Open Letter to Heather Delaney Reese

Can we start something?

Heather, in this upside-down world I feel lucky to have found you. Last month, I cross-posted this post of yours to my subscribers:

This Is what will bring Trump down: “He didn’t call the police when he saw those teenagers. He didn’t try to protect them. He didn’t sound the alarm or speak up. He walked out of the room and stayed silent. For years.”

And here you are, this past week, with escalating responses to how dangerous things are:

Donald Trump is an absolute disaster: “How vulnerable the entire planet is with someone like him in charge; a man with no plan, no clarity, no impulse control, and no business being anywhere near the decisions that determine whether people live or die.”

The President of the United States is afraid: “Trump’s responses did not appear to be from a man burdened by the gravity of leading a nation at war, but rather from a man entertained by it. When asked about U.S. strikes on the island, Iran’s most critical oil hub, his reply was, ‘We totally demolished Kharg Island, but we may hit it a few more times, just for fun.’... When the President of the United States says he might drop bombs ‘for fun,’ make sure everyone you know hears about it.”

Trump is the captain of a sinking ship: “We are living through a pivotal moment for our country, and my goal is to reach as many people as possible with clear, factual information about what is happening. The more people who understand what is unfolding, the better chance we have to push back against chaos, cruelty, and corruption ahead of the midterms.”

Trump doesn’t want us to know how bad he’s losing: Suzanne, here. Heather, you have astonishing insight into how Trump maneuvers, that’s on super-display here. It’s as per this comment you got: “This is the worst, the clearest, and most frightening report…my jaw dropped…my hands shaking with anger.”

One way we differ is that I don’t look to the elections. Even if we have a Democratic victory, we might still be under the spell of the oligarchy. And, given our polycrisis time matters, and Iran creates a real urgency now.

Though nothing means anything and all roads are marked “NO EXIT,” yet move as if your movements had some purpose. If life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. For it must be clear, even to the most clouded intelligence, that any game is better than no game.
—Robert de Ropp, “The Master Game”

Heather, can we start something? With all Trump’s roads marked No Exit, my game worth playing would be to come up with what could get him to fire all his hires and resign.

He doesn’t relish the job. It’s gotten to where he can’t stay awake for it, so maintaining even the illusion of competence is out his window. But what he does relish is riches. We would make it worth his while. Let him keep all his grift, give him freedom from prosecution, and what else? Do we care if he becomes the richest person in the world as long as he isn’t in office? Let him develop a desert somewhere. Sweeten our deal by making him the first recipient of the Save Humanity Award, in this case for courageously resigning in the face of some physical problem that’s newly diagnosed – a sleep disorder would do it -- so he saves face. A clincher, that gives him points in the adulation department, could be a state dinner in his honor. Just keep our eyes on the prize.

Heather, like Tinker to Evers to Chance, how about Taylor to Reese to someone with more outreach than even you have, that could continue on in that way, rippling out till everyone would be thinking together, sort of. A band of thinking. Sounds like something to me.

Here we are, with us in the majority now, plus all the intelligent thinking is coming from us. Now, how to get our siloed selves to be a force? Maybe it’s this way. Making up our own universal chain of command.

I have you named in my recent Open Letter to collapse-savvy people, and the update on that is that a few on that list, who have maps for possible futures, are looking at each other’s. Let’s see what that stimulates.

One of them, an especially comprehensive, masterful job by Ernesto Van Peborgh, got me thinking about how to get it seen, and I’m waiting to hear back from him to this: “How about enrolling TED? That could be the stage for all of it, however you carve it up for presentation. TED could get excited about its saving-the-world aspect, and, as they are changing leadership,your material could be in a launch for their new regime that would be splashy enough for you to get media attention so you could inspire the world with the way of being we must take on.”

How unreal this all is. It defies comparison. Nothing like this ever anywhere. A comic book sort of drama that could come off the page to actually detonate humanity. It calls to mind the classic Jack Benny line when a robber says, “Your money or your life,” and Benny takes a long pause before he says, “I’m thinking.”

So, Heather, how about thinking with me?

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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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