Meeting THIS Moment

Reflections on the pivotal nature of now.

Shit has got real.

Even though we are a month shy of the new administration entering office in the USA, politics has been dominated by the Trump agenda since the election results were announced more than a month ago. It’s worth reflecting on what this. means.

I write without allegiance to any either of the two parties that dominate US politics, but instead use as a benchmark for assessment the possibility of a sustainable and just world in which our species, and all others, can flourish.

By any objective assessment that possibility is shrinking fast. As the US fast morphs into naked plutocracy, policies that will exacerbate wealth inequity and accelerate environmental destruction are being readied.

Trump plans to extend the tax breaks provided to the wealthiest folk in America, meaning a billionaire will likely be paying a lower effective tax rate than a middle class worker. It does seem as if a full realization of this gross injustice has not yet dawned on us, the 99%. Sure the worship of money and the narrative that America is an even playing field on which we can all succeed (i.e. accumulate massive wealth) are baked into the culture here. This itself is a massive achievement by those who have long been manipulating the thoughts of ordinary US Americans, and it is likely to stave off rebellion a while longer.

Meanwhile the Drill, Baby, Drill mantra will usher in a less regulated, more destructive drive to exploit reserves of oil and gas, plus the metals and minerals which are needed to satiate our unceasing appetite for consumer goods.

The election result has striped away the last vestiges of pretense that those in highest office are trying to solve the interconnected web of environmental, social, political, financial problems. Instead, it gives permission to bad actors everywhere (including the US government itself) to continue, in broad daylight now, to advance their own interests at the expense of the rights, and even the lives, of those who stand in their way.

Meeting the moment, the process of choosing our response, must also get real.

I’ve written elsewhere how I believed 17 years ago when I wrote Your Planet Needs You, that if we the people were only educated about the threats that existed to our way of life we would, in an act of unified human genius, develop the solutions we needed. After all, we had put an astronaut on the moon, split the atom and in so doing convinced ourselves we deserved the capacity we had acquired to shape life on Earth.

If nothing else, 2024 has laid out in plain sight how far we are from exercising the wisdom that our life-shaping capacity requires. The most staggering aspect of the election is that the plans of the incoming administration have been laid out in full sight before the electorate and soundly endorsed. I can’t help, at this time of year, to be questioning what exactly we turkeys have voted for.

The questions I want to ask are those that explore how we will meet this moment of renewed threat to all of life as we know it. We can be exploring this question from three vantage points which are relevant to us all, as individuals with our own hopes and dreams, as citizens concerned with equality of opportunity and access for all, and finally as the future ancestors of our children’s children.

On the personal front, life has become more difficult for the vast majority of us. Any certainty that we felt, in the norms of our culture, in the honesty of political leaders, in the relevance of fact and truth, has been massively eroded. People are suffering in both practical and existential ways.

Our wishes as citizens are routinely dismissed by a political class who have long since been bought. Protest is now harshly criminalized to deter resistance. And the propaganda continues to tell us, with a straight face, tales of American exceptionalism.

How will future generations reflect on the way we, their ancestors, met the challenges that became so unavoidably visible in the first decades of the 21st century? The Second Dark Ages? The Disenlightenment?

So the questions remain; how will you meet this moment? how will we meet the moment?

This time of year lends itself to reflecting on these questions. Today’s solstice marks the return of longer days (in the northern hemisphere), a reminder of the cyclical nature of the universe. The religious festivals of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa each symbolize the presence of light in the dark. The advent of a new year is also a time for reflection and resetting our course.

I extend my best wishes to all of my readers that you might be nourished in these days, by family, faith, even festive fun, such that we can step boldly into 2025, choosing who we be, how we act and how we meet this moment.