When I was asked to lead service the weekend after the election, I honestly could not come up with a theme and thus, decided upon something vague - “What Do We Do Now” - since I figured that would cover any possible outcome. I had hoped that today our call for what to do now would involve how we could more deeply live into our UU values to strengthen democracy, reinstate Roe, protect women and our trans and LGBTQ siblings, focus on anti-racism, and end the genocide of the Palestinian people. All of those things remain on our To Do list but that list just got much longer and we are now facing the reality that we will have more obstacles to traverse and more limitations put on us as we try to create the country and world we’d prefer to live in. A country that values ALL people, that is committed to righting the wrongs of the past, that sees billionaires as the scourge that they are and thus redistributes exorbitant wealth in a way that ensures everyone's basic needs are met, and a country that recognizes that without an inhabitable planet, well, nothing else really matters.
The day after the election, the students in my “The Adolescent in American Society” class showed up looking like zombies. In this class, we spend a lot of time creating deep bonds so we can share openly, bravely, and safely with one another and they showed up wearing their emotions–sadness, despair, anger, fear, uncertainty—as clear as day on their faces and in their postures. Thus, we went and sat on the grass—yea, we can do that on November 6th because it was over 70 degrees, which while lovely is totally wrong and problematic—and held a “special” class. I led them in a ritual of lament, we shared what was on our hearts, we listened to good music, we colored, we lay in the grass and studied the clouds, and then we hugged and went on our way. I believe it was quite helpful for them and I know it was exactly what I needed.
If you haven’t processed this election with a young person, I urge you to do so. Their take is possibly one of the most important takes because they are the ones who are now terrified for their existence: probably can’t get married because I’m sure they will undo Gay Marriage; probably won’t have kids because the planet won’t sustain us; probably will have to watch friends and family members rounded up and deported or shut into cages at the border; probably going to witness even more state-sanctioned violence against our black and brown siblings; definitely won’t be able to rent or buy anyplace to live, etc… They’re right to be afraid. I’m actively afraid for the people I know and love, and well, honestly, I’m afraid too for people I’ll never meet but love from a distance whose lives are now in terrible danger.
But, I’m not surprised that the United States has taken a sharp downward turn into fascism. Have you ever heard of the Tytler Cycle? Well this Scottish cat, Alexander Fraser Tytler who lived almost 300 years ago, posited what came to be known as “The Tytler Cycle” which states that democracies are only viable for about 200 years. He said:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.“
Tytler goes on, “The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
Sure sounds like it fits our 248-year experiment in democracy. Now maybe some people aren’t as alarmed by what is happening, thinking those of us who are pointing out that the president-elect has real authoritarian plans and will continue our rapid shift into fascism, are overreacting. We’re not, by the way. And if you look at Tytler’s conception - we are clearly seeing SELFISHNESS reign supreme with a healthy dose of APATHY which is dragging folks into an unexamined DEPENDENCE on a wanna-be dictator. Maybe it’s in my DNA to take this whole thing seriously since as an Italian, I know what happens when you put an egomaniacal sociopathic despot into power who allies himself with some of the most villainous people in the world. (Yes, that would be Mussolini).
Unlike the sheep though, that followed Mussolini and Hitler into fascism and nazism, abdicating their responsibility to their friends and neighbors and the social contract, I would have been - and I suppose I now am - a partigiani, the Italian resistance who fought fascism and nazism. We all need to be partigiani now.
Now, I’m really not surprised by the outcome of the election. I won’t get into an analysis of all the things the democrats did wrong, which is plenty, but I’m not surprised because the United States is a country founded on genocide - the gradual and wholesale decimation of the indigenous people of this continent, that swiftly moved into the enslavement of a race of people who were kidnapped from their own sovereign communities on the African continent cementing white Christian patriarchal supremacy into our cultural DNA. While we love to harken back to the quest for religious freedom that created “this land of the free”, we instead created a land where freedom of/from religion was not actually practiced and instead, a puritanical Christianity sought to devalue and dehumanize anyone not white, not male, not Christian, and not able-bodied. The Structural Racism, Classism, and Misogyny that are the Roots of our existence are hard-baked into us. If you ask any person of color or other member of a systematically marginalized group they will tell you this outcome is not surprising because every day they experience the Structural Violence that this country stands for and that apparently more than 50% of the population is comfortable with.
So yeah, Tytler’s estimation feels right on to me, and we are now entering a time where those of us who have spent all of our lives trying to live into the values of generosity, equality, human rights, racial justice, uniting with nature, caring for the least of our siblings, and leading with love, can either choose to give up and let the authoritarian chips fall where they may, or we can recommit ourselves to resistance.
I turned to one of my favorite theologians and Unitarian Minister James Luther Adams, for some guidance on this. Here’s what he wrote:
In the summer of 1927, six years after Hitler became head of the movement and six years before the Party came into power, I visited Nuremberg just at the time when thousands of people, young and old, were in the city for the annual Nazi festival. On the day of the great parade in the streets of Nuremberg, history as it was being made at that juncture gave me personally a traumatic jolt. Standing in the jostling crowd and watching the thousands of singing Nazis with their innumerable brass bands as they passed along the street, I inadvertently got into a conversation with some people who turned out to be Nazi sympathizers. Out of curiosity as to what they would say, I asked a bystander the meaning of the swastika that was everywhere evident. Within a few minutes I found myself in a heated conversation with more and more people joining in, particularly when the discussion turned to the Jewish question. As I bore down in the argument against these defenders of Nazism, asking more and more insistent questions, I was suddenly seized by the elbows from behind, and pulled vehemently out of the crowd. No one made an effort to help me. I immediately thought I was being taken into custody. I could not see who it was who, after extricating me from the crowd, marched me vigorously down a side street and then turned up into an alley. On reaching the dead end of the alley, my host, a young German workingman in his thirties, wheeled me around and shouted at me, "Don't you know that when you watch a parade in Germany today you either keep your mouth shut or get your head bashed in?"
The man who saved JLA was an anti-Nazi, and thus they spent time together and JLA encountered groups of anti-Nazi’s in the “underground” movement. JLA wrote this a few years later:
"If Fascism should arise in the States, what in your past performance would constitute a pattern or framework of resistance?" I could give only a feeble answer to the question. My principal political activities had been the reading of the newspaper and voting. I had preached sermons on the depression or in defense of strikers. Occasionally, I uttered protest against censorship in Boston, but I had no adequate conception of citizenship participation."
. . . It is a liberal attitude to say that we keep ourselves informed and read the best papers on these matters, and perhaps join a voluntary association now and then. But to be involved with other people so that it costs and so that one exposes the evils of society . . . requires something like conversion, something more than an attitude. It requires a sense that there's something wrong and I must be different from the way I have been.
JLA knew he had to do more and his experience in Germany ignited his call to publicly, outwardly, consistently, and even clandestinely when needed call out injustices and work to undo these systems of oppression. He in turn shared this with all Unitarian Pastors and our public call to action as clergy and lay leaders lies largely with his legacy.
So what are we going to do now?
I fortuitously received an article from Waging Non-Violence a couple of days ago and want to share some of their suggestions.
First, we have to honor our grief. We cannot brush past it. It is real, it needs to be felt, it will maybe be a roller coaster, but honor it. Then, trust yourself and create communities of care and trust, folks who serve as your support team, your action partners, your “ride or dies”. (As a sticker hanging above my desk says “we keep each other safe, so we can be dangerous together”). Then focus on what you can change and release that which feels uncontrollable. This is hard to do especially when we see that All The Things Need To Be Done. But we can each find our calling and choose our hills wisely. Which leads to Finding your path. Waging Non-Violence suggests four ways: Protecting People - bearing witness, stepping in, being the frontline or back-up as needed; Defending Civic Institutions - work to make sure we keep having elections, changes things from the inside if you can especially if you work for one of these institutions (like a teacher or work for the EPA); Disrupt and Disobey - This goes beyond protesting, petitioning and postcarding for better policies and into the territory of people intervening to stop bad policies or showing resistance, including tax resistance, national strikes, work shut-downs and other nonviolent mass disobedience tactics — the most effective strategies to displace authoritarians; and finally Building Alternatives - which could mean collaborating with organizations that already exist or creating them - such as alternative political parties, mutual aid, creating new cultures of being in community. The article continues by telling us to “Not obey in advance, and do not self-censor”: Use the political space and voice you have. Furthermore, always have Power in your analysis, in the sense that you realize who REALLY holds the power - it’s often not CEOs but workers, so you can destabilize a system by using the power of those around you. And remember that FEAR is a tool of authoritarians. It’s okay to feel your fear but don’t let it stray you from your path. Finally, Envision a Positive Future - In my Peace Education classes and workshops, we do an activity where we imagine the world we want to create via drawing or writing and then we write down actions we can take to bring it into existence. It helps us not just feel empowered but also provides a guide for our work.
And one final thing I just want to add, we will need to make coalitions, and maybe coalitions with people from different political parties or who we’ve historically had issues with (but who now see the Forest for the Trees). We have to think about how to make that happen because that is different from “playing nice” or falling into the “can’t we all just get along” trap that I hear all the time because I am a peace educator and folks assume that means we should all just play together in the sandbox even if we have different “opinions”. I’m not interested in “getting along” with the people who voted for this guy and who believe in his policies and aspirations. Having different opinions and still getting along is about coffee and wine and that the Mets are the NY baseball team to cheer for. If someone’s worldview - or “opinion” - vilifies people based on their skin color, immigration status, gender, love life, or self-identity, that’s not actually an opinion. That is bias. That is hate. And our role in the resistance is to shut that down or transform it, through resistance, education, dialogue, and love. But if folks aren’t open to learning and expanding their worldview to see human rights as holistic, and want to keep those “opinions” (aka values), then move on. We’re past getting along. We are building a new way.
“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” - attributed to James Baldwin
