What to Do When the World Turns Upside Down (Part Two)
From Q Anon to "Blue Anon" political ideologies have morphed into their historical OPPOSITES. Why is this happening, how can we change this, and what does it mean for the future?
“When the people lead, the leaders will follow.”— Mahatma Gandhi
We are at a consequential crossroads. We know that institutions are failing, and will continue to fail, probably in an irreversible and accelerating way. Corporations, media, international organizations, banks, governments, political parties, churches, unions and even non-profits, academia, public education, and the scientific community have all shown either an extreme capitulation to money and political influence or a significant corruption in their operation. They cannot, with some exceptions, largely be trusted to dispense truth, meaning, or morality. We may not like this darkening trend, but we know its not going away with a change in political parties.
The possibility and experiment of democracy itself is in the balance. This too we know in our bones. But what is democracy really, if not rule of the people, by the people, for the people. We have outsourced our leadership not only politically, but emotionally, socially, intellectually, physically, mentally… every way possible. We were sold on the myth of “letting your money work for you” in a rigged stock market, of letting technology beguile our minds, of letting social media provide not only our friends, but the very medium of friendship itself. We’ve offloaded our critical thinking because convenience was so much easier and more “efficient”.
It is now time to lead ourselves, and reclaim the rightful place of the people in “public service”? We look around and see only self-service in politicians and industry leaders, and yet if we take a closer look at ourselves do we not see the same? Even our spiritual attempts are often quarantined to our own personal enlightenment and elevation, believing that some magic will transmit that light into the universe and transform it for us. How’s that working for us? Not so well.
What might work better? For one, it is time to become co-creators and participants again in the making of our own realities, and it is time to re-learn across old divisions what it means to be a human being in solidarity with other human beings no matter what our differences may be.
We can and will chart a new course beyond unconscionable choices. We can and will refuse to give into mania, fear, and identity politics on one hand, and naive idealism, blind sincerity, and mercurial hope on the other. We can and will no longer bow to the inanity (and insanity) dictated to us by vacuous reality television or by corporate-driven corruption. It is time to stop retreating and advance into an arena that has been hollowed out by a mindless processions of promises that were never going to be kept.
In September of 2020, I shared a theory with my wife, Regina, that seems to have come true. In the video discussion (on her website, ReginaMeredith.com), entitled “Conspiracy Con: A Call to Rational Thinking,” I predicted the simultaneous overreach and weakness of a potential Biden administration. I reasoned that if presidents only represent a shadowy “deep state” and no longer people, then it is best to vote for the weakest one. Biden’s subsequent overreach (vaccine and mask mandates) and weakness (captured in the slogan ‘Let’s go Brandon’) proved the theory correct.
Biden has lost all respect, and people are left with their own leadership. His bland incompetence and out-of-touch demeanor have largely erased the U.S. presidency as a focus of attention for the people. We are freed to disregard his admonitions and make our own way.
The Problem: Identity over reality, culture wars over connection
Let there be no mistake. We also dodged another bullet.
Donald Trump was a one-man attention-sponge and wrecking crew who showed that the power of the presidency could be used to outright deny constitutional so-called balance of powers. The psychic assault he perpetrated on so many, the dashing of moral standards, and the evisceration of any kind of accountability were as breathtaking as they were repugnant. We were not only witnessing a crash of democracy, we were in the car.
And yet, mercifully, actual measurable harms were far more limited than one would expect.
Under Trump, something on the order of five people died as a result of the Jan. 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol, nine Iranian and Iraqi defense officials were assassinated by a drone strike in early 2020, and a bungled Covid response killed an undetermined amount of people. (If people had simply been given the same early treatment as the obese 244-pound Trump received for his Covid— Vitamin D, zinc, melatonin, aspirin, monoclonal antibodies, steroids, Pepcid (leaving out the ineffective and expensive Remdesivir)— then tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands would have been saved.)
Joe Biden’s forced vaccine mandates, on the other hand, appear to have contributed more actual damage, not only in the form of significant amounts of vaccine injury and death according to the government database VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System), but also as a result of policies around long-term community and school shutdowns. Forced masking and lockdowns have likely contributed to significant suicide issues, poverty-induced death, opioid abuse and death, trauma, mental, emotional, and social harm, the latter which I have witnessed in my job as an educational counselor.
More people, arguably, have died under “liberal” Biden’s consigliere enforcement of Big Pharma’s fraudulently touted “miracle” vaccines than under the reckless bullying of Trump. And let us not forget this was the Biden who promised no mask mandates, no vaccine mandates, and complete transparency as to the data, constituents, and effects around vaccines.
Covid-19 rousted out into the open the “let them eat cake” inhumanity and lust for power dwelling underneath pseudo-liberal masks. This is true not only nationally but globally. This has revealed a false dichotomy as hollow as the proffered pity of these pretenders: The world is not run along liberal and conservative lines, but rather top-down elites of all stripes and the people they seek to control. To wit, the totalitarian social identification and surveillance systems of “liberal” places like New Zealand, Australia, and Canada are something out of a George Orwell book— lockdowns, quarantine camps, Covid “locator” apps for phones, vaccine passports, and even arrests and seizures of bank accounts for those protesting against these truly illiberal practices.
“Process”, technocracy, and bureaucracy have replaced effective advocacy and civil rights. Critical Race Theory, a legitimate black-originated critique of structural racial inequality has been colonized by “well-meaning” white people to create a grievance narrative that ends up helping no one, least of all black people, and causing backlash.
Let’s not let conservatives off the hook. They too have gone through their moral and political inversion. This started with the so-called Reagan Revolution in which unions were decimated, corporate malfeasance flourished at the expense of honest small businesses, and the working class was undermined at every turn. Christianity over the last decades (a la Joel Osteen) became a monied, new-agey “prosperity gospel” movement in direct opposition to the actual instructions and examples of Jesus.
This inversion culminated in the election of a candidate, Donald Trump, who was the perfect embodiment of a literal anti-Christ, an inveterate atheist, liar, cheater, family-wrecker, and democracy-destroyer, passed off as the Second Coming. However, Trump could not have had his pied-piper effect on his followers without the pseudo-progressivism of Obama, pretending to be a champion for the “little man” yet refusing to investigate big banks and presiding over flat wages, zero interest on savings, and the largest transfer and concentration of wealth in the history of the world. “Hope”? “Change?” Not so much.
After being rabidly anti-communist, and anti-socialist for the better part of U.S. history, many pseudo-conservatives found themselves, along with Trump, falling “in love” with communist dictators like Kim Jung Un and scions of the Soviet KGB like Vladimir Putin simply because they pose as “strong men,” even though their actions—to respectively assassinate relatives and hide from Covid-19— communicate nothing but paranoia and insecurity.
What effects did this surrender to pseudo-conservatism create?: A resurgent and very real racism (though overstated in its numbers and scope by alarmist pseudo-liberals), a re-romanticized emphasis on material wealth as a sign of divine providence, a culture war, an anti-immigrant fervor, and a “make liberals cry” devolution emerged at direct odds with Jesus’s admonitions to “love your neighbor, love a stranger, and love your enemy.” Like I said, “Up is down, left is right, black is white.”
The Way Forward: Seeing the genius in each, integrating the best
The good news is that historical conservatives, liberals, and progressives have more in common with each other than with their “pseudo/neo/anti-” brothers and sisters. Healthy conservatism grounds endeavor in best foundations of the past— wisdom, craft, handed-down skills, perennial values, faith, community, and family. Healthy liberalism connects endeavor to present challenges, opportunities, and concerns— including developing social equality, care for the “least among us”, emotional openness and intelligence, and respect and embrace of diverse viewpoints and cultures. Healthy progressivism launches the active principles of anticipation, creativity, sustainability, innovation, inclusion, enfranchisement, and empowerment aimed at a viable and vital future.
We should not set conservative, liberal, and progressive values against each other. Now is the time for new coalitions to emerge between formerly conflicting groups to battle the onslaught of a faithless, human-despising, and creatively-void mechanistic world view. This mechanistic world view is actively seeking to subsume all humanity under a globalist, transhumanist, artificially stupid regime in which “you will own nothing (not even your own thoughts, data, and choices), and you will be happy.” This anti-human foe it is NOT to be underestimated.
I will be in future essays reporting my experiences from the front lines of people finding common cause across traditional separations. It is becoming clearer and clearer that a global Big Brother is more a threat than the guy next to you with different political views. For right now let me share with you four principles I see emerging that bridge the divisiveness promulgated by social media algorithms and self-anointed social engineers like the World Economic Forum.
Move things forward: Creativity and conviction. Enough of the left-wing, right-wing, centrist crap. We don’t need to be divided and we don’t need to be pulled sideways. We either work together to move things forward in a healthy way or we stagnate (or destroy ourselves) and die away. Forget the pseudo-conservative “Make America Great Again, ” the pseudo-liberal grievance politics, and the pseudo-progressive thought policing. Our vision has to evolve with us collaboratively FORWARD without us pushing ourselves on others or preventing them from contributing. All these ideologies which seek to impose rule from Christian Nationalism to bureaucratic mandates to politically-correct purism are by nature dictatorial, constrictive, and anti-creative. I WANT YOUR DIFFERENCE. It delights me, rather than threatens me. It is diversity in motion, and a diverse world is a richer world. My productive self-esteem is built in constructive relationship with your difference as unique and wondrous, not on your alignment with my positions.
Don’t promise… Deliver!: Get things done. Don’t sit around with symbolic actions that feel good but accomplish nothing. In my former endeavors I tried working with the youth-dominated Democratic Socialists of America, but they spent about 99.9% of their time on basically useless performance theater. Book clubs, discussions, over-processy meetings, protests that consume resources and go nowhere (as opposed to organized boycotts), and various news alerts that flash by like reflectors on a highway. I recall an interview with a person trying to raise money for a worthy cause on Facebook whose cause got 12,000 “likes” and not a single penny of actual donation. To this point, I have withdrawn all my money from political campaigns, and I am now funding and subscribing real, effective, and successful journalism, advocacy, and “fight.” Much of that money goes to authors right here on Substack. We are building a new coalition and base of knowledge and morality, and it won’t happen overnight.
Be willing to pay the price but be compassionate to those who cannot: Courage. If you lose your job, or your standing, or your friends and family, because you are the “skunk at the picnic” doing the right thing and adhering to a humane and provable truth, then this begets a life of integrity. Encourage yourself and others to stand up! Lead by example. Compassion: Sometimes courage and decisions lead us to consider other important things— support of family, need to travel for a job, etc. I have respect and still respect decisions people have made to take a vaccine to protect elderly parents (when people thought that might actually work), to support a family in the face of a vaccine mandate at work, or because they felt they themselves were vulnerable. We ought to act in the world, to the extent we can, for the well-being of ourselves and others and beyond fears that might stand in the way of recognizing and acting upon our fundamental good will and unity of spirit. Let’s try to stretch this range of courage, but let’s not get in the same pointless animus as the nattering class.
Concentrate on goodness and love over ostensible “rightness” and disenchantment: Cynicism is a luxury no one can afford. “The world is shit?” Really? That bird gliding along the wind currents outside my window is a miracle. So are my fingers typing this essay from the concerns in my heart, so I might reach others and the concerns in your heart. We live in an enchanted world with ever present creative possibility and the specter of trauma and disenchantment residing side by side. Let us not forget the constant miracle. This is a time of heart, of spirit, of ability to see through and past our own conceits, toward the beauty of our lives faithfully and genuinely expressed. Let us embrace and respect that. Let us not rest in the conventional wisdom of despair, nor in naive hopes that someone or something will come along to deliver us. Rather let us ask (and indeed pray) to be supplied what we need to choose and step forward into the light of our own conscience. Let us and SEE what being a human being might really be about. And then let us act upon what we see.
Well said Zeus!