The fix is in, folks. The oligarchic regime that is determined to overthrow democracy has now been democratically elected. They will take power on January 20, though they are already seizing power and undermining our institutions by filling the top positions in the Executive Branch with a fool’s gallery of thugs, traitors, and fanatics, while creating their own ersatz department of “governmental efficiency” and giving all power to Oligarch # 1 — Elon Musk — to slash government programs however he wishes. The only thing all these jokers have in common is total, sycophantic loyalty to the whims of their deranged and felonious king, the Don.
Hence the constitutional democracy into which we were born or naturalized, whose humanistic principles of liberty (including intellectual freedom), social equality, and the rule of law — this nation — “of the people, by the people, and for the people” as Lincoln put it — no longer exists. Instead, we have an emerging fascist oligarchy, still called the “USA” while our lawless new king (above the law, now, thanks to his sycophantic and corrupt Supreme Court) systematically undermines the institutional constraints and divisions of power that protected us from tyranny for nearly 250 years.
The new Trump regime is, in every respect, government of less than half of the people — his delusional cult followers and those gullible folks who voted him in, while he has declared all the rest of us as “the enemy within,” to be silenced by endless lawsuits, demonized on Fox News and other oligarchic media, persecuted by the IRS, hunted down by a compliant FBI, or “disappeared” by paramilitary (unofficial and unacknowledged) death squads. And it is government by and for the oligarchs themselves — the billionaires, the oil barons, the CEOs, the industrial polluters and rapacious developers, the big banks, the faceless thieves in private health insurance firms. The rest of us are now their slaves, their hapless victims.
UNLESS…What? Where do we go from here? Forget about organizing a “peasant’s revolt” as in the French or Communist Revolutions. That is an exercise in suicidal futility. After all, they have all the money, the guns, the surveillance networks, and the hegemonic control of the airwaves and the internet they would need to demonize us as “woke” or “socialists” or “terrorists” and then crush us (to the cheers of their clueless followers).
Instead, we need to embrace the timeless principles of Satyagraha — nonviolent noncooperation of evil that is mindful, strategic, and relentless. Here is one possible approach I’ve come up with.
First, we need to stop calling ourselves “Americans” (or any other nationality, for that matter) and realize that all nation-states are simply convenient historical fictions for tapping into our innate tendency toward tribal loyalty — the same idiotic tendency that causes otherwise normal people to devote themselves passionately to following and supporting particular college or professional athletic teams.
Instead, let’s create our own “tribe” which is inclusive, rather than exclusive (like all the others). The name I’ve chosen for this inclusive tribe is “Gaian.”
So what is a Gaian?
· A living organism, human, or otherwise, who inhabits and depends on the solar-powered and biogenic cycling of nutrients through air, land, and waters of the only life-sustaining planet we will ever know — Gaia, or the living Earth. This is the broadest definition; all of us are therefore Gaians already; there is nothing to join.
· Conscious Gaians, a subcategory, are those of us who fully recognize our total dependence upon our living planet as our biological support system, and therefore place our highest allegiance with Gaia herself — the living Earth, to which all other allegiances are subordinate (i.e. nation, religion, sports team, state, locality, ethnicity, etc.) So, for example, if the interests of the US or any other nation oppose the interests of Gaia, we will always take the side of Gaia. So while we all are Gaians, conscious Gaians will oppose, and work against, any policy or behavior that poses a threat to Gaia. Today most of us generally refer to conscious Gaians as “environmentalists” or, more derogatorily, as “tree-huggers.” (Count me in; like “woke,” “tree-hugger” is a term of abuse I happily embrace.)
· There are two broad divisions of Gaian consciousness: Gaian theory, and Gaian Praxis. Gaian theory refers, of course, to Lovelock’s original Gaia hypothesis, and more generally, to awareness of the systemic nature of life on Earth and the threats to it. Gaian praxis refers to the design of human habitations that are symbiotic with, rather than parasitic upon, Gaia. Another name for Gaian praxis is Permaculture.
So I cordially invite all readers to join me in shifting my allegiance outward, as it were, from the (former) United States of America to Gaia, the magnificent living planet that is our common home, no matter where we come from. Since the life-support systems of Gaia are severely threatened by our global market economy (“Glomart” as I call it), when we become conscious Gaians, we must not only push back against policies that further harm Gaia, but we also must systematically withdraw ourselves from dependence on the money system — for money is not only the foundation of global oligarchy, but it is also a terminal cancer on Gaia. This reduced dependence on the Glomart oligarchy can best be achieved by cultivating the Eight Forms of Capital.
These include not only the two basic zero-sum forms: physical (material resources) and virtual (money), which one gains at others’ loss or expense, but also, more importantly, positive-sum forms of capital: those we can share, without losing them. These include
— biological capital (compost, seeds, cultivars, breeds, all of which can be shared with no loss);
— experiential capital (skills we have learned and can share through direct experience or training);
— intellectual capital (conceptual knowledge we have gained and share through education, discussion, and reading);
— social capital (gained and shared by cultivating friendships)
— spiritual capital (gained and shared by contemplative practices and volunteering.
— cultural capital (which one subculture or ethnic community can share with others through festivals, performances, and even restaurants).
While we can never be entirely free of dependence on finite material resources or the money system by which they are gained or lost, we can nevertheless dramatically reduce our dependence on these zero-sum resources by assiduously cultivating all these other inner and outer resources as well.
So welcome, fellow Gaians! Let’s kiss goodbye to the former United States of America, and to all other power-grabbing nations that are part of the Glomart economy, and instead devote ourselves wholeheartedly to Gaia — our true home — starting in our own backyards, by growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness! And to cultivate a community-building Gaian ethos based on learning, teaching, healing, and creating — rather than merely getting and spending.
And let us pledge to speak truth to power, to resist oligarchic tyranny and protect its potential (or actual) victims, and — no matter what happens — to sow the seeds of a Gaian future right here, amidst the crumbling ruins of Glomart!