The Pandemic
I realized the other day that, while I wasn’t looking, “The Revolution” had begun. It had been brewing for a long time and was clarified by the Pandemic. The Pandemic was like “The Great Pause”. It gave everyone time to stop and reevaluate their lives and their roles in life. It gave everyone time to rethink the prevailing systems and whether or not they were appropriate or helpful for dealing with the modern realities the planet was facing. It also made them question what would remain after the worst of the Pandemic and what would change. They also realized that the Pandemic had taught them an important lesson. They could not rely on leaders and governments to solve all of the problems, especially when those leaders and governments were entrenched in those older systems which had not adapted to modern realities. They were reminded of how helpful and important personal and community connections were when they had to rely on themselves to survive.
During this time, I had been encouraging people to join The Journey Back to Sustainable Sanity and had been watching it begin to gain momentum.
The Revolution
And then it began to happen. Jobs were no longer being filled with eager applicants. Workers were refusing to work the jobs that were offered under the present conditions. As teachers and public education came under heavier attack by a very conservative right wing in politics, teachers were refusing to teach. As working conditions worsened, nurses refused to work and went on strike. This was an indication that the present economic systems were no longer meeting the needs of those who were needed to sustain them.
Choices
I also realized that revolution could simply be people choosing a better way to proceed. It did not need to be competitive, confrontational or violent; it simply required that people stop supporting one way of doing things and instead choose a better way; like switching from analog to digital technology.
And then there were the decisions of a radicalized US Supreme Court, especially denying federal protection for abortions. That decision and others coming from that court did not square with where a majority of the citizenry are.
And there was the growing support and continuing search for solutions to the inequities in social justice, not to mention the growing urgency of the need for climate change solutions for the planet itself.
We were also bombarded with the details of the complete corruption of our last president going so far as to lead an insurrection to undo the 2020 presidential election to keep himself in power, totally undoing all of the democratic structures of this nation.
We witnessed an entire political party united in its efforts to prevent even minimal help to deal with global warming, to help ordinary citizens with health care, or to begin to deal with the massive income inequality they have so consistently supported and encouraged.
All of this was overreach and everyone was being affected by the old systems that allowed this to continue, with “business as usual”.
The Change
And people began to say “enough!” They began to be motivated, watching an entire political party justifying an insurrection and the accompanying corruption rather than trying to recognize what was happening and trying to find healing and unifying solutions. Instead, that party espoused threats, intimidation, and sometimes violence against anything that thwarted their grabs for power and control.
Most people could see that the threats to the very basis of democracy in this nation were not coming from foreign enemies but from within our very borders, and those people were willing to unleash a kind of violent anarchy to gain power and control.
We begin to see people find the courage as American citizens within this democracy to stand up against these organized and armed extremists. They are willing to simply stand up in the face of that power grab and say, “No!” And to say, “I support an America which believes in the basic precepts of democracy, and I will not back down in the face of your attempts at intimidation”.
This is, after all, a democracy; of the people, by the people and for the people, and the people are clearly and forcefully saying we need to find better systems to deal with current realities. And to accomplish that we need to attend to the voices of the citizens who support democracy and its processes. This means rethinking and changing our economic assumptions, our political systems and finding and supporting leadership that reflects the democratic voices of the citizenry.
If this revolution does not occur quickly, we will find ourselves in a nation no longer a democracy but ruled by those who would enforce conformity to their precepts by force, intimidation and violence.
Let the revolution proceed in its creation of a renewed democracy as we continue our journey back to sustainable sanity to save the nation, our souls and the planet.
