To the Dear, Sweet and Heartbroken

Ed Note: If this piece lands for you and you’re inspired to get together with like minded folks in a beautiful mountain setting this Autumn for a week of learning, hiking, literature and adventure training, check out our upcoming Camp Omega—last week in September in the peak of Fall colors in the Rockies. It’s our annual community gathering and a guaranteed shot of vitality and inspiration.

(despite and because of all that we’ll discuss down below—but if you can make it to the end of this post today, you can make it to the top of the mountains IRL ;)

***

I was pondering the bizarre bittersweetness of our current moment, walking our two happy go-lucky Golden Retrievers around the mountain lake where we live.

On the one hand—we were hiking amidst the once in a half century bloom of the Dr. Seussian Monument Plant

And on the other hand, we were realizing that their little nubby blossoms (supposedly on the verge of opening into a riot of purple and white flowers) might not bloom at all this year because of the drought.

(with who knows what kind of ramifications to their cicada-like return in the distant future?)

***

Philosopher Gregory Bateson first coined the term “double bind” to reflect the crazy making situation kids experience in unstable households.

Where a Mommy Dearest professes her love while kneecapping the child in every decision, or an Angry Father insists that the lashings from his belt really come from love–the child has a double bind—where actions and emotions cannot possibly match.

In Bateson’s thinking, it was this kind of irreconcilable split that gave rise to schizophrenia.

A contemporary of Bateson’s, Leon Festinger, coined a similar term that also entered our lexicon—”cognitive dissonance.”

In the decades since, both of these theories have been challenged by further studies. But they persist in our popular thinking because they capture something deeply true about trying to make sense of our world when all of the signals go haywire.

It’s not intended as a diatribe, there are no more points to make about any of the particulars that matter much at this stage.

(and if you still have dogs in these fights, please, for the love of god, keep ‘em on a leash!)

Instead, it’s intended as a patient history—documenting our trending vital signs over time so that we might notice how much has shifted.

So think of this a little like the Vietnam War Memorial. A stone cold accounting. Of all that we’ve lost.

So we might never forget.

***

At first (as in, say, 2016?) the initial response to obvious transgressions, like presidential payments to porn stars, “when you’re rich you can do what you like” or airport bans targeting people from “shit hole” countries, or “Russia, if you’re listening, release her emails” was shock, outrage and #resistance.

That era overcooked itself and unwound into bitterness and hysteria—it became, as the comic book cliche reminds us, the very thing it was trying to defeat.

An Illiberal mob.

By the time we lurched into Covid, our defenses were worn down, and in our fear and isolation, we became infected with all sorts of double binds and additional dissonance.

From what now seem like tiny things, “I don’t want the cruise ship to land because that will wreck our infection numbers” to “I’m only going to give aid to Red States who voted for me” we experienced enough tearing, enough mind-rending, that anything became possible, and we were willing to believe whatever was remotely plausible to make the screaming in our minds go away.

Microchips in vaccines, QAnon. Fauci. Wuhan. Masks!!!

But also:

Black people can protest in large groups because of systemic injustice but white people can’t meet in churches?

You have to wear a mask in a restaurant…until you sit down at your table.

Trans women are women.

White fragility. Defund the Police

(what AOC these days is somewhat guiltily calling Woke1)

Covid was a gain of function weaponized agent of bio-terror, released on purpose or by accident, and at the same time was a hoax and little worse than the common cold.

Every single doctor and nurse you’ve ever known working 100 hour weeks to keep people alive, were, at the same time, co-conspirators to the Big Pharma/New World Order plot to take away our freedoms and lock us into 15 minute Cities.

Until one day, all of a sudden, a random DJT appointed circuit judge in Florida (not a virologist, not the CDC, not the WHO), ruled that we didn’t have to wear masks and so we just…stopped?

Who’d have put money on that was how a global pandemic would end?

How many of us even remember that was how it ended?

Then came the Big Lie—that the following election had been stolen. Despite every court throwing out the claims and Fox paying billions in settlements for libel this alt timeline remains a loyalty test for anyone still in DC.

Schizophrenic.

Then the ensuing Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol which was at the same time a peaceful march (despite protestors and police dead and injured), a noble Minute Man style revolt against tyranny, AND a false flag event staged by Deep State actors trying to entrap innocent citizens.

Pick two?

It all starts to sound a bit like the Princess Di Reddits where she is both alive and in hiding and was offed by the Royals for crossing bonnie Prince Charlie.

This was all too much for any one mind and heart to hold, so we took steps.

We rationalized. We picked sides. We could not endure the cognitive dissonance. Or straddle the double bind. So we slowly lost our minds. And numbed our hearts.

Sure, there was a dozy interregnum, where we all slowly unfolded from the fetal crash position we’d been hunched in, and poked our heads out into the blinking sunshine.

A few years of almost normal, and of pent-up spending and traveling convinced ourselves that we were back to baseline.

But then we had more cognitive dissonance with the Dems back in power insisting, insisting that ol’ Sleepy Joe was fighting fit and ready for four more—only to watch a trainwreck debate that would’ve looked unkind if played as a skit on SNL.

Then the most recent inauguration, with all the titans of Silicon Valley cutting checks and kissing rings, all for prime spots at the AI/Surveillance/Weapons/Space trough.

What happened to “Don’t Be Evil” and “Make the World a Better Place?”

(and wait, wasn’t Kamala and Biden and Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates supposed to be the totalitarian surveillance state crew, not Palantir, Anduril, ICE, Open AI and Starlink—the ones actually building and funding this stuff???)

Like I said, cognitive dissonance.

The richest man in the world giving not one, but two Nazi salutes from behind the presidential podium (and knowing enough to edit it out of his own Twitter post) yet clowning, absolutely clowning the haters on Joe Rogan, on his way to delivering a spirited defense, that same week, of the Neo-Nazi AfD party in Germany and making a slew of bad Nazi puns in his own defense.

And we were told it was a mere spontaneous gesture of enthusiasm with Aspy undertones?

It tied the neuro-divergent loving Left up in absolute fucking knots.

Doubly bound.

But with DOGE and MAHA now onside with MAGA a whole bunch of folks couldn’t handle the possible (obvious) fact that some of their bellwether icons had absolutely lost the plot and sucked up to power and access.

Oh no! It had to be 5D chess. It had to mean something more than an ethical collapse. So we folded and crossed the picket lines with them.

And we blithely called this schism “The Vibe Shift.”

The yoga to fascism pipeline became a syphon. Sucking all the Pastel QAnon momfluencers and Conspirituality anti-vaxxers into one ooey-gooey utterly dissociated vanguard for Empire.

But we did get the resurgence of Third World diseases for our troubles (and amnesty for Roundup weedkiller). So we’ve got that going for us.

Then DOGE gutted and ransacked the entire Federal apparatus of the United States—from climate scientists, to vaccine research, to forest rangers, international aid workers, social security and medicaid.

And if at any point, you felt queasy, or that perhaps we were past cutting fat and into muscle and bone, you were reminded:

“But… But…THE DEBT! We can’t go on like this! We have to trim trillions of waste and corruption now, or we’ll be bankrupt in a decade.

You don’t want that, do you? DO YOU?”

And who better to lead the charge than First Buddy and Richest Man—he’ll bring all that world building private sector know-how to our moribund bureaucracy and save us 2 TRILLION DOLLARS.

OK? I guess?

Except none of that happened.

The “Wall of Receipts” might has well have been toilet paper.

Most recent reporting from WaPo and elsewhere have established that federal spending has actually gone up.

While capacity and resilience has gone way way down

And we’ve got absolutely fuck nothing to show for the DOGE rampage other than a bunch of culture war vendettas, the annihilating of US good will and reach and the utter blinding of our scientific and strategic dashboards—for everything from Ebola outbreaks in Africa to drought and flood prediction for American farmers, to cyber terror and espionage, to diplomatic corps and soft power internationally (which you know, might have something to do with our utterly incompetent coalition building in Iran and elsewhere).

We’re almost done, this is draining for me to write, let alone for you to read.

But it feels like a thorough accounting is necessary to do justice to the cognitive load we’ve all been straining under.

You can skip right over universities having to conduct loyalty purges, historic civil rights law firms capitulating to millions of dollars of pro bono work for DJT in exchange for keeping their security clearances, the VP clarifying that the American Dream wasn’t just an ideal for anyone, it was a white Christian identity built by Europeans.

Or Stephen Miller insisting that the stain of dirty immigrants (like Somalis and Haitians) persisted for generations (Melting Pots be damned).

Or gifted jumbo jets from foreign countries that might also have gaping security issues and force a president to slink onto another plane hidden in a catering cart.

#bewareofsheiksbearinggifts

Or that Minneapolis citizens were domestic terrorists and deserved to be shot. Never mind the cell phone videos. That ICE agents were entitled to don masks and hide badges and carjack without warrants to black op sites because the Antifa Marxist terrorists might dox them.

Or just this very week, those same ICE agents are being outfitted with millions of dollars of taser gloves to shock American Citizens into compliance like some sort of cyborg terminators.

Oh yeah—plus snatch and grabbing a sitting foreign president in his own country in his own house and extraditing him for dubious charges of fentanyl trafficking.

While blowing fishing boats out of the water with video gamer glee, while pardoning a neighboring corrupt president (Honduras) that very same month, who’d been caught bragging that he wanted to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”

Or chastising Zelensky from the Oval Office that it was the Ukrainians fault they were in a war with Russia, despite defending their homeland from an unprovoked invasion.

But thank god our new president was the peace president and would end all of these forever wars!

Or getting spun around that if you were feeling the humanitarian ache of the women and children of Gaza you were either a) duped by “Pallywood” false videos and a gullible mainstream media or b) you were a supporter of murderous terrorists.

Or if you felt that the nation-state of Israel had gone too far in their retribution and were now veering into war crimes that you were actually an anti-Semite against all Jewish people everywhere.

Or if your heart breaks for the testimonials of migrants from Central America, or Morocco or Syria, all reaping the bitter harvest of centuries of war and exploitation, then at the same time being mocked as a cuck suffering from “suicidal empathy.”

Wait, what? What about We Are The World? Wasn’t that a thing.

Wasn’t that our thing?

Never mind the sordid backstory of all sorts of culpable people dying in suss AF ways.

Or the transnational, interdisciplinary roster of dignitaries, academics and executives…that seems to implicate some warped global web of Kompromat and skullduggery.

Just cut to the most recent. Binders of names to be released that then weren’t released, then denied, then redacted beyond all reckoning (the perpetrators, not the victims), then told to move along.

Then photos, then document dumps.

Then FBI investigations of the actual sitting president—gone.

Then Ghislaine Maxwell, the only person still alive who could still spill tea, moved to cush min-security prison in exchange for exonerating the prez.

Then move along.

Then, a new WAR!

Then Todd Blanche getting fast tracked as new Attorney General, despite being POTUSs personal lawyer and up to his ears in Epstein denial and obfuscation for the past decade.

(For reasons of space and buzzkills, just gonna leave the whole paper-clip maximizing AI “you’ll own nothing and be happy” psyop here).

***

Each item of this insanely long litany of violation, all of these, crashed hard into our moral views of the world.

The view that we were the Good Guys, and that “Everyone is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of race, color or creed.”

That we were innocent until proven guilty.

That we had freedom of speech and right to protest (and due process)

That we were a nation of laws, not men. (and that no man was above the law)

And in the face of this relentless barrage of error messages and assaults to the American Way…

We had a choice.

(with all the risks and vulnerabilities that entails).

Oh, the soothing, Stockholm Syndrome of it all!

To fall in love with our tormentors, because the prospect of jailbreaking our mental prison was just too much.

Or to realize with the crystal clarity of an addict hitting rock bottom and knowing that it’s change or die:

We haven’t gone crazy.

The World has.

And acknowledging that bracing fact is the first step in our recovery.

Which should be wholly beyond the realms of petty politics.

And yet!

As we look around, and see a world on fire, flashing, flooding, burning, weeping—85% of Europeans and 60% of Americans all feel we should be doing much more to address it.

But then at the same time, you have Jordan Peterson posting this week a lengthy diatribe about the climate alarming Marxists fearmongering a false flag to crush Western Civilization itself!

(he was spot on about keeping my shoulders back and making my bed and something about serotonin and lobsters, so he must be right about this too, right?)

and at the same time the North American West is burning and Hoover Dam, one of the monuments to American engineering, is about to run dry, Europe is dynamiting river beds to desperately try and channel enough water to run its nuclear power generators amidst the largest evacuations since WWII, and we’re told ALL OF THIS is merely a plot by Big Green to scare us into giving up our God Given petrol and freedoms.

and at the same time Saudi Aramco, BP and Exxon posting 30% jump in profits, after the Iran war.

and at the same time the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (!!!) crowing that his mandate is to “drive a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion.”

And little ol’ Greta Thunberg is now the anti-christ???

If you’re somehow wondering what on earth do we tell them now, that feels honest and courageous, and all you see is that we’ve lost the plot and sold our souls and the worst among us not only are filled with a passionate intensity, but are lying through their fucking teeth about everything, for the darkest and most venal reasons possible…

We can recognize that the Death Eaters have pulled off a nearly perfect exploit—at the deepest and most vulnerable fracture in our collective psyche.

That of the family dynamic.

That somewhere deep down enough, if we’re confused, scared, tired and uncertain—if under enough stress, we all regress.

To the place where we so desperately want to resolve the double bind and this momentous and relentless cognitive dissonance that we will bend and contort, we will excuse and rationalize, just to make it all stop.

But there is another option.

We can wake up.

We can stand up.

We can call all the spades for exactly what they are.

We can say enough is enough.

Enough of the hate.

Enough of the greed.

Enough of the lies.

Enough of pitting neighbor against neighbor and tribe against tribe.

Enough of strip mining the planet while building bunkers for billionaires.

So if our parents are drunks, bullies and narcissists, the first step is just saying that part out loud.

Resolve the cognitive dissonance.

Cut through the double bind like Alexander and the Gordian Knot.

It’s the only way we will survive this worship of our own destructiveness.

Then, go find our brothers and sisters.

Name our Chosen Family.

Look after each other.

And walk each other all the way Home.

***

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