Below is the December 29, 2023 forward to Diary of an Adamant Lover (updated August 2024). In this online version, we will provide links to the more pressing facts of the matter.

This book’s supposed to keep a record of Bartleby Willard’s life and times at Skullvalley After Whistletown Booksellers — a titanic (original, progenitors-of-the-gods sense) publishing house from beyond timespace, but fronted now for some time in Somewhere Sometime Wallstreet.

What happened? How did we lose the thread? Or at least get it all tangled up and confused, catching on crags branches and rough-spots and in hinges and other narrow squeaky places?

We couldn’t take the pressure. So much evil! Isn’t this evil? What is going on? How do we stop the evil? Why can’t we stop the evil? What is inadequate in us? Everything bleeding through all the time — puking screaming chaos swirling out the lonely jagged dirty cut in our guts since long before we even knew; and now on all sides your strange violence of preferring tyranny to sharing this country with us.

Is Donald Trump evil? Are those who actively plotted with him to overthrow the 2020 election results evil? Are election-deniers in congress evil? Are US citizens who would vote for Trump after he tried to steal the 2020 election and has otherwise shown his hand as an authoritarian-in-waiting evil?

Is Vladimir Putin evil? Are those who helped him kill any remnants of democracy in Russia evil? Or are only those who poison or blow-up Putin’s rivals evil? Or are they just regular folk following orders? Are Russians who supported Putin on his way to consolidating power evil? Or did they used to be evil, but now some are not?

What have we seen with our own eyes? We have seen that evil gets away with what it can get away with.

In 2020 in the US, there were no murders, no imprisonment of Trump’s rivals. There was a repeated and sustained attempt to overthrow the election results, including trying to convince Georgia’s Secretary of State to find the votes Trump needed to win, and even, in the aftermath, an attempt to get an innocent election worker to admit she had cheated for Biden — including an attempt, made by MAGA conspirators pretending to be looking out for her best interest, to get her to plead guilty of that charge so as to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.

In 2024, what will we see? Is it not up to us? But we seem to be pouting and eating and drinking and spilling our way to whatever-happens-happens. Does it?

How am I to talk with my fellow US Americans, after it turns out that they were evil all along, and were just waiting for a chance to destroy the democracy they’d teared up over at the parade, when they thought the US and God and Democracy were all of one piece? Now, it turns out, they really most of all just like alternating between yelling about being picked on and tearing up about how deep and courageous their love of America is, are mostly into being proud of themselves, while also still mostly watching TV and eating chips, which they sometimes spill upon their shirts, jeans, slacks, sweatpants, dresses, couches, easy chairs.

What would you have us do, God?

I am thinking of France after WWII and of Spain after Franco. I am thinking of how they didn’t purge the government of all those who’d collaborated with Vichy, or of all those who’d worked for Franco. To hold things together and avoid further strife, the victors let many collaborators stay on in positions of power, wealth, prestige. It was enough that the collaborators were willing to say that was all bad and they weren’t really doing that anyway, at least in any knowing way.

But there are so many Republican officeholders who are still spreading lies about the last election, who are frantically (and so far unsuccessfully) searching for any impropriety in Biden’s life, while quietly tossing out the existing investigation into Trump’s brazen profiteering during his time in office; and publicly acting like Trump, his election denials, his attempts to use federal aid money to bribe Ukraine’s president into digging up dirt on Biden, his attempt to by hook crook or any other madcap perversion of democratic norms rescind the people’s 2020 election decision, his many obvious clear antidemocratic statements and actions during and after his presidency: acting like all this is on the up and up.

What am I to think? What am I to feel? How could I help? I see them behaving evilly out in the open, proudly; going home to their safe lives, taking their children to school and sports event, cuddling with their spouses in their safe beds. I see them sure of their goodness while pursuing an evil that could easily destroy US American democracy; which means: destroy your and my and their ability to speak openly against leaders, destroy our ability to meaningfully work together to evolve our shared conversation and shared nation, destroy our ability to keep the most powerful weapon the world has ever known (a nation state is many things, including a giant weapon) out of the hands of a thuggery that serves not We the People but only their own narrow dreams of power prestige wealth of being gods in the old-fashioned, mood- and favortism-driven tyranny-for-tyrannys-sake fashion.

What am I to think? What am I to feel? I think I am floating in outer space without a line to tether me to the mothership. I think this isn’t what I thought the USA was when I was a kid. But it wasn’t this when I was a kid. It has become this because of many mistakes big and small over many years, but most of all it has become this because Trump dared to break with democracy and found many many many so very many eager accomplices.

No one is perfect. We all have our weaknesses. But your attempts to cheat, lie, and manipulate the nation out of the 2020 election were evil. And your continued lies that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump are evil. And if Trump wins and does what it seems he hopes and is preparing to do, which is to set up an authoritarian government and revise the US American ideal from well-meaning competent leadership responsible to the citizens with a loyal-band-of-thieves (which is neither well-meaning nor competent, being accountable only to their criminal-in-chief), then you will be responsible for one of the greatest political evils in human history.

You’ll give excuses. Everyone has their reasons why they cheated on the test, stole from the church, murdered their rival, slept with their friend’s wife — whatever it is, there’s always a reason you can give, a justification you can come up with. But in the end, you did what you did.

And here and now I’m like: What the fuck! It’s not that hard! I’m not asking you to be a Saint or a great political genius. I’m just asking you to support politicians who don’t try to overturn democratic elections. I’m just asking you to get your heads out of conspiracy theories long enough to admit that there is a real danger here, and it is supporting those who would use any lie, any means, any trick to get and keep power.

What is going on? I can’t process this. I am constantly confused. How do you not see that he is playing you all for fools? Even his allies. There’s only room for one KING, and everyone else is dispensable. How do you not see that?

Is my mistake not asking you to be simultaneously a Saint, a political genius, a war hero, and a true friend? Preserving democracy is boring; but worshiping and following and thereby in some sense being a Saint/genius/hero/friend is engaging, is fulfilling, is a real trip.

Is that the story here? It can’t be the whole story. It doesn’t mention getting off on pouting, on feeling injured, on feeling picked on, on having just cause to do whatever it takes to shove your fellow citizens into the mud, the cold clammy mud of DC in January.

No, no. Shhhh. Bring it down. A little lower level.

For one thing, there is a real problem here:

Right before the Civil War, right before the Great Depression, and Right Now: Due to policy choices made and power concentrated over many decades, the very rich have so much more than everyone else that a sizable portion of We the People are feeling rather desperately squished and used.

I think sometimes of Tony Judt in Ill Fares the Land discussing the radical politics of Europe in the early part of this last century. He was discussing intellectuals who thought that the extreme wealth disparity in the West at that time had to bring about class warfare, and either the violent overthrow of the rich by the poor or the violent suppression of the poor by the rich; and he noted that it didn’t occur to these intellectuals that Western democracies might vote themselves out of the dilemma, might bring about a seismic wealth distribution through nonviolent political processes — but they did.

Of course, we did have the Great Depression and WWII in the mix. But those catastrophes did not have to end with a robust middle class and a narrowing of the wealth gap not seen since the aftermath of the Civil War. And of course, in retrospect — looking back now on policies chosen by people we never were but that nonetheless influenced the world we inhabit — we’d be in a better place today if the opportunities afforded by the New Deal had been more evenly distributed to people of all races. But well, here we are; and the beauty of democracy is that the people and government are allowed to keep working together to learn from their mistakes.

So, yes, let’s remember together that extreme wealth disparities are not good for democracies or for society in general. And let’s remember that extreme wealth disparities are created not by God’s eternal law, nor even by the “natural order” (whatever that’s supposed to mean to creatures who have been huddled around and evolving fire for so very long now), but by policy decisions. Let’s admit that it would probably be best if we could find a way back to a country where you can still of course !after all this is America! get super rich and never have to work again and go on amazing vacations all the time and so on and so forth; but yet not get quite so rich as to be able to control We the People and our shared government and/or resources.

And I’m sure there’s many other good, practical points that could be made here vis-à-vis the nuts and bolts of how we together make our way to a better way.

But for now let’s look at what lies beneath political decisions:

What is human life in the individual and the aggregate?

In my wounded panic, I lost the thread.

We’re people. The Russians who supported Putin on his way to silencing all dissent are people. Everyone is people, and people are just not at all what they think they are. They tend to appreciate themselves for the apparent-good they do while blaming the people and systems around them from the apparent-bad they do. People are lost and found. The same exact basic stuff does both great, wholesome, kind, selfless work and heinous crimes.

People don’t understand either how much the surrounding people and systems create their lives or how much they are free to find their own way. This is because we think human freedom involves humans doing what humans think they want to do. But that is not a freedom that exists. It is an illusory freedom. Only one freedom exists: the freedom to follow your own true nature. Only God is completely in possession of that freedom. Humans are free to the degree they follow God, because most fundamentally humans are vessels for the God, for Love, for the holy and profound.

So then what does it matter if the United States remains a republic or not? Freedom was never choosing what to watch, read, say, and do. It was always just living in, through, and for Pure Love. Can’t that be done in a dungeon as well as out in the sunshine?

It matters that the United States remains a republic because that’s the best way for us to work together for a system where we don’t have to choose between being good and keeping our families safe. Gently we push the discourse, rules, and norms towards aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing. Gently we work together for a place where both our animal parts and our spiritual aspects can live fully and well. Gently we work together for a way that encourages us to all be our best selves and live our best lives.

Human freedom — by which we mean the freedom to live in, through, and for spiritual Love — is a spiritual good. We should work for systems that encourage human freedom. The systems that encourage human freedom are those that seek win-wins: wins for both the mundane and the spiritual. With democratic rules and norms we can have our cake and eat it too: we can do all the neat fun interesting creative cool things we dream of doing, while also living in and through and for Love; in an autocracy the opportunities for both success and safety are hoarded by people who are using lies, corruption, and even violence to maintain control of the government: in a government dedicated to stealing power from the people, one cannot succeed nor even reliably keep one’s family safe without being complicit in the general background crime.

We can best develop spiritual freedom within a safe, stable, fairballots-anchored political freedom because we are both mundane and spiritual creatures and so need to look after both aspects of ourselves if we are to live fully here and now; and healthy democracies are fertile places for win-wins; whereas governments dedicated to keeping power by any means available, force citizens to choose always between keeping themselves and their families safe and telling the truth, siding with fairness over cheating and corruption, and otherwise letting the evil win.

It is not too late to relax and regain our composure.

What does it feel like to watch the Republican party shake out everyone willing to tell Trump he cannot steal the presidency, while elevating those willing to echo (with or without cleverly confusing supposedly constitutional arguments) his lies? It feels like being betrayed by someone you had (maybe not always seen eye-to-eye with, but had still, all-in-all basically) trusted like a family member to at least not try to harm you or the family’s peace and shared joy; and now you and your (actual, immediate) family and friends security and place in life, and the joyful freedom of not fearing your own government: all that now seems to be in jeopardy; and you don’t understand how this could happen, and you don’t know what to do, and you are angry and hurt and scared and confused very very confused.

Do you know what I miss about the early 1980s? I remember a vibrancy, fun, and shared sense of possibility. I feel now that it was rooted in the knowledge that our leaders only served after winning fair elections; and when they lost, they bowed gently out, knowing that it was better to be a political loser in a democratic republic than a political winner anywhere else. It was so fun! It made so much wholesome creative fun possible!

This is not to say that all was well for everyone in the US in the 1980s, nor even to suggest that some things have not changed for the better. I just want to say to everyone who remembers that time with nostalgia: What you miss is everyone agreeing together that democracy was not on the table; also, that’s when the policies that eventually tilted most all the wealth to the tippy top really got going, so it was still a time of comparative egality (I know!, funny, huh?). Also, we’d not yet split into our media echo-chamber bubbles; and otherwise sorted ourselves into “sides”. Also, we had good pop stars, lots of them, a deep bench of fun, innovative—sometimes even thoughtful; sometimes even deep-souled — song and dance (this, I gather, has to do with the music companies not yet figuring out how to maximize profits and minimize risks).

What’s been good in the USA is democracy. Democracy is sharing the rights and responsibilities of a free people: it is sharing the right and responsibility to together grow both our shared conversation and our shared government, to together actively agree upon what we all already agree upon:

Let’s not sacrifice the universal values (thinking and acting aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, well-intentioned, loving-kind, joyfully-sharing; together working in fair, transparent, results-oriented processes to find win-wins and the best way forward for us all) for anything. Let’s together safeguard the universal values and systems that allow the people to serve as a final check on madness, corruption, and evil in government; while simultaneously together evolving both their shared culture and shared government.

Let’s do it! Let’s say no to what Trump is not even really hiding anymore; let’s say no to the cruelly oppressing boredom of autocracy, and yes to the shared wholesome joyful fun of democracy.

Look! Noone is saying they know for sure that electing Donald Trump as president in November 2024 will destroy or even seriously harm US American democracy. But how is it not obvious that by supporting him and those who embrace his style of lies-as-weapons, democracy-denigrating/autocracy-exulting and might-makes-right politics you are committing two grave sins against democracy, and therefore against the sacred soul of things: (1) choosing to replacing our shared democracy with an autocracy; and (2) signaling to yourselves and everyone else that you are no longer interested in prioritizing what we agree on over what we disagree on?

For we humans all agree on the universal values (aware, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing). And we all know that if we as a nation are to work together to safeguard those values (without which none of our worldviews are meaningful to any of us), we need to share both the government and the conversation.

By choosing to support Donald Trump as he doubles-down on anti-democratic statements and surrounds himself with people willing to put power over democratic norms, procedures, rules and laws, you are telling me that you would rather shove my face into the dirt and keep it there than continue sharing a democratic form of government with me. That is how I read your actions. And that is why I say that what you are doing is evil.

Bartleby Willard
Brooklyn, NY, USA
December 29, 2023
Edited and updated
Saturday, August 3, 2024