For all Americans who have grown weary from the warnings regarding our willful extended adolescence that began in 2016—I get it, we’re all exhausted. As for my objection to the MAGA ideology, it has never been about how it affects me personally, but how it will continue to stunt our evolution if everyone with even a basic understanding of human nature and knowledge of history doesn’t take some initiative to reject it. The belief that nationalism and isolationism will lead to prosperity is not the general consensus among Europeans who once bought into the promises of a demagogue, the trauma of which still lingers in their cultural DNA.
Project 2025, a movement implemented centuries ago, has already reshaped much of the world we live in today. It is the continued narrative of cultural supremacy and human dominion over nature that built the means of control, inherited by a few who now feel it slipping away due to science and reason. The true reality of the manifest destiny and divine mandate that led to colonialism and resource extraction will continue to be made clear by Mother Nature—with ever-increasing veracity. This ideology has created only division among the vast cultures of our species and destruction of the ecology we depend on. Their current aggression to solidify conformity stems from the desperation and fear they feel knowing their worldview is unsustainable. It has failed us all, let’s be clear about that. We cannot and should not take seriously men hell-bent on continuing practices which have proven to be short-sighted and contrary to evolution. We don’t need to be slaves to their exponential growth model. We never did. It’s time we stop allowing fascism to take root and start healing the roots it has destroyed.
My exposure to fascism began at an early age. As a child, my family moved around a lot. By the time I was in high school, I had lived in half a dozen small towns in the Pacific Northwest. I discovered that every playground had an aspiring Nazi with his own little Gestapo troop who would introduce themselves on my first day of school. I realized early on that there is but one way to defuse the budding fascist's lust for absolute playground domination—hit him hard and fast with wit or fist and humiliate him in front of his sycophants. I also found that most bullies are cowards when confronted, and from those who weren’t just bluster, I learned cuts and bruises heal faster than dignity.
It wasn’t just kids at school in these towns; I had to deal with their fathers as well in the low-income neighborhoods we moved into. An example being a day I had my hands held behind my back by a father who instructed his son to hit me. Unfortunately for Junior, I was able to leverage Dad's body to kick his son in the face and break free, but not before he kicked me in the butt and told me to never show my face on that street again. Why? Because I was an immigrant; it made no difference to them that I was an American. The fear of others is a genetic impulse, controlled only through curiosity and the will to expand the intellect. It is also a very useful tool for men with totalitarian aspirations—their borders are arbitrary. I developed such disdain for bullies that I would willfully insert myself between them and their victims, often at my own peril. Once, as I sat bleeding in my grade school principal's office, he told my mom, “Pete has an, ahem, strong sense of justice.” But I was, at the time, naive to the number of men willing and able to mature beyond selfish tendencies into adulthood.
Social media, toxic as it is, has been a goldmine for students of human nature. It was interesting to me that engaging in discussions on behalf of the greater good would be met with personal attacks by those who do not hold the same point of view and see the world through a lens of individualism. I found that implementing the same tactic I learned on the playground does not have the same effect online because it does not have the same real-world consequences. For someone who likes to learn from cordial debates on important topics that affect us all, it is a waste of time and energy to entertain personal attacks. I have found the best way to deal with belligerence, when not physically at risk, is to just ignore it. Because my work is often construed as politically motivated (it isn’t), I have been a lightning rod for my MAGA friends, most of whom are from the very same towns I grew up in that lost their industry to outsourcing and have consequently become breeding grounds for men consumed with resentment and blame. Men I have reluctantly unfriended on social media in an attempt to make my threads a safe place for civil discourse. This has been an act, not of ego, but a commitment to conviviality. Sometimes it is better to just burn a bridge than to fight fire with fire.
My journey has also led to my understanding that if I were to put a label on my system of belief, it would be pantheism—the belief that everything in the universe is connected and influenced by cause and effect. It is the philosophical foundation of every religion—before someone slaps it with an anthropomorphic deity, making it a tool of persuasion through guilt and shame. I now understand my contempt for fascism has always come from my commitment to intuitive pantheistic principles and a lack of cultural adherence. It is why I defend all life against selfishness, entitlement, and claims of superiority, and why I can't be canceled from that to which I never subscribed. However, this is where things get interesting.
Following the belief that everything in the universe is reacting to an action, shouldn’t I seek empathy by analyzing the effects that cultivate fascism? Absolutely. Through the study of anthropology and the wars of the last century, I see chaos is sown by our societal failures to create systems that incubate children in a manner that promotes unity. Humanity is currently at a phase of evolutionary adolescence where we’re moving from the jungle to the village. There are those who claim that competition is natural, which is true in the wild among animals responding to pure genetic impulse. But a species with tools like speech and thumbs that doesn’t use them through unity and collaboration will instead need them for weapons and war. We must collectively recognize that the system built on competition has led to our dependence on unnecessary and insidious products that not only threaten our evolution but devalue our human experience. Given the statistics, it is likely the universe is filled with planets destroyed by species that didn’t make it past the phase we find ourselves in now.
The tendency toward fascism arises from individuals who never developed empathy due to a lack of a nurturing community that provided their genuine human needs. The inclination to perceive political figures who promote division as "strong" has historically led to the downfall of civilizations. There is no reason to assume that America will be an exception. Fascism is a lazy approach—it involves settling for blame rather than analyzing cause and effect to cultivate the empathy necessary for unity. Leaders who opt for division over diplomacy to achieve their objectives are unqualified to guide human progress and may halt or even end it entirely.
No one should be criticized for participating in the system they were born into. The blame is on those at the top who continue to perpetuate a system made obsolete by science and reason, but still seek to maintain control by convincing those below there is no better option. The only thing more dangerous to society than men denied their birthright to contribute and participate is a demagogue redirecting their strength and rage toward his personal agenda and grievances. The importance of raising boys in communities conducive to their aptitude for empathy should not be underestimated. Societies with high levels of equality and a ballence of masculine and femine influence produce men less suseptable to falling prey to the demagogue with totalitarian aspirations. Endevours to create models for such societies that can be replicated could very well determine if our species is to evolve or end.
Personally, I have compassion for all subjected to the matrix created through a system that promotes and encourages competition, greed, and excess. I feel empathy for all deprived of daily access to the natural cues sought by our DNA from within natural settings. All denied the right to beautiful autonomous, sustainable communities designed through the study of anthropology and biomimicry. We are all subjects to a model of exponential growth that demands loyalty to the GDP before community with disregard for our true needs in favor of those more profitable.
But I also have sympathy and regret for all the biodiversity lost due to my participation in a system built by the hubris of one cultural ideology that has come to dominate all others. I am aware that much of our technology was created with good intentions but also intended for profit, therefore has not collectively met true anthropological needs or obeyed ecological laws. I also know we can do better if we focus on our common ground and learn to reject the notion of superiority and those who seek to divide and conquer by way of the blame game.