Photo by Do Nhu on Unsplash

We have been unfree so long that we may think removing fascism alone would make us free. But that’s only part of it.

We WILL be rid of the orange tyrant. Ideally, it will be We The People who oust this dictator, but it may very well be the ultra-rich who do the job. They hate tariffs, which costs them zillions of dollars of their undeserved fortunes. They may use the Epstein files — one of his MANY terrible crimes — as the tool to remove him.

But ALL of the crimes must be ended. This includes crimes that, if they seize power (again), the plutocrats will continue.

These are not small crimes that they commit. Yes, they take what isn’t theirs  and control the government— they steal wealth and power.

But they do worse things than that.

Even before the senile felon came to power, the plutocrats were wasting billions of irreplaceable human lives and ruining the planet itself.

We must never lose sight of this. And We The People will continue to grow — and exercise our power — and rid ourselves of ALL fascists, ALL plutocrats, and ALL would-be Kings.

Celebrate the End of the Regime. Ramp Up For the End of ALL Regimes.

We The People — with our budding and growing No Kings movement — are doing the work to remove the spoiled child “king.” Whoever gets to it first will remove him.

When this happens, I will pause to literally dance in the streets. Tens or perhaps hundreds of millions will spontaneously do the same. But then we will get back to the work of freeing ourselves.

Any economic system that lets — no, encourages — people to exploit other people is evil and must be ended. Capitalism inevitably becomes plutocracy. There can be no guardrails on greed. Greed must be removed from the roots.

We need a revolution in values. Our kindness to each other and to our planet is more powerful than any tool that fascists or plutocrats have in their toolkit.

Thousands of nuclear weapons failed to protect the Soviet Empire from people who decided that they were done being used and lied to. No weapons of violence were required. Indeed, violence or threats of violence always favors the oppressor.

Fascists and tyrants prefer using fear and lies to control populations and to own people’s lives. It’s easier. But they can and do use violence whenever they are in trouble. When The People stop listening, stop believing the lies. When the scales drop from their eyes and realize that IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE THIS WAY.

The Power of Love

We will use a fundamental value to save ourselves and the planet. There is irony in this value: it’s one that our oppressors verbalize while doing the exact opposite. What is that value? Love one another.

This is, of course, presumed to be a religious doctrine but it’s a core human value, one that requires no religion. A value that has been discouraged, ridiculed as weak, and has been suppressed. It’s a value that’s required not only for a good life, but for ANY life at all.

Religion is optional.

Indeed, perverted religious doctrine has long been a tool of cruelty and oppression. How many religious institutions have covered up child abuse? And swindling on a grand scale?

Any tool that can be used to exploit people and abuse power has been used to do exactly that. That’s why POWER itself, why WEALTH itself, must be eliminated.

But we have been confused so much, and so deeply, that we think the end of power and wealth means doom and suffering. And that such a thing is impossible. Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Why Ending Power and Wealth Is the Birth of Unbounded Joy

We have been trained to think in terms of economics and in the requirement to earn. This requirement applies to most of us, but the 1% are exempt. In fact, every bit of labor must benefit the 1%.

Nearly anything people do that doesn’t earn money for the plutocrats is derided as a hobby. As self-indulgent nonsense. Non-paid activity is portrayed as a waste of time at best and, worse still, as a waste of life.

THE EXACT OPPOSITE IS THE TRUTH.

The most egregious waste of life is working for money. Yet we do that, and waste most of our lives doing that — billions of us — instead of living.

This is the swindle. This is the big lie. We don’t need to waste our lives mostly producing unnecessary crap and often producing nothing at all.

We don’t need “jobs” which is simply a code word for slavery.

Yes, you can be paid and still be a slave. Hell, even slaves in the American south in the 1800s sometimes were allowed to earn money.

They were still slaves. SO ARE WE.

What we are prohibited from is living as free people. We have been taught that we need jobs. We have been taught to want jobs. We have been taught that jobs and working are required for living. We spend our entire lives hoping to get a “good job.” Which is identical to a slave seeking a good master.

We have been taught that being a slave is a moral virtue and NOT being a slave is evil.

But we don’t need money or jobs, except under this artificial system of oppression that we were born into. We have been gaslit with lies from birth. We believe pernicious nonsense and attack the truth on the rare occasions we hear someone express it.

The truth is this:

We don’t need jobs. We don’t need money. Money and jobs are the bedrock of anti-civilization. They are the opposite of freedom. They are hostile to life and, indeed, they are powering the literal destruction of the life-giving properties of our Earth.
What humans need is healthy food, medicine, housing. What we need is our time and our freedom. What we need is to live in communities with our peers. What we need is to play and to express ourselves and to live in Nature. What we need is to love one another.

That’s the civilization we need. I’m not talking about “nice to have.” No, this is what we need.

The alternative is wasted lives, is slavery, is a destroyed planet.

This is an easy choice. We choose life. We choose love. We choose Earth. We reject oppression. We reject greed. We reject hatred and bigotry. We reject the stupid and selfish poisoning of our planet.

These are the values of The Saners.

Small Group. Big Vision.

The Saners is a small group (fewer than 1,000 signed up members) who are determined to change civilization for the better and to prevent climate collapse. We know we are too small to get this job done, so we cheerfully work with other groups. Fortunately, there are many groups doing excellent work.

But The Saners add something very important. They add a vision, a target, a destination. While ending fascism and removing cruel regimes is necessary, it isn’t enough.

What are we fighting FOR? The Saners make it clear: we are fighting for life, for freedom, for the Earth. We are fighting for each other.

Our opponents want us to fight against each other so they can continue to exploit us.

We refuse.

We envision a world without a system of unlimited greed, without unlimited cruelty. We envision a world that respects our innate values.

Yes, people are inherently GOOD, not evil. We behave badly, we adapt bad values because we live within evil systems that require us to be our worst. Cruelty and greed are unnatural and require constant reinforcement to maintain a system as evil as this one.

Our new system won’t be based on wage labor or elevating selfishness and greed. Instead, it will free us to be human.

Humans are social creatures who naturally live cooperatively in communities. It’s easy to forget this. Indeed, our oppressors need us to forget this. For many of us, their lies are so ingrained that they are an enemy within. We oppress ourselves with learned lies.

Nonetheless, the joyful lives that await us, if we choose to take them are fully available.

We can have them. We must choose them.

What are these joyful lives like? How get we get from our current hell to our desired joy?

We remove evil by refusing to cooperate with it. Of course, there are barriers to this, and it requires courage — so we do this in stages. Each of us takes appropriate action to the limits of our courage.

We may protest that our labor and taxes are used to kidnap people, torture them, put them in concentration camps. Our protest may simply be speaking out.

For those of us who are bolder, we may delay paying taxes and occasionally withhold our labor. For the truly bold, we make stop paying taxes to our oppressor and refuse to do any work for them.

Some of us will begin (indeed, have begun) setting up alternative ways of meeting human needs. We will need to produce the food, medicine, shelter and other actual necessities for people. Of course, we already do that. (Our overseers do no productive work whatsoever.) But, we mostly waste our lives and energy and time producing crap or nothing at all.

Ultimately, we will end oppression by not doing anything for our oppressors. We will work for ourselves and each other. We value LIFE not STUFF. We values TIME not money. We value FREEDOM not servitude.

And what will human life be like once we’ve finished seizing our freedom?
Watch.