If you haven’t thought about it in this context, you might say that America is in the worst & potentially most violent gridlock since the Civil War. Half the country thinks they “won” the elections & will oust the Washington elite which have seldom let any public benefits flow their way.
The other half thinks that not only did their candidate win the popular vote, but months of vicious tinkering by the Russians invalidate Trump’s claim to victory, & nowhere is that divide more strident than in regard to land rights, land use & extraction of resources from the land. Violence has already erupted & there is no end in sight.
In Nature’s Restoration, my dear friend Peter Friederici wisely reminds us that “Ecological restoration can break through this public logjam precisely because it presents us with a means of doing good in the world [together]. Doing, that is, not in the sense of opposing something bad, but in the deeper sense of acting in a positive way. Doing, in the sense that people prefer the word yes to the word no.”
My friends, it is time to elevate the Yes to be our common covenant. The alternative: Civil war? Let’s vote for healing over partisan politics & litigious conflicts. It is up to us, not them—whoever they are who are not like us to form the do-tanks to get us through this crisis.
-Brother Coyote