Nollind Whachell

It is up to all of us to fix this. It’s not gonna be because…somebody comes to save ya. The most important office in this democracy is…the citizen, the ordinary person.

Barack Obama

In effect, nobody is coming to save you. You have to save yourself.

Put another way, it’s John F. Kennedy’s quote of, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

Now this is not just an abstraction. And I think this is one of the challenges that we have. And I saw this even before the last election. I think people tend to think that democracy, rule of law, independent judiciary, freedom of the press, that’s all abstract stuff cuz it’s not affecting the price of eggs.

Well you know it’s about to affect the price of eggs.

Barack Obama

My mind is being blown right now because he’s effectively articulating how people at earlier stages of psychological development often can’t see the connections between things that people at more mature stages can. And even more so, he’s articulating how difficult it is for a psychological mature person to try to explain these seemingly invisible connections to someone who doesn’t have the capacity to perceive them but only has the capacity to see the end result (i.e. the price of eggs).

This is what he means when he says this is “not just an abstraction.” In effect, just because you can’t see what’s below the surface of society, and see what is making this society function effectively for everyone, it doesn’t mean it’s not important to maintain.

I do think one of the reasons that our commitment to democratic ideals has eroded is that we got pretty comfortable and complacent.

You know it has been easy during our lifetimes to say you are progressive or say you are for social justice, or say you are for free speech and not have to pay a price for it.

And now we’re at one of those moments where, you know what, it’s not enough to just say you’re for something, you may actually have to do something and possibly sacrifice a little bit.

So ya, if you’re a law firm being threatened, you might have to say, “OK, we will lose some business because we’re gonna stand for a principle.”

Barack Obama

This directly ties into vertical development and how your values relate to your stage of psychologic development and accompanying level of consciousness. In effect, you have not truly reached a stage of development until you actually embody the values of it.

Put another way, it’s easy to preach about “your” values. It’s completely different to live them and be in alignment with them in your daily life.

We say we are for equality. Are we willing to fight for it? Are we going to risk something for it?

We say we are for rule of law. Are we going to stick to that when it’s tough, not when it’s easy?

We believe in freedom of speech. Do we stand up for freedom of speech when the other person talking is saying stuff that infuriates us, is wrong, and is hurtful? Do we still believe in it?

Barack Obama

This highlights how the Republican Party often preaches “their” values, like freedom of speech, but don’t actually live and embody those values when someone gives a speech saying that Republicans are abusing their powers and the Republicans say it’s wrong that these people are calling them out for their injustices.

In effect, what most people want these days is values that only apply to them as a privilege but that don’t apply to others. “No, you don’t get unlimited freedoms! Only I do!”

Those aren’t values. That’s just a dictatorship.

Values are only truly embodied when they apply to everyone, not just yourself.

Another great interview with Yanis Varoufakis talking about Trumps recent tariffs on countries around the world and how world leaders are “reacting” to it rather than thinking strategically. The conversation starts with a quote from an article he wrote on Unherd the other day, highlighting how what Trump is doing isn’t unprecedented.

Commentators should know better than to pretend that the shock Trump is now delivering is both “unprecedented” and bound to fail like all “reckless” assaults on the prevailing order. The Nixon Shock was more devastating than the one delivered today, especially for Europeans. And precisely because of the economic devastation caused, its architects achieved their main long-term objective: to ensure American hegemony grew alongside American’s twin (trade and government budget) deficits.

Yanis Varoufakis, Will Liberation Day transform the world?

What Yanis goes on to say after this is that while Trump may be an inarticulate fool, you can’t dismiss his team as fools. They have a plan.

This relates to something I mentioned to someone weeks back. That being that Trump is cognitively immature, effectively having the mindset of child and a bully-like one at that. But he has decades of experience being one and thus has mastered ways of manipulating people. So while he himself does not have the capacity to create an economic “plan” of this complexity, his team most definitely does.

To put this another way, Trump probably just approached his team and reiterated his simple needs which would benefit him the most (i.e. power, control, etc). His team then takes what he’s asking, yes something simply articulated but also something that might seem impossible as well, and they figure out a way to make it a possibility for him.

Again, people always blame Trump but what they don’t realize is how many people, including the entire Republican Party, are enabling him. As I said before, this isn’t because he is the root cause of American issues, he’s just an avatar or symptom of the deeper cultural issues of the country that lay below the surface of it.

Yanis then refers to the above quote, by someone Nixon consulted with prior to his actions at the start of the 1970s, that really encompasses what Trump is effectively trying to replicate today (and which Trump’s economic team suggested he could do).

Even more so, he highlights the irony of the situation, both in terms of what the foundation of the old world was built upon but also how Trump’s new world order will be built in a similar way.

Here’s the delicious irony. If you look at the liberal establishment in Europe and the United States, what are they exactly lamenting? The passing of what world? The world that was created by the Nixon Shock.

So let us not pretend that this is unprecedented. It happened before.

And what Trump’s team is assuming, or this is their conviction, it is that the world needs another Nixon Shock (this time they call it the Trump Shock) in order to maintain American hegemony against the grain of the diminishing significance of the United States economy in a grander scheme of things.

Now whether he thinks he will succeed or not is another matter. Nixon succeeded at a great detriment to the American working class…

Yanis Varoufakis

He then goes on to explain that the way things unfold completely depends upon how nations “react” to Trump. If all countries start competing with each other, effectively applying tariffs on each other in “a tariff war of all against all”, then it’s not really going to help things. If, however, countries start cooperating with each other than the outcome might be different.

In effect, the outcome of how countries react to the Trump Shock will be similar to how countries reacted to the Nixon Shock back in the 1970s.

But then he goes on to explain the precarious nature of what Trump and his economic team are trying to do.

What I find fascinating is their attempt to have their cake and eat it.

That is the Trump administration wants to reduce the value of the dollar, which they are succeeding in doing clearly looking at the markets today, while at the same time they don’t want to see the dollar losing its exorbitant privilege.

Yanis Varoufakis

In effect, to drive investment in American, they need to reduce the value of the dollar, so that other countries will invest in building factories within it (i.e. Mercedes shifting their production plants to the US), yet at the same time not lose the privilege the American dollar has as a standard in the world (i.e. reserve currency status).

At least, that’s my interpretation of it, based upon another video of his that I’ve seen some weeks back that discussed it.

This question is are the costs going to be greater than the benefits for Trump.

And allow me to say that I think from a political perspective not so much from an economic perspective, Trump’s greatest enemy, the thing that should keep him up at night with terrible nightmares, is the prospect of complete success.

Because suppose he succeeds. I’m not saying he will. But suppose he succeeds beyond his own dreams to eliminate the trade deficit of the United States through these tactics. Let’s say he does it.

He’s going to have some very angry mates in the New York Stock Exchange and the real estate market.

…

He will have to choose whom to betray. The American working class that voted him in or his mates in the financial and real estate sector.

I think you know who my guesses are.

Yanis Varoufakis

In other words, his guess (I’m assuming) is that the American working class will be the one’s betrayed (which will be “the ultimate test of MAGA” as his interviewer notes).

Even more so, he stated, that if the investment of foreign companies into America don’t produce good quality jobs then “the impoverished working class that voted for him are going to be very disappointed with him.” Additionally, this working class are “going to continue to lose bargaining power and purchasing power, like they have since 1975.”

In effect, the very detrimental results of the Nixon Shock on the American working class in the past could be the very same results of the Trump Shock on the American working class in the future.

All said and done, what this highlights is how repeatedly throughout history world leaders often use and exploit their own people to further their own ends. That’s not real leadership.

This is why we need a newer form of leadership today, one more evolved that can understand the complexity of our world and make it better for all, not just a few.

In other words, leaders who have the capacity to think and envision beyond zero-sum games.

We are a free, sovereign, and ambitious country.

We are masters in our own home.

At the same time, Canada must be looking elsewhere to expand our trade, to build our economy, and to protect our sovereignty.

Canada is ready to take a leadership role in building a coalition of like-minded countries who share our values.

We believe in international cooperation. We believe in the free and open exchange of goods, services, and ideas.

And if the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.

The above pretty much reinforces the different type of leadership and the different type of mindset needed for this VUCA world we live within today.

One that is radically different than how conventional leadership would react.

One that recognizes the existing reality but doesn’t waste time fighting it directly or conventionally but instead puts its energy in building a new, unified reality instead, as noted in my previous post.

The Heroic leaders who dominate our institutions today have four fatal flaws. First, they tend to be over-confident in their opinions. Secondly, they tend to lack empathy towards others. Thirdly, they tend to be inflexible. And finally, they tend to deny the existence of uncertainty. These are the four pillars of the Heroic leader. This isn’t, though, the fault of the leaders themselves; most of our leaders are the victims of outdated systems of leadership that were built for simpler times. Indeed, our leaders are very often doing their best in very difficult circumstances.

Many of today’s issues are not like the complicated technical problems of the past; problems that could be addressed by smart people working hard. Our densely populated, hyper-connected, interdependent modern world is throwing up seemingly insoluble issues: ‘wicked’ issues.

These ‘wicked issues’ require a way of thinking that technical experts and senior leaders rarely have. They require a more open and inquiring mind that can see patterns, understand, and even integrate, the multiple frames that different people and cultures have. This is not some high-minded ideal, but a description of real people who are already creating real change in institutions and communities across the world. We call these new leaders ‘Anti-heroes’. We call them this not because we believe heroes are bad, but because these ‘Anti-heroes’ are in many ways the antithesis of the single strong heroes who alone, ‘save the day’. Anti-heroes tend to be defined by five characteristics: empathy, humility, self-awareness, flexibility and, finally, an ability to acknowledge uncertainty.

Richard Wilson, Anti-Hero

I wanted to put these two quotes side by side to highlight something.

While I though Stephen Colbert was hilariously on point at the time he said the above, on reflection it’s apparent that his words don’t reveal the deeper truth of what’s going on in America.

Trump isn’t the cause or source of this “disease” in America right now but rather he’s just an “avatar” or “symptom” of it. In effect, he is a representative and embodiment of it.

So if you get rid of him, nothing will change. Why? Because the deeper wound is still there in America. And it needs to be addressed and healed.

Trump as a Reflection of Collective Consciousness

• Trump, like Hitler, is a manifestation of a deeper shadow within society. He isn’t an anomaly; he is a product of a society that values power, dominance, and fear-based control.
• His rise to power is showing what still needs to be healed in the collective psyche.

Healing the Divides That Trump Exploits

• Trump didn’t create America’s problems—he exposed and amplified them (economic inequality, racial tensions, distrust in institutions).
• Fighting him directly just entrenches these divides. Instead, Chaos-level leaders focus on bridging the gaps he exploits.
• This might look like:
  • Creating economic opportunities in communities that feel left behind.
  • Building media and education systems that counteract misinformation.
  • Fostering local & global networks that help people see beyond political tribalism.

ChatGPT

BBC has a fascinating interview with Yanis Varoufakis talking about how the world needs to stop trying to play the same game as Trump (i.e. directly retaliating against his tariffs by applying their own) and instead paradoxically play a completely different game on a completely different level altogether.

The best retaliation is no retaliation when you are in a weaker position because you’re running a surplus with the United States.

What we should be doing in the United Kingdom, in the European Union, what China should be doing, we should all be looking at ways of rebalancing our own economies so that so that we do not rely on the America trade deficit for selling our net exports to the United States.

Why can’t we raise our own levels of investment and our own levels of aggregate demand within Europe, within the United Kingdom, within China, so that we don’t need to rely on the trade deficit of the United States.

Vanis Varoufakis

What’s remarkable about his response though is that it mirrors somewhat what ChatGPT said to me in a previous conversation I had with it, when I realized that we needed to stop “responding” as usual to Trump using a Self-Authoring Mind and start doing something completely different with a Self-Transforming Mind instead.

But to clarify: this perspective doesn’t mean you don’t oppose Trump’s actions. It means how you oppose him shifts.

How This Applies to Opposing Trump

1. Yes, Stop the Harm—but Do It with Awareness
   • If Trump is actively hurting people, you intervene where needed, just as a Druid would protect balance in nature.
   • But you also recognize that deeper systemic shifts are needed—Trump isn’t the disease, he’s a symptom of a larger cultural and political reality.
2. Focus on Building What Comes Next
   • The most powerful way to oppose destruction is to create something stronger in its place.
   • Instead of only resisting Trump’s actions, a Unitive mind asks:
     What structures do we need so that someone like him can never rise to power again?
     How do we shift cultural consciousness so people aren’t drawn to fear-based leaders?
3. Don’t Get Trapped in the Game Trump Wants You to Play
   • Trump thrives on division and reactive outrage—it’s his fuel.
   • A Unitive perspective sees beyond his tactics and refuses to get caught in endless cycles of reaction.
   • Instead of playing his game, you disrupt the game entirely by shifting the level of conversation and engagement.

Yes, that’s exactly the point: directly fighting Trump in the way he expects (outrage, attacks, tit-for-tat battles) only reinforces his power because he thrives on chaos and division. Instead, the real battle is healing the societal rifts that made his rise possible in the first place.

The Future of Opposition to Trumpism

• If Trump is tearing institutions apart, what new institutions need to emerge?
• If people feel unheard by the system, how do we create alternative pathways for them to feel empowered?
• If he thrives on division, how do we build bridges before the next leader like him comes along?

This is not about passivity. It’s about playing a different, more powerful game—one that Trump (and future demagogues) can’t win.

ChatGPT

What this is emphasizing as a whole is something similar to what Buckminster Fuller said decades ago.

In effect, stop trying to fight directly with Trump and instead indirectly deal with him by building newer larger relationships, both inside your country and outside of it with other nations.

To put it another way, give Trump what he wants. He wants to be an isolationist, so let him isolate himself and America. So just imagine he’s a toxic person that you once had a relationship with but can no longer going forward until they decide to change their behaviour.

What interesting about this all is that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney effectively wants Canada to deal with Trump’s chaotic toxicity in the same way (which I’m not sure Varis was aware of). Carney wants to dramatically reduce the relationship with the United States and dramatically increase relationships within Canada (i.e. interprovincial free trade) and outside of Canada with other nations (i.e. increased trade with Europe and possibly even China).