The Road From Here
There will be no divine intervention.
The train wreck continues.
Now what?
Before we can be effective in altering the future, we have to view the present reality with clarity, accept it, and disband the circular firing squad.
Right now, while the train is still plunging over the abyss in slow motion, with the first few cars just beginning to be engulfed in flames, is not the time to spend arguing about causation and apportioning blame. Keep records wherever possible. History will sort it out. Move on.
No one is going to ride to the rescue.
There is no 11th-hour-and-59th-minute hero.
The Putsch is an accomplished fact.
Some hard realities:
No matter how much we'd like to believe there's a way to stop the wreck, turn it back, there isn't. The laws of sociopolitical physics are in charge and it WILL continue getting worse before there's any realistic hope of it getting better.
If we let that immobilize us, however, it will get a WHOLE LOT worse, and maybe not much better.
So, move past denial, anger, bargaining, and even depression. This is our reality, and we can't change it until we accept its existence.
And until we're willing to inventory what we have, including creativity, to pull the tide of fascism and devolution back out.
One thing we have is experience. Look particularly to the Reagan years. While it wasn't on anything like the scale and acuity of what we face now, Reagan swung a pretty heavy wrecking ball, and we learned a lot about dodging, camouflage, and reconstitution out of range.
Another thing we have is diversity. Which is good. We're accustomed to thinking in terms of the power of "unity" and the added punch of a clear focus on one or two priorities. Exhortations like "if we ALL get behind >preferred priority here< we'll be so much more effective!"
No, we won't. Read your Sun Tzu, read your Miyamoto Musashi. Where forces are gathered, the opponent with the weight of infrastructure and weaponry will concentrate the blow. The principles of guerilla conflict apply.
Diversity, and creativity.
The Putsch has all of the institutional power in its grip. All the infrastructure. All the fixed positions to defend, now. Control of the mass media, control of the bureaucracy (insofar as any bureaucracy is 'controllable'...) control of the existent, established tools for catapulting their own propaganda and enforcing their will, within the fixed emplacements and expectations of a status quo they must defend. And there is considerable dissension in their ranks.
What have we always had (but not necessarily used very effectively?) Greater creativity. Better understanding of science, technology, and the principles of matter and energy. Willingness to change. Willingness to extend risk in unexpected directions.
We need to use all of that.
A lot of our communication, and such organization as we may allow ourselves, will have to go off the grid, out of the spotlight. Many of us can continue to operate in the spotlight-- the idea of the "counter-inaugural" concert, for instance, is a good one and can't be organized from behind the scenes.
But those are one-off efforts. What we need are the small holding actions, the tossing of sand in the gears. Deflection, ridicule, exposure. End runs around, undermining of expectations. Of which there must be hundreds, thousands, constantly. Uncoordinated, from all directions and all kinds of sources. None, perhaps, much more effective than gnat-bites. But collectively they WILL have an effect.
And quietly, we must also use such infrastructure as we do have left-- our nonprofits, advocacy groups, local governments where possible, churches that have embraced the ideal of equity and compassion, entertainment and the arts-- to support one another.
To be there for one another. To keep alive the values of humanity. To tell the stories of courage and hope.
While we cannot, and should not, strive for a flashy 'unified front,' we can quietly unify in purpose and spirit, if not in efforts.
There are no easy answers. No single stroke of action, no single figure of leadership, that will restore a vanished (and substantially illusory, anyway) "normalcy" and let us "get on with our day to day lives."
The ability of our children and grandchildren to survive, to live sustainably on a planet that will support them and their descendents, depends on us giving up on that past-based vision of "normalcy."
We can do this.
determinedly,
Bright
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