Pickpocket Politics

Ever had your pocket picked? Some clumsy dude bumps into you on the street and while you're dusting yourself off and exchanging a few heated words, you don't notice his accomplice quietly extracting your wallet. Trump is the collision man, issuing one outrageous order after another, assaulting our sense of justice and common human decency hourly. Then, when he meets resistance, he often backs off, but while we're breathing a short sigh of relief: “Whew, I guess we're not invading Canada today!” Musk is quietly stealing your funding, fingering your bank account and extracting all the data from your cell phone.

What’s worse—they’re asserting their right to pick your pocket, that they are above the law and that no one and nothing has the right to hold them accountable,

What can we do about it? Spread the meme! Corruption, corruption, corruption! That’s what it’s about, and we should flood the zone with it. Any visual artists out there that can turn this into a graphic? Stop this steal! The theft of our money, our data, our political power, our national security, our democracy.

Don't tell people “I told you so!” or “This is what you voted for, now live with it!” As tempting as that might be, this is our opportunity to undermine the MAGA movement, maybe not to change the minds of the die-hard Trumpets, (Mumps?) but to reach that far larger segment of the population who don't really like him but don't like the Democrats much either, and thought he'd be better for the economy.

Instead tell people “You didn't vote for this!” You didn't vote to snatch food out of the mouths of starving children. You didn't vote for a morbidly rich billionaire to have access to your private data. You didn't vote for our national security secrets to be delivered wholesale to Putin. You didn't vote to cut off life-saving AIDS medications from babies in Africa. You didn't vote to fire doctors and nurses who take care of our country's veterans. You didn't vote for any of this shit, and now we welcome you to join us in doing everything we can to defend our basic human decency and our rights.

Keep making calls and pressuring our elected representatives to stand up and use their power to stop this coup. The Congressional Switchboard (202-224-3121) has apparently been getting over 1500 calls a minute. Let's keep it up! Recommend criminal referrals for Musk and his henchmen. You might also contact your State Attorney General: either thank them for their lawsuits against the most egregious actions or pressure them to join if they haven't already. They may be an important bulwark against this fascist takeover.

Get together with your friends and neighbors, form a small support group and take some action together. Here's a list of thirteen suggestions from my post last week: https://starhawk.substack.com/p/what-groups-can-do-right-now

The Chinese character for crisis combines ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’. We are facing the worst danger I've seen in over half a century of political activism. But this can also be an opportunity, if we make it so, to build a stronger, more welcoming. broad based political movement for justice, for compassion and for the earth.

(Want to learn how to facilitate groups and run meetings? Join our course in The Five-Fold Path: The Craft of Skillful Facilitation, six Wednesdays, starting February 12, 6 pm Pacific Time.) https://earthactivisttraining.org/facilitation/