A NEW BREED OF PATRIOT

Lo and behold, it's our inner adult

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (GraphicaArtis)

As tough as things are at the moment - as dark the clouds looming over the near and not so near horizon - I have unwavering conviction that in the end things will be okay.

I keep thinking of the saying, “Every problem comes bearing its own solution.” The most difficult situation is often the one that forces us to grow. We become the people who, if only we’d been that person before, the challenge might never have arisen! I’m impressed by so many whose bravery and intelligence at this moment are lighting up the Internet. Many who had never given politics a thought are now channeling the full on spirit of Thomas Paine.

Yes, liars and trolls are saturating the airwaves, but they are not unresponded to. People are not allowing idiocy to go unanswered. There are people waking up each day with the clear intent of throwing a wrench in the gears of the Musk machine. Today’s mantra for a well-lived life is, “If I can mess them up the least little bit, my efforts will have been worthwhile.”

I’ve worked with people throughout my career who had just received the worst news possible. And I’ve seen what happens. In the space of five minutes, layers of ultimately meaningless preoccupation dissolve and someone’s inner adult, long suppressed, is shocked into existence. When the critical stakes in a situation become clear, “How can I avoid taking adult responsibility?” becomes “How can I totally and completely take care of this problem?” in the space of a minute.

This generation of American adults - by that I mean all generations of American adults - never had our coming-of-age crisis. Well, we’re having it now.

I laugh at an imaginary scene in my head. I’m wearing a babushka and long apron, passing cookies around to internet revolutionaries as I exhort them onwards saying “Are you all right, darling?” I’m this nutty lady scrolling through Tik Tok, seeing a young woman lay down some radical truth-telling about how fascism is creeping into the sinews of our society, and I jump up yelling, “YES! YOU GO, GIRL!” I’ve appointed myself her patron saint.

The truth is, none of us are alone. We’re united by a call of the ages that’s beaming out to all of us. All that’s necessary is that we not ignore it. Each time you read an article explaining what the hell is going on in this country - and there are many right now - remember how many others are reading it too. We don’t need a central command of any kind; nature is organizing the resistance. The air is fairly electric with it. Every day more people join the ranks of the newly impassioned, entering with the passwords “I’m ready to do what I can.”

It could be a Facebook post, a protest, educating yourself, whatever. Any energy put in the direction of truth is a bullet in the heart of a lie. Any celebration of a free society makes clear the bankruptcy of dictatorship. It doesn’t matter what you do. As long as it’s positive and pure of heart, just do it.

Everything is recalibrating now. Each life is a microcosm of the larger societal dynamic, and it’s like we’re on a ship out at turbulent sea: the floor beneath us is reeling. People thought this ship was a whole lot stronger than this, but hey, what is, is. Relationships are feeling the stress, circumstances are shifting in odd and sudden ways, and people and places are calling that make us go, “Huh!” The spiritual point there is to let it happen.

We’re being turned into the people we need to be in order to do what we need to do. Until we become this improved version of ourselves, we won’t know what to do and even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to do it. This moment is simultaneously a political nightmare, and the moment we’ve waited for our entire lives. We always had a sneaky suspicion that things were leading up to something, though in our wildest dreams we didn’t think it would be this.

(Well, actually, if I’m to be honest I thought it was probably going to be this. I wrote two books about it, and ran for President twice pretty much predicting it. I can’t tell you how sorry I am to have been right.)

I’ve lived a lot of my life in Los Angeles, where earthquakes are always in the back of everyone’s mind. You live there knowing that something is probably coming, but we never thought it would be fire. Those we thought we could keep at bay, kept over there somewhere, relegated to the hills. When the catastrophe arrived, especially in the way it did, it came with a sense of foreboding. It was exactly that. Some larger “it” has come burning down.

Okay, so we’re in it. Who knows what the Trump and Musk bromance will come up with this week. Who knows how many lives will be traumatized because of them. Who knows what laws, traditions and principles they will shatter in the days ahead.

But this we do know. No matter what they do, Americans all over this country will be rising to the challenge. From elected officials to internet sleuths, from activists to artists, from the old who remember to the young who dream, a new kind of patriot is emerging in our midst. It is a welcome new arrival, someone we’re only just meeting but who we knew all along. What a moment of discovery this is, to realize it is us.