As We Cross the Threshold, Let Us Reclaim Our Power

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Today, the day when Trump has been inaugurated as president for a second term, we cross the threshold into the unknown. We have no way of knowing what the future holds or whether our democracy will survive.

Today is markedly different from this day eight years ago, when Trump took office the first time. Today, Trump holds all three branches of the federal government firmly in his grip. Today, Trump has learned lessons from his failed coup attempt on January 6, and is packing all positions of power in the government with unwavering loyalists who will not stand up to him, and who will only act to benefit the wealthiest people in the world (certainly not support the working and middle classes). Today, Trump knows that the Supreme Court has given him immunity for whatever illegal acts he may commit as president. This is the first time any president in the history of our nation has been told openly by the highest court of the land that he is above the rule of law.

The media, known as the fourth estate for its ability to serve as a fourth check and balance on government power and overreach, is bowing to Trump in a fashion that is also unprecedented in the history of this country. Meta, which owns Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world, as well as Instagram, bent the knee after the election by firing all its factcheckers and contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. For the president who lies more than any other, getting rid of fact-checking at the largest media outlet in the world is an enormous victory, the ramifications of which we cannot even begin to predict. Twitter is owned by Trump’s most powerful ally, Elon Musk, who Trump is making part of his administration. Of course, Trump also owns a large social media platform himself. And just yesterday, Trump took unprecedented action, defying a unified Congress and Supreme Court, to bring TikTok into his sphere of influence.

As far as the corporate traditional media, award-winning journalists are fleeing storied outlets like the Washington Post and the L.A. Times for censoring coverage critical of Trump. Last week, Jennifer Rubin, the award-winning columnist for the Washington Post, resigned with these words:

“Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.”

So this is why I say that today, we cross into unknown territory. This is not business as usual, this does not represent the normal swings and backlashes of democracy, and no, people who care about the well-being of the people and the planet are not overreacting. How far will Trump and his MAGA followers go? How many people – immigrants, trans and other LGBTQ people, people of color, women – will they hurt? And how exactly will this harm take place? Will it take place with the stroke of a pen? Will Trump use the Insurrection Act to deploy the U.S. military on domestic soil, to target his political opponents, critics, protesters and immigrants, as he has threatened to do? Will the harm take place via his hateful rants on social media, which embolden his followers to attack people in vicious crimes of hate? Will the administration worsen an already horrific situation in Palestine by empowering Israel even further? Will they invade Greenland? Will they worsen the already disastrous climate chaos we are experiencing, hastening the deaths of untold millions of innocent animals, plants, and people?

The United States has, since its founding, expressed an unending and dynamic tension between a quest for democracy and human rights for all on the one hand, and a violent and brutal quest for obscene wealth, domination, power and control – dressed up in the propaganda of democracy, rights, freedom and equality – on the other.

When our Constitution was signed in 1789, it did not establish a democracy, despite modern-day perception. It established minority rule by white, educated, Christian, wealthy men. Only these people were granted suffrage; historians estimate this means that only 2-16% of the population could vote. In some colonies, even Catholic men were barred from voting! Our nation was not founded as a democracy: it was founded as an oligarchy with institutionalized race-based, sex-based, wealth-based, and religious-based political power. (This explains why the rightwing has worked so hard to advance the relatively new invention of constitutional originalism, claiming that any attempt to deviate from the letter and intent of the Constitution as written in 1789 is illegal and un-American.)

Additionally of course, our nation was built upon the backs of violently enslaved and tortured Blacks, and upon the stolen land of murdered and imprisoned native peoples. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, in her groundbreaking book Caste, wrote that Hitler and his close associates deeply admired the U.S.:

Hitler “praised the country’s near genocide of Native Americans and the exiling to reservations of those who had survived… The Nazis were impressed by the American custom of lynching its subordinate caste of African-Americans… Hitler especially marveled at the American ‘knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death.’” (p. 81)

In fact, Hitler admired America so much that he and his closest associates pored over racist American laws and writing, looking to institutionalize racism into the laws of the Third Reich, while parroting that uniquely American innocence. In 1916, American eugenicist Madison Grant wrote a manifesto on cleansing the U.S. gene pool of supposedly inferior races, advocating for a rigid system of sterilization and racial quarantining to eliminate “worthless race types.” Hitler wrote Grant a personal note of gratitude, telling him, “The book is my bible.” (Wilkerson, pp. 80-81)

So the threads of extremism, racism and fascism run through our history all the way back to its inception. But so also does another story, the story we are more familiar with, the story the U.S. prefers to project outward to the world, and inward to our citizens and our schoolchildren. The founding fathers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and have unalienable rights, and that the government’s purpose is to protect those rights and promote the common welfare.

It is the Declaration of Independence that lifts our hearts, that makes us believe that a better nation (and world) is possible, that gave rise to the notion of the American Dream. In penning these words, the founding fathers released a vision that flew far and wide, inspiring untold numbers of people – African Americans, Native Americans, women, the working class, LGBTQ people, people of diverse religious faiths, as well as people all over the world – to fight for their rights and win historic victories over the centuries.

So, if the social, political and economic history of the United States can be understood as a perpetual and dynamic tension between greed, violence, racism, fascism, patriarchy and oligarchy on the one hand, and struggles for rights, justice, and freedom for all on the other, one way of framing the question we face today is: will the tides of fascism and oligarchy engulf us once and for all? Will we even get to vote for a president in four years?

These are the questions I am grappling with, and I know I am not alone. I see it in my loved ones. I see it as I sit across from my psychotherapy clients and hold space for their fear and despair. And of course, many of us are seeing it in the writings of journalists and thought leaders around the globe.

But alongside these questions and fears, something else has been growing in me. I feel a growing determination to no longer remain silent, but rather to find and use my voice. A determination to discern what is mine to do in this struggle – in addition to working with clients – and to do it. A determination to engage in an activism that is rooted in loving connection with the Earth and all beings. And a determination to encourage all of you who yearn for a better world to find your voices and purposeful action as well.

That something, that thing that is growing in me, is power.

It is not the power the Trumps and Musks of the world wield. It is not the kind of power that requires the subjugation of others. It is the power to create, to embody one’s unique purpose in life to help others, the power to express love in action.

The other night, I was meditating outside in the dark, simply being present with the brilliant sky, and I heard these words come out of nowhere:

“They don’t own the stars.”

I felt the truth in them – a truth bigger than the words or even the stars themselves. I knew in my bones that this voice was also telling me: They don’t own your soul. They don’t own your heart. They cannot take your free will, your will to act with love; the only way they can take this power from you is if you give it to them willingly.

As I sat there in revelation, I felt a still and silent connection with the Earth, the stars, the plants, the animals, and the humans all over the world who yearn to live lives of balance and harmony with all life. There are so many of us! The trees do not want to burn. Nor do the deer, the rabbits, the birds and chipmunks. The whales do not want to die in oceans of plastic. I flashed on memories of meeting environmental activists from every corner of the world when I worked for Global Greengrants Fund. I met with Chinese activists and Russian activists. Ecuadoran and Nigerian. I knew that people on the other side of the world, in that moment of night in the West, were spending their day actively working to protect their lands from pollution and climate change. People in every country – fascist or not!

We are so many!

And so, as we move into the unknown, I invite you, I implore you, to find and cultivate your own power. What gifts and resources do you have? Are you an artist, a musician, a poet who can support local organizing? Do you have talents with social media, graphic design, and marketing? Do you have a willingness to show up for people who are in the crosshairs of the incoming administration? Are there local organizations who are already working on this and can tell you how they need you to show up? Do you have the willingness to learn? Are you willing to tear your eyes away from social media and instead put time into making your community a better place? Do you tend to isolate when you feel despair and fear, and if so, are you willing to pull together a local group of friends and brainstorm ideas? Do you have a boring job where you can actually put some of your on-the-clock time into helping people? Are you calm in the face of conflict and ready to train or hone those skills and volunteer?

If you are already fighting the good fight, if you already, for example, work for an environmental or social justice nonprofit, you might ask: how can I make our work more effective? How can we form coalitions with groups working on other issues, to magnify our voices and power? How can I carve out some time to work not just on global issues, but on those affecting my community right here? How can we change how we speak, so that we unite more people around our shared values and vision rather than creating polarization and division? What emotional or spiritual work can I do to cultivate love and power in myself, rather than blame and victimization?

To support you in reclaiming and building your power, in the coming weeks I will be writing on the top ten ways in which I witness loving people giving our power away, and in the process, unconsciously helping fascism and oligarchy, racism and patriarchy, to win. I will also discuss antidotes to these power leeches — in other words, ways in which you can reclaim and grow your power.

In the meantime, let us all remember that this struggle has been going on for centuries, and that each one of us has a role to play, if only we are willing to stand up and claim our power. And if each one of us does, fascism cannot ultimately win.

P.S. I turn to this poem over and over again when I am feeling afraid and sad for our country. Thank you to the brilliant Langston Hughes, a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose legacy we celebrate today:

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!