehow that should be hung like an albatross around our necks until it is as much a given as the false belief that the GOP is better for the economy. It should be paired with the history of the GOP’s contemporaneous turn to the so-called Southern Strategy, intended to capitalize on white racism – even though their first presidential candidate was Abraham Lincoln. Trump is the natural culmination, the logical conclusion, of that decision.

At least nine million people protested today in #NoKings protests around the world. Not just around the country: around the world. The NoKings movement is international. Global. It is

Against Trump, plutocrats, billionaires, and pedophiles.

It is

Pro-science

Pro-people

Pro-nature

Pro-empathy

Pro-diversity

Pro-justice

Pro-child.

It is joyful, even humorous. Great signs and costumes abounded, and were shared with relief and delight on social media. We are not afraid, and we are numerous.

And yet…

Don’t you wonder? When we wake up tomorrow – when Trump, Miller, Hegseth, and Bondi wake up tomorrow – what will have shifted?

has some inconvenient, challenging, perhaps unwelcome questions that are worth discussing seriously.

In that swell, it becomes easy, almost irresistible, to believe that presence alone is pressure and that numbers can bend systems designed to absorb far more than noise. And so people leave carrying that feeling in their bodies, convinced they’ve participated in disruption, when what they’ve actually experienced is something far more contained and far easier for power to survive.

And then, everybody goes home. And the system exhales. Because it was never actually threatened.

This is giving me climate change vibes.

We’ve known for decades that climate change is an existential threat to our children. That it and the Sixth Extinction have already eradicated species forever. It will eradicate more this year. Yes, we are making progress. People I deeply respect are hopeful, even while not in denial about what has been and is still being lost. Hope and joy are possible and recommended, even in the midst of a holocaust, as Wendell Berry – “Be joyful/ though you have considered all the facts” – and Jack Gilbert – “We must have/ the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless/ furnace of this world” – have sagely observed. But people and species are suffering and dying: shouldn’t we be doing something to make it stop? Shouldn’t we be in kind of a big hurry about it?

I’m not in denial of the good being done by millions all over the world. I’ve read and taken courage and solace from ’s What if We Get it Right? I’ve been with a thousand climate activists descending on DC twice a year, negotiating with every member of Congress who would take a meeting. Heroic, inspiring, and so far, not nearly enough. OUR country is one of the biggest drags on climate action, if not the biggest. In spite of all that.

And now we have placed a racist, xenophobic despot back in the White House. And Putin remains in power, as do Erdogan, Orban, and other despots. The Iranian leadership just slaughtered tens of thousands of protesters in the last few months. Netanyahu has successfully avoided jail by retaining power, which he has used to obliterate Gazans indiscriminately, and has now led an attack on Iran. And Lebanon. And now Israel is taking fire in its neighborhoods.

Americans obviously can’t fix all of the world’s ills. But goddammit, can’t we do something more urgently about the Trump regime and the carnage he is causing in our name? Are we seriously content to wait for November before putting even mild constraints on him? Are we?

Are we, in a word, utterly domesticated? I’m not advocating violence against people. But we seem to think that self defense – whether against the Trump regime or fossil fuel interests – has to follow rules that have been turned against people and planet. These large protests seem to indicate that some number of us want something better. Are ALL of us unable to come up with nonviolent strategies that actually put extreme pressure on these people? Our nonviolence looks a lot more like acquiescence than Gandhi’s or MLK’s did. They threatened unjust power structures. Trump seems annoyed. Hardly threatened.

The great irony is that Trump’s war against Iran may, by its unintended, sudden, and drastic reduction of fossil fuel security, finally incentivize nations to put everything they’ve got into a transition to renewable energy.

The No Kings organizers are planning a one day work, school, and consumer strike on May 1. Will mild and temporary inconvenience win the day? A one day strike won’t even show up on a corporation’s monthly balance sheet. The billionaires will yawn, if they even notice. Buy your gas on Thursday instead of Friday? Ooooh, shudder!

I wish I had some confidence that, as we each pull our weight in our communities, doing what little local things that we can, some cadre of people is meeting somewhere and will, any day now, roll out a series of decisive nonviolent yet revolutionary and radical strategies that will make everyone in what’s left of the White House yell for their mommies. I hope I’m missing something. I don’t think we’re going to save the world by being well-behaved and getting permits for our protests.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think on these things. Philippians 4:8

Science writer and editor Dr. Laura Helmuth published a provocative blog post today which got me thinking. As you can tell from my last two panic-attacks-in-print (sorry about those), I have been focused mostly on what and who I abhor. That is unhealthy – especially when shared.

Dr. Helmuth begins with reference to The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer, and how each tale is told by someone on a pilgrimage of gratitude. She says,

It’s such a human impulse, to give thanks for things that feel miraculous. Those of us who aren’t religious don’t have the same shrines, rituals, or regularly scheduled fellowship, but we do have secular saints, people who made the world better or saved our lives. We don’t pray to them, exactly, but it’s inspiring to remember them, appreciate them. I would gladly light a candle and leave an offering at a shrine to Saint Rachel of Carson.

Alain de Botton talks, in his illuminating book, Religion for Atheists (highly recommended), about the societal services provided by religious institutions – services often not provided by secular ones, which communities might think of providing in case those religious institutions fail or disappear. Dr. Helmuth’s prompt seems to me to come from the same place.

It’s good to remember those for whom we are grateful, who have enriched our lives. The person who invented the shower should have a straight shot at Heaven (or its secular equivalent). Singers, musicians, artists, teachers, scientists, and writers of all kinds would be on my list. Also volunteers, like the unnamed people who have raised $1.5 Billion for Leukemia and Lymphoma research with Team in Training. Or like the Minnesotans who reminded us in the last few months of the quiet, latent power of being good neighbors. Batman and Wonder Woman won’t be coming to our rescue; but damned if here some Chris, Pat, and Jerry from down the block!

Let’s appropriate another religious practice: the place of altars. Consider dedicating a space – it can be wall space, or a small table that can be set aside for this purpose – for displaying the photos of your saints, or something else that reminds you of them and what you value that they embodied. Make sure it’s someplace where you will see it every day. I see two shelves on my bookcase that are too short to hold anything but mass market paperbacks, of which I have few: I may clear them out for some photos. Maybe print the photos or reminders on a T-shirt. Or, if you’re really committed, get a tattoo – or six.

It’s Monday. Spring arrives on Friday. As we regard a new week and a new season, think on these things: who are your secular heroes? How will you keep them before your mind, in these dangerous, disheartening times? We need our saints. Before we encounter new (and, to be clear, valid) reasons for despair and anger, consider those for whom you are grateful. Please share in the comments who yours are. Here are a few of mine.

We have alienated all of our allies. ALL of them, even Canada.

In spite of ourselves, we’d cultivated global goodwill with the Peace Corps and USAID. But then we shut it all down, as if offended by the homeless people begging outside of our 5 star restaurant.

We put a belligerent C student jock with great hair and a Crusader tattoo in charge of our military.

Billionaires with no evident sense of noblesse oblige have been building bunkers because they were planning for Armageddon. Not working to prevent it: PLANNING for it. We put them in charge of our media and our business world. We created them, made them unaccountable to anyone and everyone, and thought they would be noble princes.

We’ve let millions of our own people – mostly people of color – be either homeless or live in squalor, and elected to give the money that could have given them comfort and security to the aforementioned billionaires, making money bad to have an excess of and bad to be deprived of.

We’ve scheduled marches every quarter that we can plan for so they don’t interfere with our work or lives but allow us to feel like we are taking a heroic stand. They are not bad, but they are comically insufficient to the moment.

We’ve seen the president and his inept and cruel sycophants round up our neighbors, put them in concentration camps not too different from our for-profit prisons (THAT is where we spent money on housing for people of color), and then, without due process, shipped them off – did we sell them? – to other countries for indefinite periods of time. Including children – which should not surprise us because he put children in cages last time, and 77 million of us re-elected him with eyes wide open. And instead of removing him and his sycophants with all haste, by any means necessary, we’ve allowed him to add one crime against humanity after another.

The only ones who have marched on Washington have been 20 Buddhist monks and their dog. We could have followed them. We could be there right now, surrounding the White House and Congress, or in our own states, surrounding the offices of our representatives, and demanding that our nation behave decently.

Climate change, cancer-causing water pollution, and rampant species extinctions demand immediate and decisive action. We have known about each of them for decades and addressed them, if at all, in the desultory fashion of those enthralled with the delusion that, once we’ve used up this one, some of us will escape to another planet. Scientists, books, and movies have told us everything, and left us without excuses for our inaction.

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We should march on Washington now. It may already be too late, but we don’t know that. And we should declare a period of national repentance – radical changes of behavior, not just feelings – for our cruel narcissism and hubris.

shared this excellent quotation from Kierkegaard:

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.

It would be good if we decided to be that kind of Christian nation. Not one that says “Our narrow sect of Christianity is right, and you’re all going to hell if you disagree.” But one that says we are, singly and collectively, our brothers’ and sisters’ neighbors and helpers; that we will do what we can to make sure they are not hungry, cold, or without shelter or company. That requires of ourselves decent and compassionate action – preferably including arts, music, dancing, and shared joy – and does not demand that others change their beliefs to accord with ours. It would be a Christianity that doesn’t care what you call yourself, but that asks, as any decent person would, if you need anything. It would be indistinguishable from being a good Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, atheist, agnostic, humanist, or Boomafarian (family inside joke).

Sorry. I left you alone for a month and then sent TWO jeremiads to you in 12 hours. Again, the good news is that I may be wrong about the consequences of all this. We’re about to find out. Fingers crossed. Hugs to you. I will make a point, in my next piece (in 12 hours?? 12 days?), of talking about good things we can try doing now, of good things people ARE doing, that we can build on. Everything matters. Have a good breakfast.

I’ve started a number of posts in the last month, since encouraging you to participate in Resist and Unsubscribe February. But so much has been going on, and so many newsletters and blog posts have flooded my inbox and, I assume, yours, that nothing quite seemed necessary to add to your stack of unread mail. And I’ve been trying to hit my stride, to find my flow with writing about depression.

But in all the reports I’ve seen so far, something seemed to be missing. And I just put my finger on it this evening. But first let me give you a caveat: I tend to catastrophize. So this will be dark. You might want a stiff drink by the end. I’m no prophet, but there are some things dangling out there that make us vulnerable. We’ve been telegraphing weakness, callousness, entitlement, condescension, and belligerence for a while now to everyone in the world (except Putin, for some reason). Which folks tolerated for a while because there were still things to be gained by being diplomatic.

But now we’ve pissed someone off. We and Israel killed Iran’s Ayatollah and other leaders, and (at last count) 165 of their schoolgirls. On day one. During Ramadan. After giving Netanyahu a blank check to help with his eradication of Gazans and Palestinians. While Iranian leadership still had the blood of tens of thousands of its people in its mouth from their recent revolt.

So I’m not sure we’re going to get away with this any more. Pretty sure we won’t. I could be wrong. I could just be catastrophizing. But being incompetent dicks usually, eventually, catches up with you. If not now, it won’t be long if we don’t “straighten up and fly right” as my mother used to say.

I'm not seeing enough doomsday predictions about how Iran is going to retaliate. You think Gabbard and Kash Patel are going to keep us safe? Even keep DC safe? Keep girls in schools safe, here and abroad?

Nobody in the regime anticipated the need to remove US citizens from the war zone. Hell, they apparently didn’t even anticipate that Iran would strike other countries besides us and Israel. (“You mean they’re allowed to fight back? Well, at least it’s not our kids they’ll be killing, eh, Barron?”)

So we have about a million Americans abroad. We’ve told them to leave – and given them no assistance in doing so. (Except for a few influencers. We should make them infamous, like the men who took spaces from women and children in the Titanic’s lifeboats.) The US embassy in Dubai was bombed today. We have lots of diplomats in, I think, every Middle Eastern country. Lots of rich and not rich business people. School children. You see anyone in the White House with the urgency of the people who planned Dunkirk? Is Steven Miller even working to get the rich white people out?

The Strait of Hormuz is choked off: don’t you wish we’d invested more seriously in renewables? Even the stock market shuddered a bit today. Not that a single billionaire noticed: they were busy lobbying against a 5% tax proposed by Senator Sanders. And stocking their bunkers, because they believe in the imminent end of the world. (Wait, what?)

Do you think Iran won't attack Israel now in a way that makes the history books? And Israel has nukes. Hegseth may get his Armageddon. Netanyahu was apparently the one who precipitated this move by Trump et al. Do you think he has a diplomatic bone in his body? We'll wish Jesus had come back before this to slap sense into MAGAgelicals. Just a little advice for the so-called “Christian” right: people who want their religion to be respected, much less embraced, maybe shouldn’t lust to start an apocalyptic war as an act of piety.

If we were smart we'd depose Trump and make reparations to Iran this week, join the International Criminal Court in the Hague and throw ourselves on the mercy of the international community of nations. But we are not smart. Or we’d have long ago held the powerful to account for their perversions and predations, even if they were good for our extractive consumerist economy. Instead we sacrificed everything –including the climate, thousands of species, and the welfare of our next door neighbors – to make billionaires.

Did you know we’ve been blockading oil shipments to Cuba? I assume Rubio is behind that, but I don’t know. They are near collapse. Will we attack them next, or Greenland? We’ve given up on diplomacy – and allies – and are using only force. We think fear = respect. Or maybe we just think fear is all we need, and respect is a soft power for women (whom these alpha males denigrate or assault) to pursue. We don’t think we need anyone else.

Do we know how many people we’ve deported? How many of our neighbors? How many are in these huge new, tightly-packed concentration camps? We’re not affording them due process: are we selling them to the countries to which we’re shipping them? Are they imprisoned in torture camps like the one in El Salvador? For how long? How about the babies in these camps? Last time Trump put kids in cages, too. 77 MILLION Americans signed up for more of that. We’ve never much cared about the conditions in our for-profit prisons, so why should we care about these people, beyond a momentary pinch of sadness (about which we can feel good, because we still have the appropriate emotions, for a moment anyway).

God blessed America, and we thought it was only what we deserved for being “so star-spangled awesome.”

So I think we’re about to go through some things. The good news is, I’m not a prophet. But whether I’m right in my pessimism or not, the best thing we can do – if we’re not going to descend en masse on the White House and Congress – is cultivate good relationships with our neighbors. In war or in peace, the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships. Read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry. Maybe read up about Victory Gardens. I’ve long said that one of the most revolutionary acts available to many of us is growing our own food, taking care of the Earth. It’s just a good thing to do with our lives anyway. It’s enough, actually.

Okay. Back to researching depression and reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin for my little coffee klatch/book group. If Trump et al have not started WWIII ("I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Attributed to Einstein. Or maybe Lincoln.), I hope you will tell me in a few weeks or months that I am full of it. I will be happy indeed to be wrong. Last thing I want is to be Cassandra, to be right.

Scott proposes Unsubscribe February on his new website, Resist and Unsubscribe. He announced it on his podcast with . “It can’t be a day or a week. It has to be sustained.” Non-participation in the economy, he says, is the Achilles Heel of capitalism, especially under Trump. Scott has identified the sycophantic companies, explained why we want to unsubscribe from their services, and provided links to do so.

My only suggestion/wish is that he would add Tesla. Speaking of Nazis and corporate sycophants. . .

“Back in the early 30’s, Hitler’s rise was largely enabled by corporate CEOs who basically said ‘If you destroy our trade unions, we won’t speak up against this democratic slide into fascism.’” – Scott Galloway

This is the way: one day consumer strikes leave hardly a blip on the corporate radar. They’re mostly feel-good activities. We need more skin in the game. And we need to consolidate our efforts for a large impact. That’s why Scott has targeted these companies: they have eagerly bent the knee to the fascists, and are the linchpins of the current economy.

Scott (and ) are solid on not telling folks what we have to do, what we have to give up. No judgment. It’s important to put skin in the game, but one size never fits all. You have to decide what you and your family can do. If you’re one of millions who have been asking, “But what can I do,” this is your tool: you decide how much pressure you want to apply.

It’s reminiscent of the Move Your Money/Bank Transfer Day movement that started 14 years ago. It encouraged and enabled folks to move their savings, checking, and investment accounts from the big banks – those that were funding fossil fuel development and had exorbitant fees – into local banks and credit unions. (Still a good idea, by the way.) Unsubscribe February combines the impact of widely spread individuals of varied capacities into a targeted and sustained impact. We need the oligarchs to feel pain – which reminds me of another precursor.

The Magna Carta was the result of barons putting pressure on King John of England. It was a feudal system (as is ours, in many ways), and the barons were displeased with the state of things after the king’s disastrous war and subsequent taxation. They forced the king to the negotiating table. Unsubscribe February is us putting pressure on the people who are capable of putting pressure on Trump.

We can try moral persuasion until we’re hoarse: Trump, MAGA, Putin, and the other oligarchs couldn’t care less. In the realm of nonviolent resistance, their only pressure point is economic. Perhaps Scott (or , , or ) can find a way to deal in the EU, Canada, and other freedom-craving economies for extra impact.

This is an opening and necessary salvo. It puts pressure on the oligarchy, which is accustomed to feeling like Olympian gods, impervious to the concerns of the little people down here. It won’t be easy. It has to start with a noticeable thunderclap and then grow from there, like a threatening, building storm on the horizon. So please share Scott’s website with concerned friends. We need the oligarchs – some of whom are pedophiles, remember, and protectors of pedophiles – not just to feel discomfort, but to be forced to their knees and get panicked looks on their faces. And to call Trump.

Then we need to formulate our demands.

Scott has handed us a powerful weapon. It’s up to us to wield it now.

There’s SO much good writing out there these days. For an inveterate, unrepentant reader such as I, it’s tempting to glue my eyes to one screen or another and call it a life. I want to encourage both of us to not spend all of our time on screens. Below are some really good posts and articles I’ve seen today. Because life is full of paradoxes. And, honestly, self-contradictions.

Some friends and I have talked about the tension between the big things that we think need doing, and the little, inconsequential things we think we are in a position to do. It’s an elemental question that we who are empathetic and have social consciences carry with us wherever we go. It’s also what’s behind today’s ruminations.

It started with ’s post this morning.

Having just finished reading How to Break Up With Your Phone, by , David’s report from the screen-free wilderness resonated. I suspect many of us feel obligated to be informed, and not to turn away – even for a day, much less 6 weeks – from what is happening in our world. So we check Messages, E-mail, Social Media sites A, B, C, and D, WhatsApp, Signal, TikTok, You Tube, and others as if we were just hired to do so, we’re being paid well to do so, and we have a demanding boss and a big mortgage.

For many of us, not just David, the end result is paralysis and depression. The problems are so big and so intractable. So many are suffering. We are so small, we don’t know what to do, and no great leader has arisen to lead us. As someone (probably not Gandhi, since no source is ever provided with the attribution) said, “Whatever you do in life will be insufficient. But it’s very important that you do it.” Or, as Amos Oz said, bring your teaspoon. If all of us bring a teaspoon, or whatever our capacity is, we can put out the fire threatening us. The point is, we must do those little things. We can’t get away with feeling good about just feeling so bad. If all our reading, scrolling, checking doesn’t result in our acting, of course we’ll be depressed. It’s Hitchcockian, to be well-informed, and helpless.

Author Doug Mack, on BlueSky, posted some useful info on helping the resistance in Minnesota and at home.

He urges readers to donate to StandWithMinnesota – but also, and pivotally, to “get involved with your own community. Make new friends. Get those networks going.” This makes our little actions suddenly appear not just adequate, but necessary. What Minnesota has – close-knit hyper-local networks, also known colloquially as “neighborhoods” – is something we can all cultivate. In the same thread, Mr. Mack points out that, while some of the work – that which we see in phone videos on all those sites – is public and confrontational, there is a TON of work behind the scenes that is also essential. Ana Marie Cox has written about all the invisible work and workers. She also points out the importance of having these networks established before the threat arrives in our home towns.

The thread uniting these articles – and, by implication, David Sirota’s cautionary post – is that they all point offline. They all point to the need for connection.

And here is an obligatory reference to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry, which is all about such connections, networks, and neighborhoods. She evokes the wider connection with the place, and the other living beings with whom we share it. It’s a manifesto for our times, the cold, clear water we crave.

Here is one way to manage our time online. Go online as usual. After a while (your choice), take a break. Go get a sandwich or a drink, do those sit-ups. While doing so, think about what you’ve read. What one thing really struck you today? Think about one thing you can do in response to what you’ve read. Write a letter to an editor or decision-maker. Close an account. Call a city councillor or member of Congress. Go back to your screen and do that thing. Then log off.

Once you are logged off, you can go back to your life. When the temptation arises to go back to browsing, and the guilt (compulsion?) tells you you’re avoiding your obligation to be informed, you can answer that you’ve already DONE that today. Emphasis, again, on action. And on having a life.

Then think about what you’ve seen accomplished, what has inspired you. What had to precede that for it to happen? Can you contribute to setting that stage in your town? Can you go someplace unaccustomed and meet someone who might be at work on something related, and see if you can help them? Or can you find a way to connect with a neighbor. Just connect. Not even about politics, but as neighbors. Bake cookies to share. Ask for gardening advice. Compliment their kids.

Here’s what I did today (before writing to you fine folks). I read an article in Philly Voice about the Philadelphia City Councillors who will be introducing seven bills tonight to regulate ICE if and when it comes to Philadelphia. I wrote to the author, Michaela Althouse, whose email was conveniently provided, and asked where I could get copies of those bills. She replied within the hour, and provided a link at which to find these bills once they’ve been introduced. I will then copy and send them to my city councillor and mayor and ask for them, or locally-appropriate versions of them, to be introduced and passed here in Dubuque. (Imitation is an effective form of activism. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to. Every action is a potential example to follow.)

One last thing. When we post or repost on social media, we can give priority of place to amplifying people’s actions rather than their opinions. Opinions are like . . . you know. The posts we most need to amplify and follow are not those with opinions, or even informed opinions (though those are unequivocally valuable. Listen to those with expertise and experience.). We need exemplars of action.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Lincoln in the Bardo is calling. Might heat up that leftover Pad Thai, get on the rowing machine for a bit, and then go back to writing my book on depression. If you have actions to recommend, please drop them in a comment. And if you find this helpful, as I hope you do, please share or subscribe.

It’s not about our (justified) outrage, but about what we do in times of crisis.

Friends and followers who want a kinder, more just nation: “Look for the helpers.” There are ALWAYS helpers whose work we can support. At this link is a Latine-led organization supporting those who are afraid to leave home due to ICE on the roads. Please share and join me in supporting their necessary work. ❤️

In addition, a shutdown has been proposed in Minnesota for next Friday, January 23rd. I intend to join them in solidarity here in Iowa. You can read about that here. No work, no school, no shopping. I wish it was an open-ended shutdown. Maybe we can work up to that.

And finally, a stark, prescient passage by author :

“Where were you when JFK was shot?” ask the Boomers.

“Where were you on 9/11?” asks Gen X.

“Where were you when covid hit?” ask the Millennials.

Where were you when America ended, asks Gen Z, whispers freezing in the air, words scrawled in the frost of a window, words too cold to bear.

Words not set in stone — yet.

We must preserve amongst ourselves the things that make us different from the thugs of ICE and the cruel predators of the Trump administration:

• Devotion to the Truth

• Commitment to Nonviolence

• Compassion for All, not just members of our own tribes

• Delight in and Respect for Our Differences

If you know of other verified ways to help, please share them in comments below. Thank you for everything you do to keep alive a faith in our better angels.

Friends (hi!) texted yesterday, saying,

S: “I’m about to lose my mind with outrage and helplessness with these idiots swaggering all over the world and threatening people here and the torrent of lies coming from the whole rotten bunch.”

C: “It’s radicalizing me.”

To which I replied, “What’s that look like in practice?”

Not a rhetorical question, and they didn’t treat it as such. One spoke of voicing their fury, and the other of being galvanized to do more, to volunteer with organizations working on conservation and immigration, and to be more willing to speak up and out. That has been C’s work all along, so it will be a matter of shifting to a higher gear for them. S and their spouse have also been actively sacrificial and supportive on a familial level – which, we may need to remember, is also good and necessary work in difficult times.

What does it mean to be radicalized? As used these days, it often is used to mean becoming a terrorist, someone who uses violence, sometimes indiscriminately, to advance their ends. If not that, it means shifting gears, making your life entirely or partially about a cause you care about. If you’ve survived a mass shooting, or you or a loved one has been the victim of sexual abuse or rape, those experiences may have changed the trajectory of your life or your career. Clearly that’s an example of being radicalized.

I considered saying that BIPOC wouldn’t say that they have been or are being radicalized, because every one of them born in the US is born into a culture that required them to be radical from birth. But all generalizations are false. And I imagine that many already radical friends, family, and co-workers of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Andry Romero, Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, [should I go on?] et al, found a new level of radicalization after the shock of those deaths and abductions.

Different people radicalize differently. Some do take up arms. Some become spies, or work on systems to undermine the system being opposed. I know the visceral appeal of the former, but much prefer the latter, in part because becoming violent like our adversaries seems more like assimilation (“Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”) than radical opposition. I don’t think posting more strident posts on social media qualifies as radicalization. Nor does lying the way our enemies lie (speaking of social media).

Revelation precedes radicalization, always, I think. You suddenly see things more clearly, including your potential in the scenario. And there is no radicalization without profound change. If you’ve always donated $50/month to a cause, and you increase it to $100/month, in most cases that wouldn’t be a radical change. If you change careers in order to work full time on your cause – as, for example, Shannon Watts did when she founded Moms Demand Action after the Sandy Hook murders, and Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi did in founding Black Lives Matter after the acquittal of the murderer of Trayvon Martin – you’ve been radicalized. It looks a bit like a conversion experience.

But there is, I think, another kind of radicalization, also preceded by a revelation, also marked by a significant change in the way one leads one’s life. Because we associate radicalization with a certain continuity of action or thought, this kind of radicalization may look like withdrawal. And it might be, in some cases: some folks become shell-shocked and exhausted more readily than others. So long as they don’t change sides, there’s no cause to berate them; close ranks and press on, and let them go heal or rest. They may come back, and would be more likely to if they know they will be welcomed.

But for them, the revelation may show them that they are working the wrong front. That their gifts lie elsewhere. A general may realize that his/her physical strength has begun to ebb, but their mind has been honed by decades of experience, and they may serve best in a conference room, lecture hall, or training center.

And for some, the right way, the radical way, may be to tend their garden, as Voltaire advised, literally or figuratively. They may find it necessary to tend to the raising of their children; to meeting the food, housing, or healthcare needs in their hometown; or to creating an ARK, an Act of Restorative Kindness, such as Mary Reynolds recommends. (I’ve long said that gardening, and raising our own food, is one of the most revolutionary acts we can undertake.)

So watch for the spirit to move across the waters, listen for the still small voice – or the thunderclap. It may take you in unexpected directions. And remember that we don’t know what revelations others may experience, or where they may lead. Be grateful to travel together while you do, and then let them part when they need to, and adjust accordingly. Waste no time deriding your friend’s revelation or their new compass bearing. You don’t know enough to do so. Mind your own path.