The Intensity Is Intensifying, The Denial Is A Problem, & This Shift Is Ramping Up

Denial & Intensity

We’re in a new thing after last Friday’s attempted attack on Speaker Pelosi. A new time. A new era. A new way of being.

Not a good one — but things are definitely different. Now we’re in a more clear era of political violence. It’s being normalized by 1/3 of our society and major media spheres. It’s likely to worsen and persist.

I expect it to keep iterating in leaps and bounds; with new intensity coming as some new thing happens. That’s been happening for a while now… sometimes in a matter of hours, sometimes over days, and sometimes over weeks. There’s an intensification, though, and it’s ramping up.

There are deluded souls who will keep saying that Republicans should “do the right thing” and denounce the rhetoric, intimidation, mockery, aggression, meanness, and straight-up condoning or clear endorsement of political violence. There are anchors and reporters who keep asking why they won’t — willfully missing the point that it’s intentional. It’s by design. The normalizing of it reinforces what it is. The willful naivete does, too.

Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson

The Pelosi attack was long foretold — and make no mistake, Republicans are thrilled

salon.comThe Pelosi attack was long foretold — and make no mistake, Republicans are thrilledHours after a MAGA supporter attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, Donald Trump bemoaned his “torment and oppression”

Americans go along with it because denial is easier than admitting we have a problem.

Denial is easier than getting uncomfortable and doing hard work and critical thinking to figure out what we can do about it — and then doing new and different things.

Denial is easier than making real changes in our daily lives and in our priorites.

Denial helps authoritarianism (including fascism) spread. Our hope that it won’t get worse or that somebody will fix it keeps us from doing more.

Hope is lovely and helpful if it isn’t delusional and contributory. In this moment, the hope that’s around seems more of this kind: “Boy I sure hope someone does something because this isn’t right.”

There’s shock, too. And overwhelm. Both also deliberately designed to disempower, disengage, and freeze the population. Making everyday life tougher and more overwhelming helps keep the not-powerful from pushing back on the powerful and moneyed.

One thing we can do in the face of fast-evolving and fast-increasing risk is to look it straight in the face and figure out how we can address it.

The predictions here about how this is getting worse aren’t from some wild-eyed seer forecasting doom.

I'm a disaster intelligence and security professional trained to see threats well before they come.

As such, I started thinking about how to confront this risk of authoritarianism (quickly evolving to fascism) in 2016 and 2017. By late 2018, I decided to take a deeper dive, to do a gap analysis, and to dig into things we could realistically do to seriously address this risk. I learned more about the history and sociology behind moments like this in other societies.

We have options. We can learn from others who failed or who succeeded how we can turn this shift around.

What I did is figure out how we can operationalize the lessons from history and sociology, and to create a very new nonprofit to build an effort from here forward to help with this.

For anyone who’s been following me and Shift the Country for a while… you know this work has been iterating, too. Many, many, many, many, many iterations. This is my third attempt at a nonprofit to work on this, and I had been hoping to be launching what we’re launching now back in August. Despite insanely frustrating challenges since July with advertising, social media, tech, trolls, attacks, and life stuff… we’re still at it. I’m still at it. We’re further along than we’ve ever made it, and I think we’ve finally got the grounding to build from here. Third time’s a charm!

So we’re going to latch onto this moment and whatever chaos comes with it, and we’re going to build this shift from here forward.

We can start now and have a real impact on the 2024 election — but more importantly, on the direction of this country and on the future of our own people and the people who come after all of us.

We can make history and change history. We can change our trajectory.

The base of the Shift the Country work is a 5-part approach that can help us deal with the sociological issues that led to this authoritarian movement (also I’m still writing two sections).

We need deeper fixes. Postcards and protests aren’t going to do it.

This stuff has to be at the society level — in our connections, in our communities, in our economy, in our morals and norms, and in our media. Not coincidentally, those 5 areas for change line up with our 5 Things.

Those 5 Things give us all a framework with tools and approaches we can use together to take this stuff on. To frame our shared response differently, to talk about it differently, and to act in response to it differently.

Because this type is BS is spectacularly unacceptable:

The Daily Beast @thedailybeast

“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C.—apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection,” Kari Lake said, prompting the crowd to laugh.

trib.alCrowd Laughs as Arizona Candidate Kari Lake Makes Light of Pelosi Attack“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C.—apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection,” Lake said, prompting the crowd to laugh.

Trump Jr.’s response is spectacularly unacceptable:

The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln

Trump Jr’s post about Speaker Pelosi’s husband, Paul, is vile and atrocious. Joking about political violence is unacceptable and dangerous. This is who the GOP has become and we must not allow it to continue.

cnn.comDonald Trump Jr.’s reaction to Paul Pelosi’s attack shows exactly how low we have sunk | CNN PoliticsThe attack on Paul Pelosi was terrifying. A man broke into the house of the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the middle of the night and hit him with a hammer. Paul Pelosi suffered a fractured skull among other injuries. The intruder shouted, “where’s Nancy?”

Get Ready

Here's what I offer today, as we near this election and more ramping-up.

Get your head around it.

Rethink your life in light of increasing chaos and intensity. Shift some priorities around. Maybe shift some relationships around.

Prioritize. Triage. Grieve.

Definitely grieve. We're going to need to grieve some of what's gone because we're going to do a different future than we might have been hoping for.

What that future looks like yet is not determined.

What we do over the next few years will determine it. Huge changes happen in societies in times of great turmoil. We're there. We're actually probably early in.

This Shift Is Ramping Up: What’s Next Here

What’s next is that Shift the Country is building an online event curriculum / action plan to work through the 5 Things over about 6 weeks. All will be announced here.

• This 6-week plan is what we’d hoped to do in August/September. Now we’ll do it in November/December.

• We’ll plan to create & build action teams of volunteers to get going in each of the 5 Things, but also overall and in some specialized areas as we figure that out together.

• We’ll use our tiny bit of ad funding to run Facebook ads to promote those events and get people to them. Send more funding here.

• We have to wait until after the election (Nov. 9) to run the ads, so we’ll use the time until then to build things out better than the constant iterating that’s been happening all fall since there were so many “challenges” getting this to work the way we’d planned for fall.

• Events are likely to start around November 13 to give the first ads time to bring in participants.

Hard Truths About This Nonprofit & Changes To Help With Those

I keep getting feedback from people who seem to think that just because we’re a legal nonprofit that there’s like funding and infrastructure and staff or contractors or whatever. NOPE.

We. Are. Brand. New.

Shift the Country is so new that I’m still working on the first-year 501(c)(4) filings for the IRS (and we need funds to hire an accountant to do it properly before January). We’re so new we’re not listed publicly by the IRS yet.

There are no staff or contractors. Right now there’s me, my jack-of-all-trades skillset, my over-the-top dedication to this country, my ridiculous willingness to live a very simple life to get this going, some supportive advisors, a board, and some big ideas to build out from here.

Some nonprofits like this 501(c)(4) have big money. They’re actually known as places to hide big “dark money,” because they don’t have to report donations to the IRS as long as they follow the rules.

Not us! No big dark money here!

We have startup funding from the personal savings/retirement accounts of two individual everyday middle-class humans, and a handful of donations from our website, this Substack, our mostly-not-yet-scheduled events, and four patrons on Patreon. That’s it.

We’ll need more cashola if we’re going to grow this shift for real, because that initial startup funding is out. Done. Fini. Nada.

The website isn’t perfect, I’m still re-writing two sections and the overview PDF (always iterating), and the Donate! page is reportedly too wordy. Hopefully that doesn’t keep people from donating. We’re pursuing an ActBlue account because people trust ActBlue, so I’m submitting paperwork tomorrow.

Our Substack Is Iterating Too

Finally, we’ll be doing more with this Substack.

A key feature of Shift the Country is storytelling…. which helps with making meaning, values, framing, and moral courage. We need to all get better at telling our stories and struggles and dreams. Vulnerability builds connection. Connection helps us grow and expand community. Stories also help things get coverage, get attention, and drive the narrative. We’ll get into all that as we work on this. Substack will be a key — but we’ll all need to get better at telling our stories in all the places.

I’ll start by getting more vulnerable myself. I’ll tell more of the personal stuff, the personal struggles, and the personal stories.

It’s time for me to start bringing in and growing this vision with way more people, so we can build and grow it together. I need to share more about what’s behind the scenes, what sucks, what’s working, and what we can do. We collectively need to start digging in to find ways forward to create and build this shift. All of that fits into the 5 Things approach.

I’ll call my personal stories “V Stories” on Substack — so you can tell if it’s a personal story.

We’ll be adding “Your Stories” posts soon, too. We can totally build out Substack.

Also, we may be sending more than one Substack post per day.

We need to build and communicate fast when everything is intensifying and iterating quickly. It’s not a time to hold back, so I’m going to stop doing that — holding back.

Not everyone’s going to like that, but that’s why there’s an “unsubscribe.”

We don’t all have to walk the same path, and we don’t have to build this work to resonate for everyone.

We need to build this shift to draw in people who are serious about trying new things, willing to put in some time, and able to roll with the chaos a little bit. We’re inventing something new, and we’re helping to navigate big chaos in an unprecedented era when the future of the world’s stabilizing superpower is at stake. When the future of the people we all love is at stake.

What we do is not going to be everyone’s thing. That’s okay. We don’t need everyone. We just need enough.

Be well and be safe out there as we navigate this. It’s a time to shift priorities, have tough talks, build new teams, change more relationships, keep ourselves from getting frozen, and to help each other forward.

Stick with Shift the Country and we’ll do some amazing shift even as we do all of that, too.

We can. And we will.