vitalwholeness

I actually have a favorable view of going to my regular teeth cleaning with the dental hygienist. She does a good job, the procedure is relatively painless, and I know her on a first-name basis. We discuss children and make small talk and even know some of the more important things about our lives. Not too long after my wife Kathy died, she gave me a phone call, her voice cracking on the other end of the line. At such times, those kinds of gestures make a big difference. So do random emails and handwritten cards that show up in the mailbox.

After the final flossing we compared signals on which type of Thanksgiving pie occupies most favored status. We basically divided humanity into two camps: the pumpkin pie people and everyone else. Because we fell into the pecan and mincemeat tribe, that meant that we were rooting for the same team. Out of those declarations of pie loyalty, an inner-office pie poll began as a result, and it short order true colors were revealed, the unvarnished truth of closely held pie secrets. Do you like your pumpkin with whipped cream on top? After Thanksgiving do you eat pie for breakfast? Are you willing to pucker up and eat the Gooseberry pie that Aunty Mae brings every year?

Somewhere in the middle of all this frivolity my dentist came in for the post-cleaning check. Everything seemed in order. A quick look and I was declared ready to go forth into the world until the next cleaning. When he made mention of the holidays and what Kathy and I were planning, I realized he hadn’t heard yet. It happens. News of a death gets out unevenly and some hear it before others. More than once, I have had to share the sad news on the spot. That usually leaves the other person not only sad but in an awkward position. How could I have not known? I am so sorry.

But my dentist is different. He is a man dripping with empathy, the real kind without pretense. He is also a person of faith, the kind that just naturally oozes out of his pores because it is part of him. When he asked, Can I pray with you, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and right there reclining in the chair I said yes without a second thought. He pulled down his mask, laid his hand on my shoulder, and with my friend the hygienist bowing her head in the background, a treatment suite suddenly became a chapel.

His prayer was more a blessing than anything else, but prayers and blessings are first cousins. He gave thanks for Kathy. He prayed for my encouragement and how grief might turn into gratitude. He blessed me with thoughts of a love-surrounded Thanksgiving and Christmas that could heal wounded places. At the end of those gracious words, he said Amen. And I said, Thank you, I needed that.

As he left my room and headed down the hallway to the next patient, it might have been to a filling or root canal that he went. But for me, that day, he was more than a professional provider. He was a roving chaplain.

Jovial conversations about pie preferences continued all the way out to the reception desk. But what really hovered around me was the blessing in the chair.

We certainly find the ministrations of the spirit in places and persons designed for such things – churches, temples, shrines, and religious leaders on their rounds. But where we need to keep our eyes peeled is on the unpredictable zones, in the millions of cracks, corners, and crevices of this world where the sacred is hiding and waiting to snag us by surprise. Like in a dentist’s chair.

Everybody gets to have their own personal experience of institutional evil at least once. I’ve had mine. That helps me spot it when it raises its ugly head, like in the White House last week.

In my own case, years ago, I was on the receiving end of power-hungry bullies. In retrospect I realized they were acting out an abuse pattern. They set me up for attack and projected onto me for the very same behavior they engaged in. They expected me to crawl to them for their approval. When I wouldn’t become their subordinate, it enraged them because they wanted to thrill themselves with their own sense of dominance. I never gave them what they wanted. I’m glad I didn’t. I learned a powerful lesson about this kind of behavior and today I can spot it from a mile off.

I saw the pattern playing out in the Whitehouse last week when President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance met with Ukrainian President Zalenskyy. It was supposed to be one of those ritual photo ops held by heads of state in the oval office after they hashed out the real issues behind the scenes. But the Trump administration had something else in mind. They ambushed their guest.

It was the most disgraceful behavior of a US President since the last time Donald Trump did something disgraceful. It shocked allies around the world. Americans were stunned. Only Trump lapdogs tried to spin the display as something beneficial. The truth is something else: After siding with Russia in a recent resolution on the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the United Nations, the Whitehouse debacle sealed the abandonment of Ukraine in favor of Russia. We are now alone. Except for the company of dictators and bad actors. Our former allies will stand behind Ukraine without us, perhaps against us. Instead, our imperial leaders will talk about annexing Canada, Greenland and Panama.

Identifying abuser behavior in this scenario is not difficult. The abuser blames the victim for their plight. The victim is cajoled into extending endless gratitude. When the victim asserts their independence, they are accused of being ungrateful. Cooperation is equated with capitulation to the abuser. The abuser reminds the victim that they are powerless without the abuser because only the help of the abuser can make them powerful. Interrupting and cutting off the victim in mid-sentence communicates how unimportant their words and ideas actually are. The abuser gaslights the victim by presenting a fabricated reality based on falsehoods. The victim is expected to accept. The victim is accused of being the real problem when they aren’t. They are expected to submit and take responsibility for that which they did not do. The abuser communicates that the victim owes them something, continuing to take from them and coercing them to participate in things that will actually hurt them. The real accomplishments of the victim are dismissed, while the abuser takes credit for the good.

All of this took place in clear sight in the Whitehouse. The Abuser-in-Chief played his role perfectly. But as in so many cases like this, unintended consequences soon rose to the surface. It doesn’t take long for bullies and their behavior to be identified. Collusion with Russia became doubly clear. And the one who was set upon, President Zelenskyy, became the recipient of renewed admiration and support.

Now people of good will around the world are bringing an equal and opposite reaction, gathering around Ukraine in spite of the abandonment by the former leader of the free world. In the meantime, we are cleaning up the blood-splattered flag from our self-inflicted wounds, the source of which sits behind the resolute desk in the oval office.

Today I had two separate conversations with people directly affected by the current administration’s sacking of the federal government. The first was a man who worked for the Consumer Protection Agency, up until a week ago that is. He was summarily dismissed along with dozens of his fellow staff members. Their job? To protect citizens from the kind of untoward practices that led to the economic meltdown of 2008. But it doesn’t matter if they protect citizens. Something else is at work.

The second was a retired federal law enforcement employee who provided the blow by blow of the Doge invasion of personal records, the kind of privacy and security invasion that would have justified an investigation just a few years ago.

It is clear that we have entered new territory. By now we are becoming aware of the many agencies affected, including USAID, NIH, FFA, IRS, Social Security, and more. Here is the thing: Elon Musk and his storm troopers operate under the mask of efficiency, rooting out waste, and eliminating fraud. But it’s a smoke screen to cover what they are really up to. I want to talk about that.

It has been the plan to gut the federal government as a part of a second Trump term. It was outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – its roadmap. People like billionaire Peter Thiel who bought J.D. Vance’s Senate seat and placed him in the Vice Presidency, and Oligarch Elon Musk, the South African who bought Donald Trump’s Presidency in return for favors, join with other authoritarian-leaning oligarchs in an ambitious attempt to undo democracy and replace it with a single party, autocratic, theocratic fascist state. To get there you have to destroy things. You have to savage the separation of powers, sack the judiciary, gag the press, and pillage every institution of government, removing expertise and smarts. They want to privatize health care and the support of veterans and make millions off them. They want to gut anything that benefits all the people and make those who are already economically fat even more obese. They want to eliminate those who can investigate them and fire career law enforcement people. They want to politicize the military and transform them into the President’s new storm troopers. Replace competent people with compliant unqualified people. Silence and disappear the scientists and experts. Soil international relationships. And while they are at it, dismiss the board of the Kennedy Center and move in Trump as the chair.

Why all this? To consolidate absolute power. To move beyond governing a state and instead forming an international cabal of strongmen and oligarchs to determine everyone’s future and profit off it. They will decide what happens to Ukraine. They will decide what happens to Gaza. Trump wants this. So do his wealthy enablers. And his populist working class minions don’t even know that they are being played with a sheaf of culture war issues du jour.

That is exactly why a bunch of inexperienced tech kids under the supervision of the rogue shadow President, Elon Musk, are tearing through government with a digital chain saw. It is not their mission to reform; they want to destroy. And unless someone stops them, they will do just that.

This is also why American politicians like Vance and Hegseth show up at a security conference in Munich with supposed allies and trashes them. And spouts Russian talking points instead. Putin was surely tossing back a double vodka on that one. What useful idiots I have in America, he must think. Yes, the enemies of America are within. And they are mine.

One response is for Americans to throw up our hands and say, “Oh, well, there’s nothing to do.” Another is denial, “It’s not that bad, things swing back and forth.” Another is to be petrified and stuck in place with feet in concrete. None of these are adequate for these times.

As opposed to the fake Christian Nationalists who use religion to accomplish their ideological ends, I want to suggest another way forward. I think that the menace that stalks at noonday is already in the land. The whore of Babylon is here. I think that only spiritual power and moral resolve can stand against this tyranny. This requires resistance to injustice, domination, and destruction. This requires denouncing the ways the worst among us are thrilled at marginalizing anyone who doesn’t look like them and worship their small little tribal god.

For everything there is a season. It’s time to be prophets, not consolers. Not time to comfort, but rather to confront.

We do not choose the times given, only how we will respond. Generations from now they will look back at us and ask, “Did they stand against the plague?”

Well, did we?

This week I sent out a video through TikTok in which I apologized for the embarrassing presentation by American leadership – Vice President Vance and Secretary of Defense Hegseth – at the security conference in Munich. It was presented as an open letter from American citizens to Global neighbors. Then I waited.

Within a short span of time, I had 35,000 responses. They are still coming in. All but a few – from American Magas and European far right fascist movements – thanked me for my transparent message in which I described exactly what is now happening in the United States. Those who posted were from countries around the world. Many have been long-time allies of the US. The responses were what I might have expected.

Many were in shock, finding it unimaginable that the beacon of freedom had disappeared beneath the waves of authoritarianism. Many felt this was the death knell of our country. Others felt betrayed and doubted if they could trust us again. Still others knew that millions of good-hearted Americans did not vote for this administration and that it does not represent their views. One after one, respondents spoke of their support of Americans in hard times, because they had been through hard times in their own countries.

I found many of these expressions heart breaking. So very disillusioning. And yet, I was also warmed by expressions of solidarity from afar. They are still pulling for us. Dubious, perhaps, but still hopeful.

I cannot even pretend to be neutral or patient in this time. Consider me an unapologetic part of the resistance against this extremist administration, one that places the United States in existential peril. There is no compromise. There is no middle ground. There is only prevailing over these anti-democracy forces, these oligarchs and theocrats.

I am part of the resistance. Will you join me?

Start here, with 5 Calls.

All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to stand by and do nothing.

Don’t be one of those.