I fully appreciate and applaud Trump’s decision to nix the TPP, and, I feel nothing but disgust and a sinking feeling, bordering on despair re: the decision to go ahead with the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. How to hold both these assessments of Trump’s first 48 hours within my poor beleagured psyche and not scream in agony? Not sure.

One thing is for sure, what I tell my podmates here in the Green Acres Village: please remember, it’s not going to get easier, it’s going to get harder. Whatever are your personal practices that help you center and maintain balance during the onrushing maelstrom, do them daily. Every single day. And meanwhile, while remaining awake and aware of the larger fractious and disturbing energies, let us focus here, now, inside our own psyches, inside our homes, inside our little village, inside our neighborhood, inside our town and its region. Let us give all that we have inside us in service to all that is within our personal and connected purview. No stops. No hesitation. No excuses. This is not a joke. Our time has come. We can thank Trump, who James Howard Kunstler has now begun to call meshuga (crazy, idiotic), for the wake-up call. It’s either get active, all of us, each in our own specific way, calling upon everything that we have ever learned, and all the dreams that are inside us longing to manifest, or die.

Of course, we’re going to die anyway. But which way? Do we want to go out ignominiously, as cowards, our lives in denial, terminal distraction and/or addiction, or do we want to pull out the better angels of our nature and trumpet their joyous greetings to the whole world.

Here are two pieces, by people who understand the implications of Trump’s determination to restart a growth economy on a finite planet.

Kunstler Warns: “We are repeating the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.”

Albert Bates gets more specific:

Three Pillars: “By pushing the status quo beyond the brink, the status quo protectors have now put it into freefall.”

Here’s one blogger’s utterly bleak assessment:

The Paradox of Awakening

Here’s Jon Rappoport, who finds a different meaning in what appears to be Trump’s new beginning, one which is not bleak, but audacious and invigorating. However, keep in mind that Rappoport’s perspective  does not include the larger context of the finite planet’s resources.

A Key Clue to Trump’s presidency: American Empire

Rappoport, like most, doesn’t question the whole business of “nationalism,” since, I suppose, it’s opposed to the nefarious central corporate command of “globalism.” Varoufakis, however, does question nationalism.

We need an alternative to Trump’s nationalism. It isn’t the status quo

Hagopian’s view of what’s going on seems to be ambiguous. On the one hand, he says all presidents are basically appointed by the Deep State — including Trump. On the other hand, further down, he appears to be cheering Trump on, rather like Rappoport. Who knows? As he would agree, it’s very very difficult to discern truth in today’s climate of nasty disputes over “alternative facts.”

President Trump’s Inaugural Address Declares War on the Ruling Elite as the Media and Protestors Declare War on Him

Meanwhile, it’s about time all pundits address the overriding impossibility of endless material growth on a finite planet’s finite resources.