Several days ago, I was out on my morning walk with puppy Scampi when I came across an old friend, about my age, whom I shall call here, Sarah. Sarah was on her bicycle, riding around the compound where she lives, round and round, what she does every morning. I waved. She waved back.
Later that day, we both happened to be in Aldi, at the place where five people can check out electronically all at once. Seeing her there, and when our eyes met, I greeted her, “Hello Sarah! How are you doing?”
“I’m doing fine . . . Actually I’m NOT; just so upset about what’s happening to this country.” Said with great emphasis.
“Well, I’m still a Trumper,” I replied, loud enough for those around us to hear (dangerous, in this academic town).
“I know.” She replied. “And that’s why I don’t come to your Community Dinners.” (She used to come, years ago.)
Before she could get going on the rant that I could feel was coming, I told her “Actually, I’m both.”
While I realize that without shrinking the bloat in the federal government the entire country will soon go broke, I also very much appreciate how some of DOGE’s efforts are resulting in many thousands of people having great difficulties. As an example, I told her about noticing clearly immigrant little kids dressed up for school with backpacks, waiting at the bus stop with shy parents who don’t speak English, knowing that they all live in the “project” behind. “Who knows,” I thought at the time, as I passed them on the sidewalk, “what would happen to them if money to to fund that project gets axed. Or if their parents get deported.”
At this, my felt appreciation of both sides of the current political polarity, she looked puzzled, taken aback. But then when I mentioned Elon Musk, she turned suddenly rabid. “Oh, he’s just an African nazi,” she shouted, red-faced, as if the devil himself had suddenly climbed inside her and was spewing fire.
At this, I just put up my hands, shook my head in wonder, turned and walked away.
How I wish I had stayed, to tell her how we here in Green Acres Permaculture Village work with the inevitable political differences that arise between us. It’s been a necessity that we learn to do this, ever since what I still call the covid con— and what nearly everybody else around here still sees as a real epidemic, requiring masks, distancing, etc. etc, — cleaved us in two. In fact, during that strange time, the fear virus coursing through culture was so very virulent, that we stopped Community Dinners entirely for about a year.
Here’s how we do it: we just “stay with what we have in common.” And inevitably, what we have in common is much greater than what divides us. What divides us is merely ideas, those usually instilled into our brains on screens by outside sources, rather than gained through real lived experience, on the ground, where we live and breathe and relate to one another as equal, sovereign souls.
I’m reminded of Mattias Desmet, who introduced the idea of “mass formation” to us back during the covid con. Remember this? from 2022:
The Psychology of Totalitarianism
This man is showing us, with his language, how to bridge the gap between opposites; to live in the spacious presence between them, rather than condemning either pole as “the other.”
I subscribe to his substack. Here’s his subtly argued, both/and post from 4/19/25.
The Snitch Line of the Minister of Health
As a kid who grew up in the 40s and 50s, I can’t help but feel nostalgic now, and I wonder about Sarah, who also grew up then. How she must be suffering, to have succumbed to the cultural MK Ultra GOVERN-MENT (govern the mind) social divide, to having “picked a side,” and is now battling it out. I know full well, that as she pedaled back to her lonely apartment, while the ego part of her was still hot, underneath she did not feel good about either herself or the world. Hate does not heal.
Daily, hourly, minute by minute, I pray that I shall be one of those who help heal the divisions most people alive today are so immersed in that they do not realize it is possible to both dive below them to what we have in common, and to allow ourselves to rise above them, above all the quarreling, to look down with compassion upon sufffering humanity.
How did we allow ourselves to get to this point?
How did we allow ourselves to succumb to the (required, designed) madness that pits us against one another while the totalitarian state gradually, seemingly inevitably, clamps down?
Let’s stop.
Center, re-group.
Love ourselves.
Love one another.
Love unceasingly.
BTW: just as I turned from Sarah, one man turned from elecronically making his own purchases. He looked at me, knowing, appreciating.
It’s time we speak Truth, unceasingly . . .
. . . with Love.
