With so many eggs in the basket of the midterms, if the vision of the Democratic Party still will come from serving donors over serving us best we think of other ways to get what’s lifesaving in play.
Something we don’t even talk about is that it feels good to be nice. To be kind. It’s not a sacrifice. If you make it a habit to fill your life with little pinches of sweetness you’ll float around, weight will be off, and energy will be on. Throw some fun in. Come on, that could be how the world works.
Greed is the enemy. In what will be new, we’ll be watching out for each other. Like we do in disasters. Staying in that energy isn’t rocket science. We can do it. A spirit of generosity needs to be in the air. People need to be on give. Making it better for one another.
How can this be our zeitgeist? What could upend the torture we’re inflicting on each other? I’m betting there’s a hot core of heroism waiting for that crack in everything. Let’s go crack-hunting. What would let the light in?
I fantasize Taylor Swift doing a Lady Godiva. That would shake everybody up! (My shake-up in doing something like that is a story for another day.) Or, let’s say Taylor Swift, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Pope Leo XIV, each with more than 50% of us following them, link up with MacKenzie Scott and Melinda Gates to call for a culture of love. I bet that could turn the world into a caring place!
We are beyond ridiculous in the emperor’s clothes department. Dear, dear, dear, dear, look around. Strange but true, not a power-person or a bunch of them together has committed to getting our nightmare gone. LET’S GET REAL. He can nuke us. It’s not possible to say whether he would or not. And that’s MAYDAY, MAYDAY.
What can I do? I’ve taken some cues from Inside the Intelligence, that’s 27 pages of instructions I got decades ago. Here are some excerpts:
A hubbub of irrelevancy will go on forever until there is a call to STOP. Call, Suzanne, call. Be clear. Get everyone’s attention. No more settling. Wake the world up.
Suzanne, you are a seething island of passion in an ocean of indifference…you are merely doing your job.
You can only be heard by those who can hear and they will emerge as they may. Keep talking. You are refining your thoughts. We are very well pleased.
Almost everyone is evaluating instead of entering life where they would not know separation. Replace survival and acquisition with adventure. Gather the Messiahs.
We have programmed you to seek excellence. You cannot settle for less. You know the composition. The orchestra must be in tune.
There is some kind of basic workability to look for, like you’re a mechanic and the earth is a vehicle. Make it work. It works from skewing the point of view from a separate “me” to a collective “we.”
If I had the authority to get attention paid, right now I’d get sign-ups for a massive Coalition for the Good, for boycotts and whatever else would make for progress. And, how about a national conversation about what it would take to get Trump to fire his hires before he and Vance resign? Also, we’d talk about a coup, where I’d see some outstanding women occupying the Oval Office. Hey, you ex-presidents, movie stars, billionaires, and sports heroes, how about, while I am short a powerbase, that you put up a flag we can rally round to create that coalition? That can happen today!!!! Come on, get us moving along, singing a song, side by side.
Shoulds and oughts and musts are the coin of the progressive realm on Substack, but what’s not jangling here are to dos for making our dreams come true. To change anything, you start with changing minds. As we think, so we act, and by my lights tops on the list is to get all of humanity aware of overshoot and proud of ourselves as the brilliant problem-solving species we are.
That’s if we make it, in any decent stead, out of The Worst Reality in the History of Mankind. No fixes are offered; the points that are made are to get us starkly aware. As always, the best chance for getting where we need to be is knowing where we are.
“The path the United States is walking in its confrontation with Iran is the worst set of circumstances any great power has faced in the history of mankind…The worst reality in the history of mankind is not that America faces a determined adversary in Iran. It is that America is choosing to fight a war it cannot win on terms that accelerate its own unraveling.”
Dear, dear Leonard Cohen, my world is not as interesting a place as when I could entertain the fantasy of you falling in love with me…
To get immersed in the point of view I argue for, have a look at comments I’ve made in Substack Notes.
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First of all, I’m very aware of your story “to share for another day” you’re an icon and a legend. Giving kindness is the strongest tool there is, and it takes no effort at all. It just takes being a human. I was getting gas yesterday, and an older woman couldn’t figure out how to fill her tank, brand new car, so I helped her. It lifted my whole day and I’m sure it lifted hers as well. Kindness, is the universal solvent.
I appreciate your emphasis on kindness, generosity, and shifting from a "me" mindset to a "we" mindset. In times of uncertainty and division, those values can help rebuild trust and strengthen communities, I have seen and experienced it firsthand.
I think the bigger challenge is how to sustain that spirit when the immediate emergency has passed. I believe a true "Coalition for the Good" would need to be rooted not only in shared concerns, but in empathy, listening, and a willingness to work across differences.
One thing I have heard from fellow community members is the desire to create a place and an environment where stories are shared across generations. For me, I feel as we have so much to learn from each other both young and old.
Thank you for encouraging people to imagine what that could look like.