How Do We Counter Extremism Here At Home?
How do you fight fear and violent extremism when it's in your own country? Your own society?
You can't do like what we did after 9/11. You can't go around all over the world and hunt down would-be terrorists.
Here's an example. The insurrectionist who led a mob chasing a Capitol Police officer up stairs lives a half an hour from where I am in central Iowa.
People cheering racism, hatred, and intolerance are in our neighborhoods.
They're in local government. They're on school boards. They're not just in Congress.
Here's the thing. And I know a little bit about this having spent a decade working in the homeland security field in DC.
I don't think you win against hatred, fear, and intolerance by playing whack-a-mole.
Especially when it's in your own society.
I think you fight it by strengthening the rest. By helping the rest of the society find some way to heal and to help each other.
To re-weave the social fabric.
To build resilience and connection and community. To find ways to thrive and flourish.
What are the other options?
Do you just let your society wither and die?
Do you let the extremism fester and expand?
Or do you decide to dig in and do the tougher work of strengthening the damn thing? The society?
The society itself is not so far gone that we can't enliven and empower and energize the majority of people.
The majority of people want the thriving and the flourishing.
They don't want the extremism.
They don't want uncertainty. Instability. Hatred. Intolerance. Fear.
They want science and equality and livable wages and CEOs that don't make hundreds of times more than the rest of us and communities that we invest in and children who have bright futures and competitiveness worldwide and a strong economy and supply chains that don't crack up and the lists go on...
What I'm putting forward is that we can do work to energize the majority.
To strengthen our connection and community. To actively work to shift the narrative. To drive it to be about what WE want and what we can do. To take all kinds of creative action to bring attention to all of that. To actively help make things better, and put the focus on that.
It's a few basic things. Getting connected with humans you can work together with. Coming up with creative things you can do to help save this democracy or drive the narrative or both. Getting alliances and businesses on board. Getting media coverage. And telling and sharing the stories ALL over the place.
It's a recipe.
Plus it doesn't just help heal and strengthen society.
It energizes voters. Not just to vote.
But to have faith in this country again. To have hope. To break out of cynicism and apathy.
It counters extremism by putting the energy into our larger collective and what we can do when we activate that. The extremists stop sucking all of the oxygen. They can go back to their hidey-holes or wherever. They won't go away. But they won't be the focus.
It's pretty audacious saying all of this. It's brazen.
But it can work.
We can't make change by continuing with the same.
We've got 3 decades of culture wars and 5 decades of not investing in Americans. That's a whole hell of a lot of resentment on top of all of the fear and intolerance.
What else are we going to do to counter that?
We'll get into the specifics of how to make all of this shift happen as we get this new Shift the Country organization launched later this week.
Then we'll start sharing examples and tools and creating the things... and we'll be off and running.
It's not going to be for everyone. Not everybody thinks it's going to do any good.
That's okay. They’re not our target audience, then.
In this time of crisis and uncertainty, we all have to pick a lane. Well, we don't have to - but it helps.
I've decided to get to work creating space for us to help shift this society and this country. I’m not alone. We’ve got a team to get started, and we’ll grow it fast.
It's cultural. It's ground level. It's not a magic bullet.
It's going to be tough and it's not going to be for the faint of heart.
We're going to have fun while we're doing it. We're going to see some tragedy, too. Because that's what's unfolding (persisting?) up in this country.
And we're going to be connected with other fabulous humans through the amazing and through the tough stuff.
We're launching this shift sometime later this week. I swear that's what's happening. We're down to putting together a new website and a Substack (right here) and a Facebook group. Everything else is in place. Or close enough to get us out the door.
Today though we're dealing with some life.
You have to live it to give it.
Today I'm going to see some friends I haven't seen in approximately forever. Community and connection stuff. Later on I'm seeing another friend I've committed to building more of a relationship with.
Others in our core team are dealing with life stuff, too. So we'll get to this shift when we get to it.
And that's how this year is going to roll. Some people are going to fall away. Some people are going to be dealing with tragedy. Some people are going to be celebrating.
But we're still going to make some shift happen. We will. We are.
Keep the faith.
We've got good people.
We've got really big brains.
We've got super cool ideas.
We're going to put them together and we are going to make this country into something that actually serves the majority of people it's supposed to represent.
It's active democracy and that's what we're going to do.
Damn straight. Get ready.