We find ourselves facing what many historians call the most perilous moment for American democracy since the Civil War. The principles outlined in "The Holy Force" are not theoretical exercises, but survival strategies.

The coalition now in power is a network of extreme wealth married to extreme ideology. It threatens the well-being of millions. Project 2025's 920-page blueprint for authoritarian control is being implemented with bureaucratic precision and psychopathic indifference.

The damage is not hypothetical. It is unfolding in real time: healthcare stripped from seventeen million Americans, environmental protections gutted, civil rights reversed, education defunded, and brutal enforcement agencies empowered to terrorize vulnerable communities.

This is what Desmond Tutu meant when he said neutrality is complicity. This is the elephant standing on the mouse's tail. Our fake enlightenment test has become searingly literal: If our spiritual practice does not mobilize us against this concentrated assault on human dignity, then it is hollow performance, narcissism in meditation posture.

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The Paralysis of Shock

I know something about being confronted by malevolence. Years ago, two strangers with shotguns approached me on the Due University campus at night. My body trembled uncontrollably. The innocent part of me couldn't believe this was real. The realistic part knew I was in mortal danger. Paralyzed by shock, I stood frozen as 47 lead pellets tore into my flesh. They remain embedded there still.

I share this because millions are experiencing a similar paralysis now. The enormity of the threat freezes us. We oscillate between disbelief and despair. Some well-meaning voices counsel us to simply "beam unconditional love" at those inflicting violence, as if positive energy were sufficient response to fascism.

But sacred activism demands more than passive acceptance. It requires what Andrew Harvey calls "the marriage of mysticism and revolt"—the holy force.

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This Isn’t Hatred. This Is Holy Outrage.

We harbor no personal hatred toward those enacting this chaos. Hatred would distract from essential work. But we carry righteous anger about the harm being inflicted. This anger, metabolized through spiritual practice and channeled through strategic action, becomes sacred fuel.

We categorically reject literal violence. We condemn anyone who advocates for such actions. But we wholly support all nonviolent efforts to challenge, obstruct, and ultimately remove from power those who abuse their positions to harm others.

This is what Gandhi understood: that nonviolent resistance is not passivity but a fierce commitment requiring more courage than violence. That spiritual practice doesn't excuse us from political engagement—it demands it.

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Our Extended Vow Tested

The Extended Bodhisattva Vow we articulated is now urgently concrete: committing not just to ease suffering but to ensure all people have food, shelter, healthcare, and the foundations for joy.

When ICE becomes a militarized force terrorizing families, the vow demands we create sanctuary networks.

When healthcare is stripped from millions, the vow demands we organize mutual aid clinics.

When education is gutted, the vow demands we build alternative learning communities.

When environmental protections fall, the vow demands we become water protectors and land defenders.

The mystic who doesn't act on behalf of justice has not truly seen the interconnection of all beings.





The Counterspells: Strategic Resistance at Scale

Even in the face of soul-numbing cruelty, we refuse despair as our default mode. This is not denial. It's strategic. Alan Watts taught us that our efforts for justice will fail if made from "guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart." But he also knew that love without leverage is sentimentality. Sacred activism requires both spiritual fuel and tactical precision.

When SNAP benefits are slashed and families face starvation, when healthcare premiums triple and the sick are abandoned, when an 870-page bill delivers trillions to billionaires while stripping dignity from millions—we need counterspells that match the scale and severity of the assault.

We rise with strategic resistance:

• Economic disruption as spiritual discipline: General strikes that stop the machinery of exploitation. Coordinated consumer boycotts targeting corporations that fund authoritarianism—hitting them where revelation meets the bottom line.

Bank transfers from predatory institutions to credit unions and community banks, redirecting billions in collective capital. Shareholders wielding proxy votes as exorcism rites, casting out executives who profit from cruelty.

• Ridicule as sacred weapon: Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel weaponizing humor to expose absurdity, their satire reaching millions who might never read manifestos. Gavin Newsom's targeted mockery stripping away the strongman facade.

Saturday Night Live sketches that make fascism look pathetic instead of powerful. TikTok creators turning authoritarian pronouncements into viral jokes, dissolving fear through laughter. Because tyrants can survive many things, but they cannot survive being made ridiculous.

• Legal warfare as liturgy: ACLU attorneys filing injunctions that block cruel policies before they metastasize. State attorneys general refusing to enforce unconstitutional federal mandates.

Blue state legislatures passing sanctuary laws with teeth. Lawyers working pro bono to flood ICE with habeas corpus petitions, gumming up the deportation machine with sheer legal volume. Public defenders treating every case as resistance, every client as sacred.

• Electoral insurgency as ritual practice: Voter registration drives in communities targeted for suppression. Precinct captains organizing like they're building underground railroads—because they are. State legislature campaigns that flip chambers and block the worst.

• Ballot initiatives that pass Medicaid expansion, raise minimum wages, protect abortion rights, and fund schools—even in red states, bypassing corrupted federal power. Running for school boards, city councils, water districts—the unglamorous offices where policy actually touches lives.

• Mutual aid as material magic: Not just potlucks but coordinated networks providing healthcare through volunteer clinics when insurance vanishes. Insulin-sharing rings when pharma companies gouge diabetics.

Community fridges in every neighborhood feeding people after SNAP cuts. Underground railroads for abortion access, trans healthcare, banned books. Collective housing solutions when rents become predatory. These aren't metaphors—they're infrastructure.

• State-level defiance: California and New York and Illinois building healthcare systems that catch those thrown off federal programs. States stockpiling medication ahead of tariff-driven shortages.

Governors forming regional compacts to preserve environmental standards, worker protections, consumer rights. Blue state tax structures that claw back what federal policy gives to oligarchs. State-level policies that function as lifeboats while the federal ship lists.

• International alliance: Connecting with global movements facing similar threats. Learning from organizers in Hungary, Poland, Brazil who've fought creeping authoritarianism. Building transnational networks that share tactics and resources.

Making it clear that American fascism threatens global stability, recruiting international pressure. Diplomatic embarrassment as leverage—making the regime's cruelty too costly to sustain on the world stage.

• The long game of cultural transformation: Not just resisting but building the future inside the shell of the dying empire. Cooperative businesses that prefigure a solidarity economy. Time banks and tool libraries demonstrating post-capitalist possibility.

Democratic schools teaching critical thinking and civic courage. Media literacy programs inoculating communities against propaganda. Youth organizing that trains the next generation in both mysticism and revolt.

• Strategic noncooperation: Federal employees slow-walking cruel orders, losing paperwork, "misunderstanding" directives—bureaucratic resistance from inside the machine. Teachers refusing to implement propaganda curricula.

Scientists preserving climate data before it can be purged. Doctors refusing to report patients seeking reproductive care. Tech workers declining to build surveillance tools. Each act of principled refusal a brick removed from the authoritarian edifice.

• Media insurgency: Independent journalists investigating corruption that mainstream outlets ignore. Whistleblowers leaking documents that expose grift. Fact-checkers methodically dismantling lies before they calcify into accepted narratives.

Podcasters building audiences larger than cable news, creating alternative information ecosystems outside corporate control. Local newspapers staying alive through subscriber drives, preserving the last line of defense against municipal corruption.

• Our brilliant, tactically creative pundits who nourish insurrectionary hope. There are too many great souls to name, but we'll start with these:

Heather Cox Richardson translating history into current strategy. Rebecca Solnit reminding us that hope is a discipline not a mood. Robert Reich breaking down economic injustice in terms anyone can understand.

Dahlia Lithwick defending the rule of law with fierce eloquence. Jay Kuo making resistance accessible and actionable. Thom Hartmann connecting authoritarian dots across decades. Jessica Craven turning outrage into organized action.

Mehdi Hasan interrogating power with prosecutorial precision. Timothy Snyder teaching us how democracies die so we can prevent it. Adam Serwer exposing cruelty as the point and naming fascism clearly. Anand Giridharadas dissecting oligarchy and the billionaire con.

Wajahat Ali combining humor and moral clarity on authoritarianism. Ruth Ben-Ghiat showing us the authoritarian playbook. Rick Wilson trolling authoritarians with strategic savagery. and Joy Reid centering racial justice while dissecting right-wing strategy.

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This is our spell-work at scale. Not just singing what they try to erase, but building material alternatives to their death cult economics. Not just affirming that healthcare and housing are sacred rights, but creating systems that deliver them when government fails to.

We practice presence as defiance and ecstasy as fuel, yes. But we also practice strategic coordination, economic leverage, legal persistence, electoral discipline, and material solidarity. The mystical and the practical braided together. Prayer and boycott as one seamless gesture. Meditation and organizing as complementary practices.

Because the holy force is not just love in action—it's love with a plan.