Revolutionary psychology includes the powers we possess to define destiny less by evolutionary routes than by seeing the mind as a more infinite source of direction, wisdom, and connection. To many that’s just gobbledygook. To others it’s the route to open freedom of higher self, mind, and destiny. It’s hard to see for some and liberation for others. We live in a world that prefers gobbledygook.

Fani Willis in Georgia holding on by a hair as Republican officials threaten to, basically, just remove her. She soldiers on but across her face is the future of the country, slipping away but held by threads until the fabric can no longer clothe the body.

A silver dollar reads value on each side. But the eagle rests on the “tail’s” side. This invisible barrier holds some magic power and allows each side to absorb the significance of the other. At least imaginatively. Republicans coopt the high tone of Democrats with all the self- serving smarm imaginable. You can fool some of the people all the time. Spin the dollar on the table’s surface and see which side lands up. Anyone with both hemispheres working is out of there: both sides-ism doesn’t cut it.

We are one body, but Trump burned the bridge just as the other candidates were clambering behind. Chaotic swimming below as the candidates flail against the current. Such pathos. DeSantis is surrounded by ocean and Gulf, but he’s down there still dressed to kill in his tighty whities. They’re slipping down in the current revealing what we already knew. Anarchy, absolutism, and pure self- interest is/has been babbling in the brook since T. arrived. When will the swimmers tire and join the wind-blown cadre of abettors ashore lunching on Trump burgers. The public by and large cannot interpret unfolding events with any skill except to look right and left for the scapegoats. They’d jump off the cliff if told to do so but they’ve already been dumped in the stream.

On the local level, the dynamics are small scale by comparison. Let’s give a cheer for Jack Smith, lifeguard for the Constitution when its floating downstream. It’s all boiled down to strait facts requiring less to be said thankfully. The leading news sources rake over the bodies of the participants, framing them in theatrical roles that have hypnotized the religious. The press is supposed to be the guardrail against the bad guys, but the show is full of them. The commemorative portrait on the dollar’s head’s side are the founders pleading for immortality: “We now think we should inspire again those whose vision blurs.” Both sides think the other bonkers. Traitorous! Both side-ism is the last place you want to end up. That’s where the problem started and what the media mostly champions.

The bottom truth is that people can always find a way to work things out intelligently if they want. But they have to be motivated by circumstances that are unequivocal. Self-interests are strong and rule for many reasons. Deception has been so rooted within the body politic, facts so conflated with opinions, obfuscation so blandly applied. Does anyone have the key, the deus ex machina or some devine revelation that will be transformative? Put the opinion polls out of business?

If all this has struck you as overly dark, it’s because the dawning day after the next election isn’t until November of ’24. If the sun is eclipsed as in 2017, the Republican illusion will continue to spawn its dust storms until the population is completely drained from the self-service of corruption. When will that happen? Or when will the apostasy occur that allows shared values to overrule the submission and clutch of false illusion? Why does it seem so simple for some and so threatening to others? We adhere to dogma that our subconscious finds convenient or unchallenging, ideas that create the illusion of protective mantel. Our schools in many regions have failed their students. We now ban books and try to protect them from ideas that require stepping out of the comfort zone. Over time civilizations have struggled to return to a playing field where the sun shines and fear of ideas that are new or inclusive have free rein to succeed or fail under the light of public experience.

There are great minds, great art being made here and throughout the land. So how do we reach those whose gifts are detoured, whose greater vision is hidden by fear and, so often now the mind’s conditioning that can no longer access its greatest gifts, not the material world and its illusions, but the visions that come from belief in our higher spirit, our epistemic vision valuing inclusiveness, the whole, the larger. We can worship gobbledygook, or we can ride free.

Alan and wife Jane live in bucolic Shelburne Falls. He likes the arts and ideas world, Jane the compassionate love of healing, quilting, and spirit. Kiko the black cat- good mouser, always has an opinion.