The DQ of "Rescue the Republic"

Hoping the Faustian risk will steer the Dynamic train to Freedom

It was with a little trepidation that I attended the “Rescue the Republic” rally in DC this weekend. One of the subthemes of this impressive rag-tag group is that privacy is over. Our biometrics are in the system, and if shit hits the fan, I could be singled out as MAGA when they “come after us” as they seem to be doing in places that are heading in a much more overtly authoritarian direction. After all, in many ways this gathering had a rather Trumpian Rally vibe. This is the confounding aspect of “Rescue the Republic”…that it comes packaged in an uncomfortable orange wrapping.

So what was the common ground? It was Freedom. Freedom of speech, Freedom of bodily autonomy, Freedom from corporate control. Anti-establishment, and anti-corporatism, pro health and pro environment. And it is here where we all found our people, regardless of the more superficial trappings of the recognizable red hats and the leftover Kennedy tees. They came together in green MAHA caps, but also in other hybrids such as the blue “Make Earth Great Again” cap - a call to ending the corporate ruination of planet and its inhabitants, human and otherwise. In fact, exactly the calling I followed in my hippie-influenced youth. I felt in a lot of ways I was with the post-hippie Reagan/Bush/MID protestors of my college days. And as they often pointed out, the Democrats are now the pro-war party of Cheney and the NeoCons.

Pirsig framed the hippies of the 60’s as chaotically dynamic. They threw away social values, but they threw away biological values too. “if it feels good, do it” their baseball cats would have declared. Let’sremember the protagonist of Lila - an Inquiry into Morals as the personification of unfettered dynamic Quality whose continual unashamed capitulation to desires and who also was psychotic (without her meds that were stolen with her purse) embodied a person without patterns.

Like Lila, Trump is certainly chaotic being. He’s impulsive, short sighted, holds grudges, changes his mind and loyalties on a dime, and has an embarrassing history of giving into biological gratification. He also especially reviled for continually defying social norms. But unlike Lila, Trump is also a “brujo” - an objectionable outsider with unusual talents who shakes up society and in doing so redirects the culture into the future. In the novel Lila, the Indian brujo could bridge the gap with the invaders which ultimately saved the people, and as he replaced the political elite of his own tribe, so do the underserved and unheard leftovers of a lost America hope that he will do for them.

It is the pattern of which Trump is the embodiment that has allowed all manner of outcasts to feel heard…to feel as though they can break through the stagnant cultural immune system that is the modern American Uniparty. I don’t believe Trump became president so much for his desire to be so as much as that there is an emergent desire (or social pattern) that cries out for a brujo…any brujo. Trump could still be the opposition (such as it is) to the System, the Man, the Elite. Or he could be just that (if he was invited in like Cheney, he may very well accept). He could go either way, and I think this is what the RR movement has detected.

The cultural immune system of the Uniparty is so rigid and closed, that it cannot be undone with an independent candidate. Independent minded Democrats who don’t follow the party line are uninvited and cancelled. Therefore it might seem the only choice, or best chance, at this very dysfunctional, imperfect moment in American history, that a renegade such as RFK jr. has is to hold their nose and get on the “Trump Train”, try to grab the controls, and steer it towards correction.

That train could be guided onto the Quality track, back toward values that were lost when we became permanently distracted by social media. These values require grounding onself feet planted on the earth. It requires connecting back to a physicality of experience in which we wake up to actual cause and effect. It requires veering away from theory and intellectual values and back into social and biological values. These values, once the realm of the left, are now represented elsewhere - with the populists, with the right and left libertarians (in terms of the political compass popularized by Bret Weinstein) .The rally was a combination of MAGA and liberal/libertarian/independents. All who could be comfortably placed on that lower half of the compass.

Here are my political compass results as of today:

Here is a link for you to take it:

https://www.politicalcompass.org/test/en

While many of the acts and pundits would have been completely comfortable at a Trump rally, many more were heterodox. In terms of the famous people, there were die-hard Trump supporters such as Brandon Straka and Mike Benz on one end, and coordinator Bret Weinstein, journalist Matt Taibbi and comedian Jimmy Dore on the other. Those on one side professed their allegiance, those on the other skirted the elephant in the room. In between, Jordan Peterson, RFK jr, Tulsi Gabbard and Russell Brand - who by any other measure would be liberals - admittedly had do do a certain amount of rationalization and, self denial and capitulation to get on board this train implying the unsaid hope of steering it in the right direction.

Lila was potential. She was a damaged soul, but she had the capacity to harness her chaotic Dynamic Quality for her own good. The novel Lila ends with Phaedrus attempting to steer her into a space of quiet reorientation. A space in which she could emerge with the insight to take on healthy patterns and still maintain her Dynamic integrity. As much as Pirsig fans may object to me twisting the MAHA movement into the Pirsigian channel, and onto the Quality track, I think Pirisg might agree that the process itself is what heals. That Dynamism isn’t necessarily unobjectionable - in fact it might be quite objectionable - but in that dynamism is the power to transform stagnant, untenable, rigid, enforced low Quality.

Look, a majority of the attendees including myself so wish RFK could have been a viable candidate. But the Uniparty immune system was just too potent. Maybe it’s a risk that the train will guide the movement versus the other way around. That would be a catastrophe. But one of the loudest messages of the rally was the necessity of risk taking, and this choice, as smelly as it seems, might be a risk worth taking. As the multilevel metaphorical and actual poisoning of the earth, our children, and ourselves reaches critical mass, I guess there really isn’t time to wait for a better alternative.