The United States government, and those empowered by it–from large institutions to lone, rogue individuals–are marred by a long and troubled history of violence and oppression, censorship and corruption, refusal of rights and liberties, social purging and cleansing, destroyed alliances, both domestic and abroad. The moment we find ourselves in has not emerged out of nowhere. This history is also greater than the United States: If you’re a loyal witness to suffering, or turn and take the occasional sober look at the polycrisis, you’ll see the centuries of lead up: colonization, capitalism, white supremacy, and ecocide on every continent. This moment is the manifestation of centuries of causes and conditions.
While the happenings of now may fit squarely into patterns of the past, this second term of Donald Trump feels new and unusual in the story of the United States. Emboldened. Extreme. If not (yet) directly impacted, we are witnessing uninhibited, vengeful madness, fueled by hatred and greed. It serves no one for us to be shy about what we see.
A review of history helps us make sense of and understand the present. In the The Origins of Totalitarianism, often cited academic Hannah Arendt published an examination of how authoritarian regimes administer fear and manipulate loneliness to fortify regime power and control a state population. The political playbook of the autocrats, the fascists, the authoritarian ruler–whatever label you’d like to use–is a phenomena well-studied by researchers over the last 100 years. The Trump administration’s strategy and tactics may be at times shocking, but they are nothing new.
The essence of their strategy is to engender fear, overwhelm, and undermining doubt. We cannot fault ourselves if their tactics of psychological warfare, at times, are successful. We are only human.
While our traditions provide powerful insights into the constructed nature of our experience, there is a difference between holding our views with proper humility and succumbing to gaslighting.
They are trying, with concerted effort, to shock and paralyze our bodies with fear. As of this writing, if you are a trans or nonbinary person; an immigrant, refugee, or asylum seeker; a federal civil servant; working on anything related to climate change, clean energy, diversity, equity, or inclusion; Palestinian; a citizen of the Global South sustained on US foreign aid, the threat is imminent and real. (This list, while perhaps exhausting, is of course non-exhaustive.) If you are immediately impacted, or love someone immediately impacted, it’s a completely reasonable reaction to feel afraid. Our fear for the well-being of the other, the vulnerable stranger, makes sense. It’s reasonable to feel scared, overwhelmed, dizzingly confused, or in deep despair given the events of the last few weeks. In response, we can know fear as fear and meet it not with denial (a false bravery) nor judgment but instead compassion. Through practice and in community, we can cultivate steadiness and courage.
They are trying, with concerted effort, to engender doubt, not healthy skepticism but undermining doubt, as we regard one another and our own perceptions. Sowing seeds of mutual suspicion among those who might come together to challenge the status quo is a classic, pre-emptive divide-and-counter strategy. And while our traditions provide powerful insights into the constructed nature of our experience, there is a difference between holding our views with proper humility and succumbing to gaslighting. Let us be clear: madness has taken the wheel. You are not deranged. It really is happening.
Shifting Landscapes of Power
A precarious political situation unfolds before us. Each day, more and more is revealed.
Powerful institutions bend the knee. Notable figures kiss the ring and seek out a transactional, self-serving relationship. The ultra-rich choose their money over their morals, and step into an implicit, or explicit, alliance with the administration. Senior elected leaders of the opposition party show up off-balance, timid, and out-of-touch with reality.
At breakneck speed, the new administration decimates the public sphere and public service itself: civil servants resign out of principle, fired in mass, forced out by fear, or their offices and projects defunded or shut down. Some manage to resist, refuse to implement and execute on illegal and reckless orders across agencies and departments. At the same time, non-profit organizations report and reel from the loss of major donors and grants as their sector is heavily targeted.
For the time being, most courts stand strong. In the short term, much depends on their integrity. Indeed, we acknowledge and express immense gratitude for all those who are presently resisting the immediate impacts, wrestling in the trenches, dedicated to holding the line. Our present situation may be far worse without their struggle and sacrifice.
Faster than conventional response can accommodate, branded as patriotism, and in a complete distortion of ethics, the new US Administration is engaging in widespread, vitriolic scapegoating in service to the end goal, an autocratic coup. Unless decisively countered, those willing to betray even the notion of public good for their own limited gain will succeed and even the most basic social cohesion and the rule of law will fail.
Where then, is the response?
Contrasted with what we might hope for or expect, the streets seem eerily quiet, rallies tout clever signs yet amass only small crowds, conventional outlets’ opinion pieces pine for normalcy yet, by principle, suggest no response. Perhaps we, the subjects to the new tyranny, text one another with our astonishment and yet, at scale, offer no compelling invitation into action that is appropriate to the scale and severity of the threat. Those we most expected to rise up and call us into resistance just aren’t.
Might it be that resistance alone is somehow not enough. That it no longer, if it ever did, call to the deepest desire of our hearts.
We have inquired over the last few weeks on why.
Certainly many in the US are just fine with what’s unfolding, it’s what they voted and hope for. The silence of the satisfied makes sense. But where is the outcry from those of us who find this all exactly wrong and frequently terrifying? Just a thought, might we apply, right here, the Dharma teachings? Should we perhaps bring our genuine curiosity to our relative silence instead of judgment to what appears to be failure?
Understandable Quiet
Benefit of the doubt: our brilliant and fierce frontline organizers, our first-responder activists may be tired. Our countless dedicated civil servants may be disoriented. It’s reasonable for all who are under attack, or for those who defend the socially vulnerable, to want to take a moment.
We’re in new territory. The stakes and risk of taking-action in an authoritarian regime are much higher. The consequences of exposure, state or vigilante targeting are real and frightening. Benefit of the doubt: those who are working to defend, protect, sabotage, and resist, may want to do so with caution, to proceed quietly, and use under-the-radar tactics. It’s reasonable to choose protection over promotion. We recognize there is much going on that we simply cannot know or see.
There is also much to grieve about right now. Death. Famine. Genocide. War. It seems as if cynicism itself has won the day. We may have lost a particular vision of the future, especially in regard to action and societal transition for climate change. Social, political, and economic systems are breaking down and ending. Even if we have critiques or true desire for their change, many of us still live entangled and identified with these systems. Their death or intense disruption may feel like the death of ourselves. Benefit of the doubt: we’ve lost and are losing so much that we love. There is wisdom in taking a pause to grieve.
Let us not equate this relative silence or the absence of familiar resistance with apathy or cowardice. Given space and some time, might something deeper, transformative, be supported? Might this allow consciousness to assess the changes in the political conditions, gather together, and take proper time to devise a new way forward? We know that quick and easy answers won’t cut it. We need long-term, power-building, defiantly inclusive, and narrative-winning strategies. Not one plan fits all either. We likely need many plans.
Might it be that resistance alone is somehow not enough. That it no longer, if it ever did, call to the deepest desire of our hearts. While we protect those immediately endangered, might we also want something more? Can we trust the wholesome desire for something more? For this that is not yet here to emerge, we might need to soak in this uncertainty, give it time, patience, and trust.
A Problematic Silence?
Still, the authors recognize Buddhism, with notable exceptions, does not have a great history of showing up for social justice, standing in at times of necessary political intervention. There may be a shadow side to this silence, especially in our Dharma communities.
We can acknowledge the tendency to favor comfort over leaning into wholesome, transformative discomfort. Are we holding the space for appropriate response or justifying our preferences for quiet, peace, and stability because we’ve earned our social position, or because we’re entitled to an insulated way of life?
A Beautiful Story Bypass?
A narrative is going around about this moment: that this is an inevitable, necessary, and creative death. In summary, the story goes: “From the ruins, in time, a better, more enlightened world will arise.” This is one way to tell the story of this moment, but remember: this is only a story. As temporarily helpful as this might be to our distressed hearts, might this be another means of escape, responsibility evasion, and justification for transcendence? It’s important to ask yourself, who is served and who suffers for this story?
If we want the course of change to trend towards compassion, lovingkindness, justice, truth, joy, and belonging, we must will and work for it to be so.
There is nothing inevitable about a positive course of change, despite our beloved story of progress. For so many and for the Earth, things are not okay. Things may continue on as very not okay. Injustices may go unchallenged. Harms may go unhealed. Deaths may be forgotten. Madness may go on authorized. An enlightened world may very well not arise. If we want the course of change to trend towards compassion, lovingkindness, justice, truth, joy, and belonging, we must will and work for it to be so.
There is a thin, but powerful middle way between two extremes: a mind consumed by chaos and drama, thrashing and hyperreactive, itself a host for war; and a mind with feigned indifference, rigidly safe-guarding stability and peace, pushing away all that poses a threat, and disparaging that which unsettles.
Possibilities
What might be possible if we say yes to this opening, turn towards, and feel empowered as we find our way through?
We are much more capable, much more knowledgeable than we may think. We have the gift of the magnificent Dharma, and now is the time for practice, both on and off the cushion.
Some invitations: Be with, but not be overtaken. Accept the situation as it is, and find the onward leading path. Practice the brahmavaras of friendliness (metta), compassion (karuna), joy (mudita), and equanimity (upekkhā), in relationship with oneself and others. Stay open to the wilds, and release the allure of certainties and compelling delusions. Question the cynical mind, the old habits and stories, the familiar forms, and let go. We can do it, and we can do it well. Each of us is more than capable. Steadiness is possible in this storm.
With mindfulness as our abiding center, beginning there, the possibilities fan out infinite and in all directions:
Trusting our good intentions and wholesome desires and then opening ourselves to feedback from the impact on our own hearts as well as one another and the Earth, we might each find our own right way. This is hard. We must begin, yet not end, with self-compassion. Settled and grounded, we can increasingly trust our minds, hearts, and bodies to guide us through it all. Taking an honest look at our social location, we can evaluate our responsibility to ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, those aforementioned targeted groups, the more-than-human, and our planet, and then iteratively discern our path. Where will we place our efforts, how will we stay appropriately informed, what comforts are we willing and unwilling to let go of, what risks are we ready and not ready to take?
While the historic realm continues to accelerate into polycrisis, we can connect with the absolute as it remains unaffected, unperturbed and unperturbable. Again and again, we can return to our practice, shore up our spiritual resources, and share the benefits with others.
What do you see and sense about this moment of unexpected silence? We invite you to wonder with us about that deep desire … Might we find ourselves then surrounded by those that headed this wise, urgent wanting? Might we together make a stronger community more rooted and clear in its own actualized power?
