Soul Power: Embodying Fierce Love in an Era of "Shock and Awe," Greed, Cruelty, & Domination

Learn about the varieties of power, the stress survival responses fight/flight/freeze/fawn, ways to protect yourself from their "shock and awe" tactics, and how to express your power through love

Minnesota Historical Society, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

1. The context: “Shock and Awe,” Anger, Grief, Fear, Anxiety, Despair

2. Understanding Power-Over and How it Functions

3. The Nervous System’s Default Response to Power-Over: Fight/Flight/Freeze/Fawn and Power-Under

4. Power-Within/Soul Power

5. How to Shift from Stress Response to Soul Power

1. The Context: Anger, Grief, Fear, Anxiety, Despair

Over the past three weeks, we have witnessed the most brazen and unconstitutional power-grab by any president in U.S. history. The new administration is breaking the law frequently on many issues, and with impunity. Worse, this power grab is not neutral: like any good fascist who seeks to rule a large population with a tiny cabal of men, the administration is using the dangerous and oft-repeated tactic of stoking resentment and hatred for small minorities of people: black and brown immigrants, including those here with proper legal documentation, and transgender people. The assault on their freedom, rights, and dignity has been breathtakingly cruel.

I am not going to spend time making the case for these shocking statements, as there are others much more suited to the task. And if I still have readers who don’t know what I’m talking about, I strongly encourage you to vary your media diet and add even just one new source: the plain-talking, fact-providing, history professor-who-is-merely-trying-to-serve-Americans-and-not-out-to-make-herself-a-billionaire, Heather Cox Richardson. After reading the fast-food-like spin of major media outlets and the contemptuous mud-slinging on social media, reading Richardson is like eating whole grains and spinach. It may not trigger the dopamine centers of your brain, but it will make you much, much stronger.

No, my purpose in this piece is not to persuade. My purpose is to provide support to the folks who are shocked into depression, despair, hopelessness, anxiety, grief and impotent rage.

For those of us who have kept ourselves informed with facts over the past several years, frankly, we should not be surprised. Trump lies more than any other president, and so we did not believe him when he disavowed Project 2025 on the campaign trail. He unabashedly spewed lies during his campaign about immigrants and trans people, shamelessly feeding the fires of hate in order to get elected, so are we really surprised that he is following up on that technique and now causing tremendous harm to the rights and freedoms of these groups? Trump attempted a treasonous coup against the United States and was never held accountable for it, and now the Trump-packed Supreme Court has given him carte blanche to do whatever he wants, even if it is illegal. So no, the multi-pronged, illegal administrative coup attempt to turn our constitutional democracy into an oligarchic monarchy should not shock us.

And yet, we are shocked. I’m shocked. Most of the people I know are shocked. Day after day, I sit with psychotherapy and shamanic clients who are shocked. The unprecedented hubris, the sheer number and speed of attacks on constitutional democracy, and the cruelty of those attacks on the most vulnerable among us, is causing loving, compassionate and law-abiding people feeling not only shock, but also overwhelm, horror, fear and anxiety, grief, rage, hopelessness, depression, paralysis and internal collapse.

The question I seek to answer in this post is: how do we protect ourselves from helplessness, paralysis and despair, so that we can resist oppression where we can, and create caring communities from a place of grounded, loving power?

First, let’s be clear. The shock, despair and paralysis many of us are experiencing are exactly what they want. They have told us so.

Many of Trump’s sycophants used the term “Shock and Awe” to describe their strategy for the opening days of Trump’s presidency. For those of you who may not be old enough to remember this, the Pentagon first injected this phrase into the mainstream lexicon (with the lapdog compliance of the corporate media of course – glorifying war is hugely profitable), in the early days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Media outlets obligingly plastered the Pentagon’s propagandistic phrase “Shock and Awe” all over the news in huge, splashy fonts, including on the covers of Newsweek and even National Geographic.

But what does this term mean, and where does it come from? Career militarists Harman Ullman, et. al. coined the term in their 1996 book Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. The core idea is to overwhelm the enemy with so much firepower, technological superiority, speed, situational awareness, and precision in execution, that the enemy experiences a “a desired state of helplessness and a lack of will to continue the fight.”

(A quick aside: think about this for a moment. Trump and his people are treating half of the voting population in our democracy as enemy combatants. What does that tell you about their feelings about constitutional democracy?)

Luckily, there is a glaring strategic flaw in the “shock and awe” approach: it fails to account for people’s resilience, creativity, fierce will to freedom and sovereignty, and the passionate love we have for our communities and our land. As Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) wrote of the Iraq invasion:

While the early strikes reflected rapid dominance, the ground operations toward Baghdad were soon filled with surprises as well as challenges in coordination and synchronization, plus the fog of war all military campaigns experience. And over the next decade, American and coalition forces—of which I was a part on several occasions—shifted from a conventional fight against a totalitarian state to an asymmetric one against a complex counterinsurgency with political and social challenges, then to a counterterrorism fight against myriad groups from al Qaeda to ISIS. The costs to the United States were significant: a financial burden exceeding $2 trillion, growing domestic distrust of the government, declining public support for the war, strained international alliances, and greater regional instability—in addition to more than 4,000 combat deaths, more than 31,000 wounded, and untold numbers of suicides related to combat’s emotional trauma.

We are starting to see the fruits of this fierce commitment to our democracy and the people in it, in the onslaught of lawsuits that have forced the administration to back down or halt many of its illegal operations.

Knowing that they want us helpless and terrified, the question becomes even more urgent: how do we resist falling into these states? How do we protect ourselves from their evil shock and awe tactics, step into our power to defend our people and the land, fight for our rights and freedom, and create the loving communities and country we yearn for?

2. Understanding Power-Over and How it Functions

In my own attempts to resist their tactics, it helps me tremendously to remind myself of the nature and varieties of power. The best conceptual framework for power I have encountered comes from author, activist, and nature-based spiritual leader Starhawk. In her book Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery, and more recently in a post-election Substack post (yes, you can follow her and she is one of my favorite writers), she distinguishes between three fundamentally different varieties of power: power-over, power-within, and power-with.

Shortly after the election, Starhawk presciently wrote:

Power-over is perhaps the variety we’re most familiar with: the power one group or individual has to determine the resources or choices of another, to impose sanctions or punishments, to use force or violence. We encounter that power every day, sometimes in benign forms, sometimes in systems of oppression and repression. We are about to see that power wielded in ever more cruel and ruthless ways.

It is no surprise that Americans are most familiar with power-over, for our nation was built upon it. It is the power of the colonist to steal indigenous people’s land and commit genocide; it is the power of the slaveholder and the lynch mob; it is the power of the capitalist to exploit workers; the power of the health insurance CEO to delay, deny, and defend insurance claims and send working and middle class people into mountains of medical debt; it is the power of the domestic abuser and the child abuser; the power of the rapist and politicians who force women to bear children they do not want; it is the power to create laws to decide who is legally allowed to live where, and forcibly remove the “illegals”; it is the power of the school shooter. It is the power of CEOs to destroy entire species of plants and animals, raze forests, pollute oceans, level mountaintops, extract oil and coal from the depths of the earth, and ruin the delicate balance of climate, destroying lives and livelihoods all over the world.

The technologies of power-over inevitably seek to increase the ability of one person or a tiny minority to restrict the choices, freedoms, and end the very lives of the many. In the colonization of this continent, that technology was the gun. In becoming a world superpower-over, that technology was the nuclear weapon. In electing a traitor who is attempting to effect an administrative coup, that technology is the algorithms and propaganda of social and traditional media.

Despite the violent harm it causes, Americans are obsessed with power-over. It is why so many ferociously defend their “right” to own military-grade weapons. It is why our most popular movies feature superheroes with bulging muscles who’s only conflict resolution skills are violence. It is why most fantasy books and movies portray magic as the ability to control nature. It is why America’s most popular sport features massive men whose objective is to dominate as much turf as possible, as frequently as possible, to run up as many points as possible, while minimum-wage earning women in bikinis cheer them on. (And by the way, as an American raised on football, I love a good superhero or superbowl as much as the next person. Go, Wonder Woman! Go, Black Panther! Go, Eagles!)

Whether power-over can be wielded for good is a complex question, one I don’t have the time to get into here. But what we do know from the research is that the longer a person wields positional power-over others, the more he loses the ability to empathize with others. This should raise serious concerns about our model of governance: we elect people to represent us and thereby give them tremendous power, but simply by becoming powerful, they become less responsive to our needs and struggles.

We also know that when we experience power-over, for example, when we win a card game, testosterone, dopamine, and self-confidence surge through our bloodstream. It feels good! And we feel good about ourselves! When this is repeated over time, it can lead to a sense of internalized superiority — in other words, we perceive ourselves better than others. This might not seem like a big deal when we’re talking about board games. But think about the game of life, where the playing field is not level for people of color, women, LGBTQ+ folks and working and middle class people. Many white, straight men start on third base thanks to inherited wealth. They are promoted easily, supported not only (in some cases) by their own hard work, but also by the good-old-boys network and the sexism and racism of the culture. Thus they win more easily and frequently. This gives them confidence, and they begin to perceive themselves as naturally more skilled, intelligent, and effective than the rest of us.

3. The Nervous System’s Default Response to Power-Over: Fight/Flight/Freeze/Fawn and Power-Under

How do power-over moves impact those of us who are not wielding power-over? First, it is important to understand that power-over operates as a zero-sum game, the kind of game where, when one player or team wins, everyone else loses. Sports and board games are fine examples of zero sum games: trophies and medals are in limited supply.

This means that when someone makes a bid for increased power-over others in real life situations, they are literally trying to take power away from the rest of us. This is exactly what we see happening at the federal level right now: the Trump administration is taking power away from our elected representatives in Congress and thus in turn taking away power from we, the people. To make matters worse, the power-over moves the administration is making are putting many people’s lives, livelihoods, freedom and rights at risk.

So, it should come as no surprise that our nervous systems are responding to these power-over moves as a threat to life. And when nervous systems perceive a threat, they automatically send us into one of four survival responses: fight, flight, freeze/collapse, and fawn.¹

In the immediacy of the wild, where these responses were naturally selected for over time, these survival responses are ingenious. Imagine an early human who is being stalked by a saber-toothed tiger: she hears rustling in the grass, hairs on the back of her neck go up, and she swivels around, all of her senses alert and alive, listening, watching, smelling for the threat. A tiny collection of neurons in her brain, the amygdala, combines all of this sensory data, compares it to learning from previous experiences, and within milliseconds, determines whether she is strong enough to fight off the threat, fast enough to flee it, or if she must freeze. Whatever the amygdala decides, it then dumps the appropriate stress hormones into the bloodstream to enable the body to act: the heart beats faster; breathing becomes shallow and fast, muscles tense for action.

The amygdala is an absolute marvel of natural selection, and we would not be alive today without it. The problem today is that a lot of the time, we are not faced with direct, immediate, physical threats to our survival, to which we can respond can physically. Much of the time, we learn of threats to our safety and well-being through the media, and the source of these power-over threats is dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of miles away. Due to the all-pervasive access we have to news, and the addictive nature of our devices and social media, and our inability to respond directly to the threat, our nervous systems are caught in pervasive and continuous stress/survival responses. Not only do chronic stress and anxiety prevent us from standing in our power and responding with our full creative powers – brain scans show us that we literally don’t have access to the higher thought centers of our brain when we are in a survival response – chronic stress leads to illness and premature death. Over time, we enter a state known as “power-under.” We are afraid, anxious, filled with ineffectual, reactive rage, or paralyzed by despair. When we are stuck in power-under, we develop internalized inferiority - thinking we are less important or worthy than those with power-over.

So, when members of the administration tell us that they want us to enter a us “state of helplessness and a lack of will to continue the fight,” this chain of events is exactly what they are counting on.

4. Power-Within/Soul Power

The good news is that there is an alternative to responding to repeated power-over moves with a chronic stress/power-under response. In her recent post, Starhawk describes a wholly different form of power, which she describes as “spiritual power, moral courage, creativity, skill and ability.” She calls it power-within.

When we enter the state of power-within, we leave behind the stressful survival response. We realize that we have choice in how we respond to a challenge, often a multiplicity of choices. We feel trust in ourselves, in our own integrity, our own ability to express our values in action. We let go of trying to control that which we cannot control, and instead focus our attention on what is here for us to do, now. We feel a sense of purpose, and even if we are grieving or angry about what is happening, there is an inner core that is grounded and peaceful. We let go of trying to control the larger outcome, and instead embrace expressing our values in every moment.

While survival responses can often feel fragmenting and disconnecting – we are only using the survival portions of our brain after all – in the power-within state, there is an experience of wholeness, because every aspect of our being is available to us. We are alive to all of our senses, and we observe the threat rather than look away in fear, numbness, or disassociation. We have access to our entire brain, including the cognitive and creative centers. We are open to feeling and receiving the wisdom of our emotions. We are in tune with our body and what actions it is capable of taking. We are open to creative inspiration from our deepest, most authentic selves. Psychologist Julie Colwell frames it this way: we are able to see ourselves as creators rather than victims. And we are connected to something larger than ourselves.

While power-within can be conceptualized in purely secular terms, we can also take a spiritual approach to this state of being. I believe that every one of us has incarnated with both a shared purpose, and a wildly, wonderfully unique purpose. The purpose our souls have in common is to love, and to embody that love in flesh and blood, through words and actions. Our unique purposes are the particular and delightfully diverse ways in which our souls long to express that love. A scientist might be called to express that love through observing and learning about chimpanzees. A musician through bringing beauty, joy, fun, and emotional catharsis to her listeners. A father through raising his children to be strong and independent adults. A teacher through empowering children to live lives of meaning, wonder, and freedom. Each person’s purpose is unique, and we are woven together in the shared purpose of embodied love.

For this reason, I have come to conceptualize power-within as “soul power”: the power to embody love through action, no matter how challenging or oppressive the circumstances.

Soul power is the power to embody love through action, no matter how challenging or oppressive the circumstances.

Soul power is far, far more powerful than power-over. Because we are so steeped in expressions of power-over in this culture, that might seem like a hard statement to swallow. But consider this: power-over can always be taken away. But no matter how much power-over a person wields, he can never take away an individual’s soul power. The only way soul power can be fully taken is through our consent, our participation, our decision to abandon our love, our values, our very souls and submit.

Strangely, despite America’s obsession with power-over, the vast majority of the population identifies as Christian, and Jesus embodied the teaching of soul power to the very last. There could be no more violent and complete expression of power-over than nailing his wrists and feet to a cross and leaving him to suffer and die. But Jesus did not fight, flee, freeze or fawn. Nor did he succumb to hatred. No, we are told that, amidst terrible pain and suffering, he said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. provides another stunning example of soul power. Let’s take the moment when he was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama. He was thrown into a dark cell in solitary confinement, denied even a mattress to sit on. We can only imagine how his white jailers treated him. But he did not fight, flee, freeze, or fawn. Instead, he penned one of the most creative, persuasive, and soul-stirring letters known to humanity.

When an ally smuggled in a newspaper so that Dr. King could read a statement written by eight white clergymen who criticized his nonviolent tactics and called on him to slow down and negotiate, King began writing a measured response in the margins of the newspaper. When he ran out of room there, he continued on little scraps of paper. Eventually his jailers allowed him a notepad, and the writing culminated in the letter, Why We Can’t Wait. In it, you can feel his passion, his fierce love, his heart, his intelligence – there in dark, solitary confinement, at the mercy of violent and cruel enemies, he was in full command of himself and all his faculties. He was whole.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s just a taste to allow you to decide for yourself:

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people… when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

I have purposely chosen to highlight the soul power of Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr., because everybody knows who they are. But please do not be daunted by their stature, the extremity of their soul power, or their Christianity. Ordinary citizens of every spiritual orientation or lack thereof, embody soul power all the time. We are currently seeing this in the myriad forms of resistance to the administration. And to develop soul power, we usually need to start small.

5. How to Shift from Stress Response to Soul Power

First, a disclaimer: I don’t have all the answers. I am still learning, and there are a lot of resources out there. What follows is not meant to be a comprehensive how-to guide, but to give you an introduction to the six most important principles, which I have found to be transformative in my own life, and for my clients. Note that if you have a history of untreated trauma (talk therapy is not considered an effective form of trauma treatment), you may need the support of a therapist to dislodge the habit of defaulting and staying stuck in survival responses.

1. Name it. The first step in getting unstuck from chronic stress will always be to recognize that you are stuck in the first place. Then, you can choose how to deal with it. Remember, our bodies are not built to get stuck here!
   

2. Move your body in ways that feel right. When our nervous systems detect a threat, our bodies have evolved to act. Even with the freeze response, wild animals move their bodies by vigorously shaking from head to toe after the threat has passed. Sometimes they also run away. This helps them return to neutral. Humans have this biological response as well, but due to social pressure (and the discomfort of medical professionals), we suppress it. If you are feeling frozen, try shaking. If that is too hard, you can start small, by swiveling your head from right to left, or wiggling your fingers and toes, and then work up to bigger movements until you are moving your whole body.
   
   Psychologists believe that we need to “climb the ladder” (see graphic below) of the nervous system: once we have gotten unstuck from freeze, then we need to move through the motions of flight or fight before we can come back to neutral. If you are feeling the urge to flee, allow your body to go through flight-like motions. I’ve encouraged clients in the flight state literally to walk out of my office and run around outside. They are invariably amazed at how much relief this brings! Most of the time we suppress the urge to flee, and this only causes the anxiety and fear to dig in.

   

   Graphic Source:The polyvagal ladder, adapted by Deb Dana. Source: NICABM. Found here. Unless you’re a neuroscience nerd, don’t worry about the scientific jargon. Just notice the different states available to our nervous system.

   
   If you’re feeling the urge to lash out or fight, try doing pushups, or pushing on a tree or door jam. These mimic pushing off an attacker and get us in touch with our core muscular strength. You can also throw air kicks and punches. Test out what feels good in your body!
   (RESOURCES: Somatic psychotherapy is devoted to the practice of engaging our bodies to heal, and trauma therapy leverages what we have learned about trauma into tools and practices to heal. None of this is talk therapy, or CBT, by the way. Talk therapy won’t touch this stuff.)
   

3. Unearth the wisdom of the emotion. Emotions are not just here to make our lives colorful. And contrary to patriarchal, racist, binary oppositional thinking, emotions are not “irrational.” Emotions are here to give us crucial information we need to flourish.
   
   When we experience pleasant emotions, our bodies are telling us that fundamental needs are getting met, such as love, connection, belonging, safety, meaning, beauty, etc.. When we experience unpleasant emotions, it is an indication that our fundamental needs are not getting met. For example, we feel afraid when we need safety. We feel angry when we need our boundaries honored or to be treated as though our lives matter. We feel sad when we have lost something or someone we hold dear. Pretending as though something is not wrong is like ignoring the “check engine” light in the car - it’s only going to get worse (and potentially cost a lot more money).
   
   The simple act of identifying what our emotions are trying to tell us can be profoundly grounding. Because emotional literacy is not prioritized in our culture, think of this as like learning a whole new language. To help with this, there are lists of human emotions and needs available free online. Here is an especially good one. (RESOURCE: This needs-based theory of emotion is the most helpful I have ever encountered. It comes from a modality called Non-Violent Communication, and trainings are available everywhere.)
   

4. ACT ON THE WISDOM OF YOUR EMOTIONS! I cannot emphasize this enough. If you notice the “check engine light” blink on in your car, and you get the message – “something is wrong!” – but then fail to fix it – what good is that? This is precisely why our bodies evolved emotions and the survival response in the first place: so that we can take action to address the problem. Sitting back and doing nothing sends us right back into a state of power-under and survival stress.
   
   When the threat is coming from far away, such as the Trump administration, it can feel harder to act. We don’t have the option to push the attacker off of our own bodies or run away. And the media doesn’t help: most journalists simply report the facts and don’t suggest actions we can take. So it takes serious strength of will to pull our attention back from the perpetual train wreck happening in Washington and focus on what we can do here and now. But we must. Not only to save our democracy and protect those most targeted, but also to make sure we are not caught in chronic survival stress for the next 2-4 years and beyond.

   
   So, if you are upset about how immigrants and transgender people are being treated right now, there are a myriad of actions you can take. You can call your congresspeople. You can look for local organizations who are addressing these issues and volunteer. You can call a meeting of like-hearted friends and brainstorm what to do as a group. You can take the long view and write postcards in local races to support candidates who support the human rights of all.

   
   You know what doesn’t count as action? Consumption. Especially media consumption. I’ll say it again: consuming media is not action. Information is only as useful as the actions we take that are informed by it.

   
   Let’s return to the sabertooth tiger example. The woman’s sensory perceptions gave her crucial information about her environment to keep her safe. But if she doesn’t use that information to act, she will die. Likewise, our constitutional, human rights-based democracy is being stalked by a tiger. The fact-based media are our sensory organs, providing the information about what is happening so that we can take action to save it. Becoming aware of this sensory information is not enough: if all we do is pay attention, we will be caught in chronic stress. We absolutely must act if we wish to save ourselves and our constitutional democracy.
   

   (Some of the many resources for action out there: Choose Democracy, Indivisible, 5CALLS.ORG)
   

5. Connect with others: Community Power. In the days following the election, my wife organized a group of our friends to meet. We shared how we were feeling and brainstormed what we could do as a group. It was incredibly helpful. My high from that meeting lasted for over a week! Then, for our first action, we decided to organize an event for the evening of the Inauguration, suspecting that people who care about human rights and democracy would isolate at home and fall into despair.

   
   Now, we live in a rural town of only 1,300 people. But we packed our local brewery with 80-100 people! Someone led us in a participatory song circle; other people performed music and spoken word and standup improv, and we ended by breaking into small groups and brainstorming what we as a community can do. People were smiling and laughing and crying. And now we have an energized community, where people are organizing.

We live in a culture that increasingly isolates us around our TVs and devices, but change happens through organizing in groups. If you start participating in a group, or create one yourself, and you take action together, I promise you that you will feel the power that comes from working together. In fact, Starhawk views the power of community as so important that she identifies it as the third form of power: “power-with.”

6. Connect with the Divine/that which is bigger than you. Frankly, I can skip all of these other steps (except the action part), by connecting directly with the divine. For me, that comes from shamanic journeying and/or communing with the sacred web of life, which I have come to call the Sacred Circle. If you are atheist or agnostic, this could come from spending quiet solo time in nature. For others, such as Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr., this came through prayer/communing with God.

I think there is a lot of confusion about prayer these days. Many people lose faith in God/Goddess because it appears that He/She does not intervene in human affairs and prevent us from tearing each other apart. If God is so all-powerful, why does he let us suffer so? But what if this is not how the spirit realm works? What if God, or Spirit Helpers, or Angels, are not here to save us from ourselves, but rather to help us save our own selves? What if the way they can help us is by supporting us to embody our own Soul Power, to help us embody love in word and deed?

If this is true, you might try focusing your prayers less on divine intervention in the affairs of the world, and more on asking for the strength to do what yours to do on this Earth. Ask the divine to help you enter into your soul power.

When I spend time with Spirit Helpers, I often feel a tremendous surge of power and love running through me, and it strengthens my will and gives me the energy I need to act! When I sit in silence in nature, and reach out with my heart to connect with the sacred circle of life, and feel its beautiful harmony, and the desire the natural world has for humans to come home to that harmony, I feel tremendously supported to do what is mine to do. I am part of this sacred circle of life; we all are. My fear dissolves. I experience the truth that no one, no matter how much wealth and power-over they wield, can take away this power from me. They can never buy my free will, they can never turn me into a hateful, greedy, selfish person; they can never own my soul.

This is Soul Power. May we all step into it now.

1. Fawn is a relatively new theoretical category of nervous system responses. Psychologists developed this concept through the study of abusive relationships, where a domestic partner doesn’t feel she is strong enough to fight off her husband, feels she cannot flee, and will be targeted for further abuse if she freezes. So she tries to placate the threat, by supporting him, doing whatever he asks even if it causes harm to herself or others, respond to criticism with praise or admiration, and never saying “no.” It seems to fair to say that nearly all of the Republicans in Congress, and many of the Democrats, are exhibiting the fawn response.