Just as Roman society had already begun to crumble before the barbarians ever reached their gates, so America was on the path of dying empire before Donald Trump reached ours. So many sectors of American civilization - and so many of us, I’m afraid - had compromised our principles, our ethics, even our decency too often and too completely, for years. Tiny lies, tiny vulgarities on the part of individuals as well as institutions became cultural norms. Things that seemed perhaps like unimportant compromises with our own integrity, easy enough to gloss over, became features rather than glitches in how we did business, even inhabited our personal relationships. In the quantum field out of which this moment emerged, there’s no difference between a lying lover and a lying corporation.

Thus weakened morally, we became politically vulnerable. The problem wasn’t just that Trump prevailed; it’s that he found it to be so damn easy. He got to the gates and broke them open. And in ways tough to admit, it wasn’t that hard. He and his minions are raping and pillaging even as we speak, and they’ve only just gotten started. They won’t be done until every non-white person, woman, immigrant and non-Christian is put back in their place - you know, that place below, acquiescent, compliant, subservient, less vocal. The worst thing is, the people behind all this actually think that will be for the best. That’s how evil this phenomenon is.

The vision of the New Barbarians is everything the founding vison of our country is not. Their efforts are a direct attack upon a society in which we are true to the idea that “All men are created equal.”

That sentence is not simply that we’ve decided to create a society in which all men are treated equally. It’s a statement that we will treat all men equally because we were created that way. To our Founders that meant everything, and it should mean everything to us as well. The sentence is a spiritual creed, not just a political agreement. And only a devotion to that creed will empower us to prevail against the barbaric forces at work in our modern politics.

Unless We the People reclaim for ourselves the radicalism of our Founding vision - that all men are endowed by our Creator with unalienable Rights, and governments are instituted to secure those rights - then everyone from Peter Thiel to Elon Musk to Russell Vought to Donald Trump and the rest of them will be successful at demolishing it. To them, those principles are just meaningless nonsense; it’s our decision whether they will be meaningless to us. It was so obvious when Terry Moran asked Donald Trump what the Declaration of Independence meant to him, the President responded, “Well, it means exactly what it says... it's a declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot." It was glaringly obvious he had never read it.

Now that we are where we are, what matters is not who Trump is but who we are. The Declaration of Independence is America’s mission statement, and what matters is whether you and I understand it. When enough of us reclaim its vision, deeply, in our hearts, then we will have the power to push back the barbarians. But not before. Why? Because that document is not just a statement of politics, it’s a statement of moral force. It transmits more than information; it transmits power. And we need that power to support us now. It’s what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “cosmic companionship.” Shouting about what the Constitution says, without claiming the emotional and spiritual power of the Declaration, ultimately gets us nowhere. Elected officials and legal experts shouting at the modern barbarians every time they trample on our Constitution, “You can’t do that here! It’s against the law!” is not enough to save us. The barbarians don’t care that they’re trampling on the Constitution. That’s exactly what they’re here to do.

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The Founders’ task, as they saw it, was to create a government that would reflect divine universal law - not just British law. They referred to “Laws of Nature and of Nature's God” as having entitled us to our freedom, therefore our rights are not granted by the government. Governments are instituted to secure the rights already granted to us by Nature’s God. Government derives its just power from the consent of the governed, as expressed through representative electoral processes outlined in our Constitution. If and when government does not secure our rights, We the People have the right to alter or abolish it. The Constitution is politically brilliant; the Declaration is morally profound. The Declaration, like the Constitution written eleven years later, was radical in 1776 and it is radical today.

Abraham Lincoln did not expect to win a second term. With the Civil War dragging into its fourth year and almost half a million Americans already killed, he couldn’t blame Northern voters for having had enough. He expected a huge majority would agree with his opponent, General George McClellan, that it was time to make a deal with the South; why should their husbands, sons and brothersd have to die just because someone else owned slaves? If they wanted to go, went the argument, let them go. Negotiate an end to the war and we could start again as two neighboring countries, one slave- owning and one not.

Lincoln stood his ground however, with a platform calling for the South’s unconditional surrender and the abolition of slavery. He did so not only to preserve the union, but to stand by what he saw as the moral raison d’etre of the war: the principles of the Declaration of Independence. If you’ve never read his Second Inaugural Address or haven’t read it recently, do so now and it will rip you open.

To him, whether this country would abandon the principles of the Declaration was the crux of his generation’s political struggle. It was their struggle then, and it is ours now. To Lincoln, if all men are created equal, entitled by their Creator to the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then slavery must not be allowed to exist. The Confederate states had no plans to contain the institution of slavery within their own borders, by the way; their plan was for a huge slave-owning empire that would stretch not only across this continent but would include large swaths of Latin America as well. For millions who had never owned or traded slaves - who had lost their own loved ones in this most hideous war - to then vote for Lincoln on the strength of that moral argument, remains a staggering testament to their greatness as well as to his.

My mother used to tell me, “Growing old is not for sissies.” And neither is saving a country. We cannot, and must not, allow the political rupture of our own time to devolve into a second Civil War. Yet we must stand up as bravely as our ancestors did - true nonviolent struggle takes courage too - if we’re to preserve the principles on which we purport to stand. We have never fully actualized those principles, but from Abolition to Women’s Suffrage to the Civil Rights movement, at times we have made great strides. It is the job of every generation to seek to “create a more perfect union.” In our time, unfortunately, we are literally slipping backwards. There are those among us, barbarians in business suits, who have no use for our founding principles - they find democracy inconvenient to their purposes, mocking what they see to be its quaintness and inefficiency. It’s up to us whether or not we will join the barbarians, or care so little to stand up to them that they’ll continue over the next three years to march like Hitler through the Rhineland.

Our Founders didn’t underestimate the dangers that King George’s authoritarianism posed to their rights as free people; we shouldn’t underestimate the dangers that the new crowd of American authoritarians poses to ours. Our biggest mistake in the years leading up to this was a toxic form of complacency; our biggest mistake today is if we choose to be naive.

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*NOTE:

For those of you wanting to delve deeper into our Founding principles, I’ll be leading a two day book club on Healing the Soul of America for paid subscribers.

On Monday, May 11 and Tuesday, May 12, we’ll gather with the TRANSFORM paid subscribers to explore the ideas in Healing the Soul of America. I think they will resonate with what we’re witnessing in the country today.

My goal in writing the book was to explore founding principles and historical facts that as Americans we too often forget. Too many of us have lost our psychological connection to America’s larger story, and we must reclaim it in order to heal.

While the book was first published in 1998, it certainly seems relevant to America today. Here’s an example….

While we politically broke free of serfdom over two hundred years ago, perhaps we have not yet achieved the psychological and spiritual and emotional conditions necessary to sustain our freedoms. The needs of our business institutions are consistently placed before the needs of our people, and the trend is getting worse instead of better. Corporations have become a new aristocracy, while the average American is a new brand of serf. The difference now is that it is possible to buy one’s way into the aristocracy; that, however, is a far cry from removing the institution.

We have exported democracy around the world, yet here at home we are in need of a democratic renewal. From thinly disguised efforts at voter suppression, to industrial agricultural giants practically forcing genetically engineered food into our food supply and trying to outlaw efforts by anyone to let us know, there is a specter of Big Brother in the air that’s growing uglier every day. What happened to Americans that we have become so easy to seduce with a tax cut here or distract with a sex scandal there? What happened that we are willing to place the good of corporations before the good of our children, that we have been willing countenance the corruption of our political system by the dominance of corporate wealth? What happened to the “spirit of rebellion” without which, according to Thomas Jefferson, democracy cannot survive? We gave us our power as we too often give up our principles. As short term economic gain became so solidly our bottom line, we failed to question to moral damage this was doing to America’s soul. The corruption did not step there, howeer. Now it aims for our democracy.

Some things haven’t changed, huh? And look where it’s gotten us! If you’re interested, please join me for the book club. Read it before the class if you can, so we can go as deep into the material as possible.

DATES: Monday, May 11 and Tuesday, May 12
TIME: 2pm PT / 5pm ET
LINK: Below the paywall

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It’s late night here in London. I had some thoughts I felt like sharing so I jumped on Substack live.

Sending love to all…

M.

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And such eruptions will continue to occur in this society until we decide to become non-violent. Violence is a symptom, it is not a cause.

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Health is not the absence of sickness; sickness is the absence of health. Health is something we must proactively cultivate. Similarly, peace is not the absence of violence; violence is the absence of peace. Peace is something we must proactively cultivate.

Yet America’s obsession with brute force is evidenced everywhere - from our foreign policy to our environmental policies to our law enforcement policies. Until we seek to remove it everywhere, it will always plague us somewhere…

In the meantime, a group of elites being possibly endangered but no one shot at gets the ruling class of this country more apoplectic than American school children being shot and killed at point blank range. Our views are very, very skewed on this topic. And only we can change that.

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Hi everyone -

From political violence in America to ICE raids to the war in Iran, so much is going on these days. Much of the news media is pretty good at reporting the facts, but we need more than that. We need to understand those facts, in order to process them meaningfully. We need to recognize patterns. We need a deeper conversation about the problems in our midst if we're to have any chance of solving them.

I hope you feel that’s what you find here at Transform. Modern American politics - and modern American journalism - is so focused on superficiality. The deeper historical meaning of our country is a philosophical vision of what humanity can be, both ways we’ve honored that vision as well as ways we’ve dishonored it. We’ve strayed and are straying from the core principles at the core of America’s founding these days, and to those we must return if we’re to ever reclaim the better angels of our country.

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Our paid subscribers meet quarterly so we can talk about such things. Our next Town Hall for paid subscribers will be this Monday, April 27th, at 1pm PT / 4pm ET. Let’s process what’s unfolding in our country right now.

Date: Monday, April 27
Time: 4pm ET / 1pm PT

I look forward to connecting with you all.

All my best,
Marianne

The Zoom link is below the paywall.

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According to Heather Cox Richardson today, there’s a “newly created Economic Defense Unit (EDU) in the Defense Department. The EDU is directing government investment in private sector defense contractors and has cut deals for the government to start taking equity stakes in those businesses.”

So it’s no longer just the usual suspects of defense contractors — Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), General Dynamics, Boeing — making money on this war. They will of course make fortunes replenishing the supply that we’re exhausting in Iran, repairing what’s been broken, etc. But now the government itself — i.e. the cabal that’s currently running this country — will themselves have an equity stake in the madness. Don Jr. and Eric have also gotten in on the business opportunity, selling drone interceptors to Gulf countries being hit by Iran.

Trump is a businessman, as we all know, and there’s no bigger business opportunity than the U.S. war machine. His “dream military” after all has a yearly budget of $1.5T. In the old days all this would have been called war profiteering - which is illegal of course - but those days are over.

Registered to vote yet?

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I remember years ago when people started saying the government should be run like a business. First of all, no it should not; it should be run like a healthy family. And secondly, what kind of business? A righteous one, or an immoral unfettered con? Makes a difference.

Of course, the government should be spending American taxpayer money in legal, ethical and appropriate ways. It’s probably a good thing at this point to remember that no major part of the U.S. Defense Department has ever passed an audit. But hey, let’s give them half a trillion dollars more, shall we? One of the more ridiculous claims of this administration is that it’s going after fraud, when in fact the President himself has been convicted of numerous counts of fraud and is pardoning fraudsters at an alarming rate. And secondly, this administration is a fraud. Most importantly, it has fraudulently claimed to serve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. From violating the separation of powers to impounding appropriated funds to attacking the press to withholding citizens’ due process to prosecuting illegal war and more — instead of protecting the Constitution, it is ripping it up.

The corruption in American politics has gone from a contained cancer, which it has been for years, to a full body diseased condition. Watching virtuous Congresspeople, Democrat as well as Republican, trying yet failing to withstand the current assault on every pillar of freedom our government is supposed to represent, has put millions of us in a state of shock. After the shock comes outrage. After the outrage comes something almost eerily calm. “Okay, it’s happening. Now what do we have to do?”

And that’s where things get tricky. Obviously we need to wrest as much control from this administration as possible with our votes in November, but it will take more than that to address the deeper elements of what’s gone wrong in this country. As we’re all aware, Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. He’s merely the tip of a spear and unless we deal with that, then just removing the tip wouldn’t matter all that much in the long run. Our Supreme Court and both houses of Congress are now split into two categories: the kneecapped, and the complicit. Either way, they cannot now be counted on to protect us.

As I’ve been saying for a while, it’s our turn now. We the People need to stand up and keep standing. We can take upon ourselves a four-pronged, integrative approach to the struggle at hand.

1. Understand the larger arc of history that’s taken us to this point. Just today, I saw this comment on my YouTube page:

I am currently reading her book The Healing of America. I realize that if I’d read it when it was first published in 1997, I would have dismissed it as alarmist. Now I know that I was living in lala land and unable to see the true direction that the country was headed. How unfortunate that so many others were like me then.

I replied to her that soon I will be hosting a book study on my book HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA. You might want to purchase it, or check it out of your local library, so can read it before we do the class. We’ll provide details after next week’s online Town Hall.

2. Prepare your internal self for the work at hand. As Gandhi taught in his lessons on political non-violence, “self-purification must precede political action.” What’s happening today is an attack not only on our institutions but also on our nervous systems, and cultivating our personal capacity to endure this moment is necessary if we’re to transform it. Whether you’re doing the daily meditations here on Substack, or doing any other spiritual, reflective, or meditative practice, the work to strengthen our attitudinal muscles is as important as any other form of political activity. Only a whole-person, holistic, integrative approach to this moment will be powerful enough for democracy to prevail. Among other things, spiritual practice will increase your intuitive ability to discern the part that you can best play in the unfolding process of our political repair. When Gandhi was asked to name the leader of the Indian Independence movement, he responded, “the small still voice within.”

3. Involve yourself now in the coming elections. The obvious political work is right in front of us, as every American can vote for a member of the House of Representatives this November, and a third of us can vote for a Senator. Remember this from Abraham Lincoln: “While the people retain their virtue, and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government, in the short space of four years.”

   With enough work, we can win back both houses of Congress. We need to remember that the President and his minions are already at work trying to rig this election, and only a massive showing at the polls will be able to override their efforts. Above all, make sure you’re registered. Do it now!!

4. Stay informed. Information is power. After meditating each day, I scan Heather Cox Richardson and other sources as well in order to stay on top of the news. It’s important not to ignore what’s happening, but equally important not to allow ourselves to spiral down emotionally. If you’ve watched two or three ICE videos, you don’t need to watch ten more. We all know what’s happening, and each of us is only asked to do the part that we ourselves feel called to do to respond effectively to these times. None of us are alone in this. We are part of a matrix of healing, organized on an invisible plane by nature itself. Think of yourself as one cell in the immune system now rushing in to heal our body politic. None of us can afford to sit out our part in this, but it’s the entirety of the system that accomplishes the task.

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If on any day it all just seems too much, that’s okay too. Binge watch Downton Abbey or something. But then come back. Friends don’t let friends sit out this moment.

One more thing. Late in his life, my father had a weak heart. We were told by doctors that because he’d been so in shape earlier in his life, particularly as a soldier in WW2, his body had formed a kind of alternative set of capillaries then compensating for the system that was otherwise damaged. And that’s what we’re doing now. We’re forming an alternative field of possibilities that will compensate for those now being blocked. Whatever would be the opposite of a shadow government, we’re it.

Get on it.

Hi everyone -

We process with friends and therapists, but we don’t process collectively in this country. Yet what we’re going through is a collective trauma. I see our Town Halls as an opportunity to process what’s going on with others who are going through it too.

Our next Town Hall for paid subscribers will be on Monday, April 27th, at 1pm PT / 4pm ET. I very much look forward to this opportunity to gather with members of our Transform community.

When I was a little girl living in Houston, a hurricane named Carla hit Galveston. I remember my parents boarding up all the windows in our house, explaining to my brother and sister and me that a big storm was coming, it might be kind of scary for a while, but to always remember: Storms end. I know it seems like we’re in the middle of a storm right now, but let’s remember: Storms end. I see a lot of opportunity for something new and better on the other side of it.

I hope you’ll join me on April 27th for a conversation about the meaning of this storm we’re in now. What does it says about who we’ve been, and what does it say about who we need to be now?

The link is below for paid subscribers.

I look forward to seeing you there.

All my best,
Marianne

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For the defenders of democracy, the first order of business is to win control of Congress back from the cult-like Trumpsters who now preside there. Then of course, to win the Presidency in 2028.

But neither of those alone will be enough to heal the cancer that’s now deep in the bones of our democracy. We have broken our most basic social contract: the idea that government should secure our unalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We have become a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations, leaving us with too many Americans for whom America is simply too expensive a place to live, a planet imploding under the weight of our irresponsible environmental policies, and militarism the dominant factor in our foreign policy.

Enough is enough. We need to rethink, repair, and regenerate what is good, true, and beautiful about our country and the world.

Conscious citizenship means more than that you have a passport. It means you have an emotional investment in the well-being of your country. You understand the responsibilities that come with power, you understand the gravity of the mistakes that we have made, you understand the depth of the problems we face, and you are dedicated to being part of the solution.

All of us are responsible now for all of the above. We need to see citizenship itself as a layer of any meaningful, well-lived life. We need a movement of Americans now ready to think, feel and act our way into a new America. Out of this period of chaos can emerge a new beginning, but only if we are willing to make it so.

Let’s goooo!

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Thanks to Maddie Hale for having me on this week’s Trump Report.

And don’t forget to join me for a Town Hall for paid subscribers on Monday, April 27. You can find the login info here.