Waking up in America

If you remain silent, they will win. If you remain indifferent, they will control you.

We never had coup d’etats in America. Growing up I was dimly aware of yet another coup in another South American Country. I felt secure and proud living in the United States of America. We had our act together.

Now other Countries are reading about the coup in America.

Here is my deepest fear. I fear that unless America wakes up, we will become a miserable dictatorship. We will exist with all the hardships imposed on us just like those so called Third World Countries. We are so close to this becoming real. I often wake in the deep dark of yet another night shocked this is happening.

What happened? How could this happen? I’ll tell you very clearly. Americans went to sleep. We became smug. We have never had whole cities bombed, never had foreign troops storming our streets and never had a dictator’s voice blaring over loudspeakers in our towns. All the manipulations performed by the media, politicians, oligarchs and foreign adversaries over the past few decades would never have worked if we were awake. I am convinced of this.

What is awake? How does a person live a life of awareness? It is beyond ironic that the enemies in America worked to destroy an aspect of being awake. They called it woke. It is that part of us that gives a damn all the time. We do not check out. We manage our emotions, express compassion and are clear-eyed about things.

For over 2,500 years Buddhism has promoted being awake. It is considered essential to living a conscious life, a life of compassion and wisdom. All the papers I write on Trilogy point to waking up. As a practicing Buddhist for over thirty years this thread of conscious living (being awake) runs through everything I write. This aspect of being awake is not a luxury or a sweet byproduct of spending the weekend in the woods. It must absolutely be who we are as living beings. Waking up is not some self-improvement guilt fueled way of living. It is climbing out of fog into the clarity and joy of being alive to all of it; the horrific and beatific.

It has come to pass that unless we wake up in America, we will lose everything. Our children’s children will curse us.

I have said this on Bluesky and on Dr. Heather Richardson’s Letters from an American. I am weary to the bone of people’s outrage, complaining and whining. I am certain I am not alone in this. Outrage, complaining, name calling and even infantile made-up names do not win over a coup in America.

This is our reaction to a coup in America? Whining? Name calling?

For most of us, this time in America is uncharted territory. Our Leaders seem to be wandering around doing a lot of pontificating and not much else. The only people who seem to have a plan are the bad guys.

We can recognize that this is happening. We are scared. This is where we are. We need to stop the whining, doom scrolling, doom posting on Substack or complaining with your friends. If people are not doing the above, they have checked out. We can have the grace and self-respect our forebearers had in this Country and fight back. We the people outnumber the politicians. Our numbers are immense.

By pushing yourself away from your computer and simply walking around with a bunch of other people saying a loud “hell no” we can win this thing. We can stop the coup. Isn’t that crazy?

By pushing yourself away from your computer and inviting people to your place for a session of mapping out pockets of resistance in your community we can beat them. Look at what the Resistance did in occupied France in WW2.

By pushing yourself away from the ballgame, the reality tv show or the latest outrage media broadcast screaming at you we can win this. Decide on a plan. Call Congress. Educate yourself about what others are doing.

Put your phone down with the incessant scrolling like a hypnotized person. It is a slick tool created and sold to you by the same oligarchs who have now invaded your Country. They are designed to put you in a trance. They are the tools the oligarchy used to manipulate people into bowing down to a coup. If you remain silent, they will win. If you remain indifferent, they will control you.

Close your eyes for 5 minutes. Take three deep slow breaths. Hold a second or two. Exhale. Give your confused, terrorized mind a rest. This is the beginning of waking up. Read up on my previous papers in Trilogy. There is no charge. You might come across a method that shakes out your fear and malaise and gives you some comfort.

And finally. Be calm with yourself.

The Peace of Wild Things

By

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

And I wake in the night at the least sound

In fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free