Share with your friends in New Zealand - because you can feel the change here and most don’t think it could happen here - like they thought in America.
I sure hope " ...Try to understand where “the other” was coming from, and reach across the aisle to our red state brothers and sisters and help them see we have common interests and fears but I think we all sense now that things have shifted..." isn’t meant as a sneer at us “red state” folks, because in a lot of ways we’re the only real hope for turning this ship around. The damage you’re looking at here didn’t come from nowhere and it dint come from the people who live here. It came from a long history of being used stripped and financially engineered by the parts of the country that now feel comfortable talkin down to us you know for over a century east-coast capital has treated places like Oklahoma as extraction zones Dust Bowl wasn’t just bad luck or bad farming it was driven by speculative agriculture absentee ownership and financial pressure that forced people into ruin. We had strong socialist, populist, and labor traditions (look up the green corn rebellion my oklahomie roxanne dunbar ortiz writes about that) here that were systematically broken because they threatened that model what you see now isn’t people “voting against their interests.” It’s the aftermath of generations and generations of economic and psychological warfare on a region (dust bowl penn square bank crisis housing crisis okc thunder extraction.....)
And this isn’t abstract history. A few of us here just helped SHUT DOWN A PROPOSED ICE detention facility on the south side a project that only existed because of big-finance development pipelines tied back to the same elite networks AND Mayor Holt who dances on NYC bartops when he visits his private equity pals up there, and buffonish goons like the "ive had it!" podcast who love him so....people still treat as enlightened when they’re headquartered in New York or DC. The same financial architecture that coastal liberals claim to oppose is quietly exported here, where the damage is EASIER to ignore so when people ask, “why do you vote against your interests,” they’re asking the wrong question cuz the real question is, “why did we do this to you.” cuz Oklahoma didn’t become this way in a vacuum it was shaped deliberately by national power national f'n funny money and national political games. Some of us are trying to unwind that in real time, on the ground, not as a cultural argument, but as a fight against an economic system that’s been using this place as a f'n pressure valve for generations.
The first time anything on substack has made me cry. I’m on Team Human.
It took 9 (nine!) months for me to feel brave enough to say hi to someone before or after a meeting of my local Buddhist sobriety group, Recovery Dharma.
There is a LOT of conditioning of isolation and alienation and social anxiety to alchemize before even borrowing an egg sounds plausible.
In that nine months, all I did was show up. I participated by listening while people shared their experiences in that Quaker style of one at a time speaking. I meditated and kept my mind from wandering, holding space. Occasionally I spoke when I felt called to, but those were the days I sprinted out as soon as the meeting was over. Haha.
Now I’m having all these lunch meetings with people I haven’t seen in years (some in decades). And there’s this sense we all have that we’re doing something counter cultural by fighting loneliness. We’re all rusty. We’re all a little awkward. But we’re making connections.
It feels like enough, as long as I’m not scrolling. That only leads to a doomy sort of feeling that nothing is enough.
"Let’s be with this before we do something about this."
To me, this is the preparedness--learning to meditate and ground. It is not on the material level where we can save ourselves given any emergency.
Also I applaud the creation of viable community alternatives.
What is sticky for me are your answers involving changing the system. I say let's opt out as much as possible while creating the alternatives. For example, you mentioned the online connections on one block when Signal was cut out. This was the establishment of a node? If a lot of us did that we would no longer need the controlled Internet. How about black and gray markets? Alternative local currencies, barter markets, and etc., would be moves towards de-banking and eliminating the system by cutting out its economic base.
I suggest checking out Freedom Cells, (https://freedomcells.org/) an international group that you can create locally in your neighborhoods.
Everything you lay out here (and so much more) is completely expected in a world of extreme overshoot. There is nothing we can do, other than, as you say, connect with others and build community... except I'll add one thing. Defend the natural world where you live with everything you've got. Without flourishing natural communities, human communities cannot thrive. Nature is primary. In overshoot (and the inevitable collapse that follows), there is little else.
agreed. it's the quiet part out loud while we are in such intense reaction to the violent assault on cities, on brown and black skinned people, on and on... for a while the climate movement was a stand in for "nature batting last" and for protecting forests, trees, rivers, creatures on the verge of disappearing. A love affair with wildness. And then the political brutality has us all in overwhelm and reaction. We do need to keep an eye on protecting what we love and "nature" is our neighbors as well.
i say this with all due respect as a former student of yours, but if the behavior of the trump administration is the alarm bell for authoritarianism, were the last 25 years just "democracy" in your mind? though the expressions of state power under right wing leadership may not be as subversive as the left, i dont know how you can get more authoritarian than the covid and vaccine protocols under liberal governance, not to mention the level of censorship that the whole country was subjected to.
where was team human then? unfortunately a majority of the left—radicals and liberals alike—parroted propaganda that handed the state infinitely more power than the campaign promise of trump to deport illegal migrants. requiring the acceptance of an experimental gene therapy in the name of Public Safety is light years away from the logic of deporting criminal illegals, yet the former is embraced and the latter is attempted to be made out to be "gestapo tactics"? did the gestapo offer paid flights home and 3000$ and a place in line to apply for citizenship legally as their alternate option to concentration camps (the analog to deportation, apparently?)
as someone who thoroughly consumed the world through a leftist lens for over 20 years, i am well acquainted with its logic and end goal and from my perspective it is a religion for Godless, unrealistic, shame filled, dishonest, neurotic people. the more i healed myself, the more insane the left and its worldview became. i don't believe the right is necessarily the final answer, but it has a longer history of social cohesion in the usa than the left has.
i agree with you grounding in your local community is a pathway to repair, but as we enter into the kinetic stage of a second civil war dont forget that it was the anti war left in the 70s that planted the seed to bring the war home, the conflict you see now are the fruits of that seed, planted in the name of "love" and "freedom".
Interesting take. You think covid protocols were more authoritarian than publicly executing dissidents in the street? Than putting legal, law abiding citizens in torture prisons in foreign countries or home grown concentration camps? You think asking people to wear a mask and stay 6ft apart was greater government overreach than masked agents abducting men and women off the street or using small children as hostages to lure out their parents? The fact that you describe the covid mRNA vaccine as “experimental gene therapy” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how that vaccine works. But let’s put all of that aside.
What’s happening now is not a right or left issue. It’s puzzling to see it framed this way. It’s a human issue. It’s a constitutional issue. It’s a spiritual issue. It transcends party lines. Regardless of your political affiliation, federal agents assaulting and murdering US citizens in the streets is unacceptable. Full stop. A good rule of thumb is: ask yourself whether you would be okay with what’s happening if the other party was doing it. If the answer is no, this is not a party issue.
There’s one thing I do agree with you on though. What’s happening now isn’t new. You’re right—we haven’t had democracy for the past 20, 30, perhaps 50 years; maybe never. What they’re doing now to white people they’ve been doing to black and brown bodies, and Asian and Native American bodies for centuries before that.
The key difference now, is that the veil is lifting for white America. The penny is dropping for a lot of people who intellectually understood racial injustice and systemic oppression, but can now feel it on an embodied and visceral level. And maybe THIS is the chance to establish the kind of cohesion and solidarity that hasn’t been previously possible.
Another excellent piece, Doug! One note: I would quibble with your characterization of Trump’s narrow 2024 win as a “mandate” for much of anything. Unnecessary concession to the regime’s messaging.
do you really think that a USA similar to France ( where the last years macron police blinded a number of people that today NO AI is able to say) or to Belgium you will be better? We read your book in the fall of the 90ies and we experience today specially in Italy a stagnation and misery which is uncanny... in order to live we write "calls for proposals" following the delirant ambitions of the Kommision ... are you sure that all that chaos is not a plan to turn USA in a "sort of DDR" in which when you ll be there you ll remind my words. It is a shit.
I'm a New Zealander (in NZ) but this is inspiring and relevant for any of us team humans, I think.
Share with your friends in New Zealand - because you can feel the change here and most don’t think it could happen here - like they thought in America.
Thank you for the nudge, John! I have just restacked with a note.
I sure hope " ...Try to understand where “the other” was coming from, and reach across the aisle to our red state brothers and sisters and help them see we have common interests and fears but I think we all sense now that things have shifted..." isn’t meant as a sneer at us “red state” folks, because in a lot of ways we’re the only real hope for turning this ship around. The damage you’re looking at here didn’t come from nowhere and it dint come from the people who live here. It came from a long history of being used stripped and financially engineered by the parts of the country that now feel comfortable talkin down to us you know for over a century east-coast capital has treated places like Oklahoma as extraction zones Dust Bowl wasn’t just bad luck or bad farming it was driven by speculative agriculture absentee ownership and financial pressure that forced people into ruin. We had strong socialist, populist, and labor traditions (look up the green corn rebellion my oklahomie roxanne dunbar ortiz writes about that) here that were systematically broken because they threatened that model what you see now isn’t people “voting against their interests.” It’s the aftermath of generations and generations of economic and psychological warfare on a region (dust bowl penn square bank crisis housing crisis okc thunder extraction.....)
And this isn’t abstract history. A few of us here just helped SHUT DOWN A PROPOSED ICE detention facility on the south side a project that only existed because of big-finance development pipelines tied back to the same elite networks AND Mayor Holt who dances on NYC bartops when he visits his private equity pals up there, and buffonish goons like the "ive had it!" podcast who love him so....people still treat as enlightened when they’re headquartered in New York or DC. The same financial architecture that coastal liberals claim to oppose is quietly exported here, where the damage is EASIER to ignore so when people ask, “why do you vote against your interests,” they’re asking the wrong question cuz the real question is, “why did we do this to you.” cuz Oklahoma didn’t become this way in a vacuum it was shaped deliberately by national power national f'n funny money and national political games. Some of us are trying to unwind that in real time, on the ground, not as a cultural argument, but as a fight against an economic system that’s been using this place as a f'n pressure valve for generations.
Love you forever 'n ever Douglas take care
Thank you, Doug. I find myself quoting you a lot including at a neighborhood media gathering where a few of us determined to "stay weird."
The first time anything on substack has made me cry. I’m on Team Human.
It took 9 (nine!) months for me to feel brave enough to say hi to someone before or after a meeting of my local Buddhist sobriety group, Recovery Dharma.
There is a LOT of conditioning of isolation and alienation and social anxiety to alchemize before even borrowing an egg sounds plausible.
In that nine months, all I did was show up. I participated by listening while people shared their experiences in that Quaker style of one at a time speaking. I meditated and kept my mind from wandering, holding space. Occasionally I spoke when I felt called to, but those were the days I sprinted out as soon as the meeting was over. Haha.
Now I’m having all these lunch meetings with people I haven’t seen in years (some in decades). And there’s this sense we all have that we’re doing something counter cultural by fighting loneliness. We’re all rusty. We’re all a little awkward. But we’re making connections.
It feels like enough, as long as I’m not scrolling. That only leads to a doomy sort of feeling that nothing is enough.
But connection is dissent, is protest.
I’m hoping to continue to get better at it.
Great post, Doug!
I like what you said:
"Let’s be with this before we do something about this."
To me, this is the preparedness--learning to meditate and ground. It is not on the material level where we can save ourselves given any emergency.
Also I applaud the creation of viable community alternatives.
What is sticky for me are your answers involving changing the system. I say let's opt out as much as possible while creating the alternatives. For example, you mentioned the online connections on one block when Signal was cut out. This was the establishment of a node? If a lot of us did that we would no longer need the controlled Internet. How about black and gray markets? Alternative local currencies, barter markets, and etc., would be moves towards de-banking and eliminating the system by cutting out its economic base.
I suggest checking out Freedom Cells, (https://freedomcells.org/) an international group that you can create locally in your neighborhoods.
Thank you, Doug. Such interaction is truly the only good solution.
Great article! So well put
Wonderful, thank you, as always.
Everything you lay out here (and so much more) is completely expected in a world of extreme overshoot. There is nothing we can do, other than, as you say, connect with others and build community... except I'll add one thing. Defend the natural world where you live with everything you've got. Without flourishing natural communities, human communities cannot thrive. Nature is primary. In overshoot (and the inevitable collapse that follows), there is little else.
agreed. it's the quiet part out loud while we are in such intense reaction to the violent assault on cities, on brown and black skinned people, on and on... for a while the climate movement was a stand in for "nature batting last" and for protecting forests, trees, rivers, creatures on the verge of disappearing. A love affair with wildness. And then the political brutality has us all in overwhelm and reaction. We do need to keep an eye on protecting what we love and "nature" is our neighbors as well.
i say this with all due respect as a former student of yours, but if the behavior of the trump administration is the alarm bell for authoritarianism, were the last 25 years just "democracy" in your mind? though the expressions of state power under right wing leadership may not be as subversive as the left, i dont know how you can get more authoritarian than the covid and vaccine protocols under liberal governance, not to mention the level of censorship that the whole country was subjected to.
where was team human then? unfortunately a majority of the left—radicals and liberals alike—parroted propaganda that handed the state infinitely more power than the campaign promise of trump to deport illegal migrants. requiring the acceptance of an experimental gene therapy in the name of Public Safety is light years away from the logic of deporting criminal illegals, yet the former is embraced and the latter is attempted to be made out to be "gestapo tactics"? did the gestapo offer paid flights home and 3000$ and a place in line to apply for citizenship legally as their alternate option to concentration camps (the analog to deportation, apparently?)
as someone who thoroughly consumed the world through a leftist lens for over 20 years, i am well acquainted with its logic and end goal and from my perspective it is a religion for Godless, unrealistic, shame filled, dishonest, neurotic people. the more i healed myself, the more insane the left and its worldview became. i don't believe the right is necessarily the final answer, but it has a longer history of social cohesion in the usa than the left has.
i agree with you grounding in your local community is a pathway to repair, but as we enter into the kinetic stage of a second civil war dont forget that it was the anti war left in the 70s that planted the seed to bring the war home, the conflict you see now are the fruits of that seed, planted in the name of "love" and "freedom".
Interesting take. You think covid protocols were more authoritarian than publicly executing dissidents in the street? Than putting legal, law abiding citizens in torture prisons in foreign countries or home grown concentration camps? You think asking people to wear a mask and stay 6ft apart was greater government overreach than masked agents abducting men and women off the street or using small children as hostages to lure out their parents? The fact that you describe the covid mRNA vaccine as “experimental gene therapy” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how that vaccine works. But let’s put all of that aside.
What’s happening now is not a right or left issue. It’s puzzling to see it framed this way. It’s a human issue. It’s a constitutional issue. It’s a spiritual issue. It transcends party lines. Regardless of your political affiliation, federal agents assaulting and murdering US citizens in the streets is unacceptable. Full stop. A good rule of thumb is: ask yourself whether you would be okay with what’s happening if the other party was doing it. If the answer is no, this is not a party issue.
There’s one thing I do agree with you on though. What’s happening now isn’t new. You’re right—we haven’t had democracy for the past 20, 30, perhaps 50 years; maybe never. What they’re doing now to white people they’ve been doing to black and brown bodies, and Asian and Native American bodies for centuries before that.
The key difference now, is that the veil is lifting for white America. The penny is dropping for a lot of people who intellectually understood racial injustice and systemic oppression, but can now feel it on an embodied and visceral level. And maybe THIS is the chance to establish the kind of cohesion and solidarity that hasn’t been previously possible.
Another excellent piece, Doug! One note: I would quibble with your characterization of Trump’s narrow 2024 win as a “mandate” for much of anything. Unnecessary concession to the regime’s messaging.
do you really think that a USA similar to France ( where the last years macron police blinded a number of people that today NO AI is able to say) or to Belgium you will be better? We read your book in the fall of the 90ies and we experience today specially in Italy a stagnation and misery which is uncanny... in order to live we write "calls for proposals" following the delirant ambitions of the Kommision ... are you sure that all that chaos is not a plan to turn USA in a "sort of DDR" in which when you ll be there you ll remind my words. It is a shit.
These are not unusual times