Reclaiming your nervous system in Trump 2.0
Let's take a multimedia metaphysical inquiry into the rocket shit we're on.
“Man overboard!”
Captain John Leggett threw an orange life vest overboard. Let the drill begin.
Fifteen years ago, I was a novice sailing student who had just lurched through the rough and rockin’ Pensacola Pass. And I was queasy.
Talk about shock and awe; my circuits went blank.
Do I bear off, tack, gybe? I could barely hang onto the wheel.
Cap’n John took a sip from his too-early-in-the-morning tumbler of “dirty water” and helped maneuver the boat out, around, and back. We rescued the life jacket, but not my nervous system or stomach. Both were tied in knots.
Reclaiming the course, I gripped the wheel and headed into the wind. Called beating or close-hauled, it’s the roughest point of sail. We tightened the canvas, and I concentrated on holding course against the waves and wind.
“Breathe, Bruce, you can do this.”
With no terra firm to calm my nerves, I struggled. Suddenly, a pod of dolphins flanked the boat left and right, riding the waves in sheer delight. I calmed down, knowing that the Unseen World sends helpers.
Flash forward to 2025
As a political person, I’m scanning the waves for my dolphins. I spent most of 2024 managing the campaigns of four seventy-year-old Democratic women in a ruby-red Georgia district. Running rapid-response marketing gave me a keen sense of the political zeitgeist. Our grand strategy was to get moderate Republican women to vote for women’s rights — and Kamala. My ads painted a picture (all too prescient) of what another Trump term would look like.
On November 5, I felt an eerie political wind shift — as powerful as anything encountered in sailing. I was heartsick but not in shock — that would wait until Week One of Trump 2.0.
One week into Musk’s gutting of the government, I as struggling during a particularly tough yoga class. As my oomph circled the drain, I felt that same sensation — struggling to hang on. Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly” came on. Yes! — no dolphins, but they were there in spirit.
“I don’t need to buy this shock-and-awe BS,” I thought. I can bust the dark clouds of fear and reclaim my nervous system.
I went home and created a mash-up of the Tom Petty song with clips of the original cloudbuster, Wilhelm Reich. Reich’s cloudbuster device purportedly could produce rain by manipulating what he called "orgone energy.”
Wow, I thought. Maybe orgone energy is Bondo! I plan to write about this in the future.
The Cloudbusting Video:
Read on. I hope to bust some of your clouds.
Was it just a dream?
Open your eyes, for life is but a dream. ~ Rumi
Our life is a dream within a dream. ~ Yogananda
"We are asleep. Our life is a dream.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hinduism and Greek philosophy have long viewed this world as an ever-changing projection of consciousness, similar to a dream. The parallels to “night terror” in our current course are uncanny. Two friends of mine even fell out of bed during Trumpian nightmares.
That sudden wind shift — like flipping the channel from Happy Days to Hitchcock or Shakti to Shiva — is the first clue that astrologer Robert Brezsny’s observation is correct:
The truth is fluid, slippery, vagrant, scrambled, and promiscuous. ~ Robert Brezsny
Is this a temporary blip or a cosmic upheaval? It doesn’t matter. We must sail the wind and waves we are given.
Step One: Acknowledge that the train has left the station.
(You can skip this paragraph). Dream or not, we are sailing head-to-wind:
Crazy cabinet nominations, DEI scrubbing, photo-op deportations, drones, J6 pardons, three plane crashes, an exploding CyberTruck, freezing Federal Funds, USAID, NOAA, Department of Education, mass firings of civil service, FBI and CIA, Medicaid and Veterans benefits threatened, Treasury’s distribution system hacked, copied, and all personal, corporate and institutional data stolen, blockchain-based crypto-centric to become a new global currency, slashing medical research and, to Netyanahu’s surprise, Trump developing beachfront property in Gaza.
Did I miss anything? Yes, read the Stalin playbook.
No amount of Kubler-Ross’ Denial, Anger, Bargaining, or Depression will change the fact: Not only has the train left the station, but the two engineers in the cab are taking the world on a runaway train ride.
RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985)
Step Two: Settle Your Nervous System.
As a yoga person, I often practice parasympathetic breathing. It sends a signal to my brain to tell the anxious part that I’m safe. Let’s add some Sumo strength to help face this moment:
Find your Sumo ring: Consider how sumo wrestlers cannot be pushed from their center — marked by the dohyō, the circular ring that a Shinto priest blesses. Sumo wrestlers throw salt into the ring to purify it and ward off evil spirits. We can do the same. Imagine a circle in your immediate space. To start, claim your space. You will not let your nervous system be pushed into fight-or-flight. You will stay centered in your human values.
Find your stance: Sumo wrestlers adopt a wide stance to lower their center of gravity to become immovable. We are not wrestlers, but we can anchor our feet to the earth and butt to the chair. In traditional Chinese medicine, this center is the lower dantian.
Breathing exercise: Anchored to the earth and in your ring, breathe through your nose, taking a full inhale, then one more gulp of air. Slowly let the breath out through your mouth using Ujjayi breathing, also known as "victorious breath" or "ocean breath.” It involves constricting the throat muscles to produce a soft, audible sound. Here’s a video.
Claim your dohyō: You don’t need to be 300 pounds to root your being. Watch the events of the day unfold with equanimity and knowledge of self.
Step Three: Who are these people?
You weren’t expecting a malicious freak show to invade your psyche — but it has.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War states:
"Know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.”
~ Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu clearly studied his enemies, so let’s study this inauguration moment. Click to play this gif of PBS footage. Keep watching until you can answer: Who are these people, and what is occurring in their insides?
Answer: These are the people driving the runaway train.
Let’s break them down into six groups:
1. The Performers
Clowns are performative politicians who milk the cameras for notoriety and profit. They are prone to cosplay. DeSantis with his boots, MTG with her hat, and Kristi Noem, the new DHS chief donning tactical gear, badge, Botox, and hair extensions to announce: “Dirtbags like these will be removed.”
2. The Thugs
Sociopathy, also known as antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), is a mental health condition that involves a pattern of disregard for the rights and feelings of others. They want immigrants gone — all of them.
3. Racists and Misogynists
The current antipathy to women and people of color seems like a scene from Mississippi Burning. Darren Beattie, the new State Department Under Secretary, posted:
Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.
Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men. ~ Darren Beattie
4. Autocrats
Soviet scholar and Atlantic contributor Anne Applebaum explained:
They possess “a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power… To stay in power, modern autocrats need to be able to take money and hide it without being bothered by political institutions that encourage transparency, accountability, or public debate. The money, in turn, helps them shore up the instruments of repression.” ~ Anne Applebaum
5. Oligarchs
In “The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto,” author Jonathan Taplin explains how in a virtuous society, it is “the humanists — the writers, musicians, filmmakers, and artists — [who] provide a vision for where we want to go.” Instead, the geeks have inherited the earth, and we can only hope they don’t burn it to the ground.1
6. The Grifters
In the forward to The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism, George Conway writes:
Literature tells us that grifting was an abiding feature of human society for centuries before the advent of modern politics. The history of cons, scams, and rackets in America dates back to the dawn of the Republic and no doubt earlier… Conservative philosophy demands civic virtue and moral rigor – and yet Americans who call themselves conservative are undeniably more susceptible to… politically tinged fakery, from phony charities and direct-mail boondoggles to cancer and COVID cures, watered penny stocks, overpriced gold, and useless dietary supplements.
Speaking of gold, let’s not forget convicted Senator Bob Menendez (D), who blamed his wife for accepting gold bars and cash payments and hiding them from him!
The Archetypes
Greed goes back centuries or maybe millennia. The myth of Icarus originated in ancient Greece and may date back to the Bronze Age.
The world is currently watching Elon Musk ascend toward wing-melting altitudes. We got a preview three weeks ago when his Space X rocket experienced “a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn” (In plain language: It blew up).
My next favorite archetype is the George Lucas character Jabba the Hut:
[The villainous fool] pursues their desires at the cost of everyone else. Jabba the Hutt is decadent… to the point of intimidating others and participating in acts of cruelty and power games so that he can have the sensations of power and leisure he demands.”2
The operative words: “Sensations of power.”
The most tantalizing archetype is the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Based on a 1797 poem by Goethe, the Mickey character unleashes uncontrollable chaos by tinkering with systems beyond his depth.
Our modern-day Mickey Mouses are remaking government systems at breakneck speed, from air traffic control to the Treasury. What could go wrong? These barely-out-of-college engineers include:
Six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24… who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project.3
The Reality Show
Trump was a reality TV performer, and so is his cabinet:
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy was on three reality shows, including MTV's "The Real World,”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon is a former professional wrestling performer,
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a former Fox News host, and
Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former syndicated talk show host, will be in charge of Medicare/Medicaid.
As a publicity stunt, the drunk-on-power reality President erratically released 2.2 billion gallons of water — reserves that farmers need this summer.
Give me hope, please.
Take another couple of parasympathetic breaths.
Four Forces are driving this train
MALICE » A malicious vortex seems unstoppable with its executive orders, firings, deportations, and Musk. It’s the runaway train.
RESISTANCE » The Democrats appear powerless, the media seems compromised, and corporate America is complacent. Will a sleeping dragon awake and fight the fight?
INCOMPETENCE » The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight is a cause for hope. Mistakes create openings on the game board of corruption.
HAZARD » The Law of Unintended Consequences is often called karma. It’s always unpredictable but never surprising.
Example: When Bush ignored the Presidential Daily Briefing, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike the U.S.," hazard entered our world dramatically on 9-11-01.
Let’s discuss these four forces.
Resistance
Without control of Congress, the Federal Courts are the only entity with brakes on the runaway train. Good news: Democrats were in charge of confirming Federal Judges for 12 of the last 16 years.
How it works:
Trump signs an illegal Executive Order (EO).
Example: Musk sending Federal Workers packing unless they take his “Fork in the Road” buyout.
Public Interest Groups file suit.
Unlike laws passed by Congress, EOs are soft targets for lawsuits.
The ACLU and other groups file suit. In this example, Democracy Forward filed suit for several federal employee unions.
The groups choose friendly courts — typically on the East and West coasts. Currently, several suits are in DC, where judges are royally pissed at the 1500 J6 pardons.
Temporary Restraining Order (TRO)
Because of Incompetence, the EOs are almost always illegal.
The judge gives a TRO, blocking the action.
As I write this on Friday night: “Federal judge blocks Trump administration from putting thousands of USAID workers on leave.” Woohoo.
USAID is the most critical lever for our standing in the world. Billions of dollars of commerce are also at stake.
Injunctions
Temporary Injunction: The Plaintiff shows that there will be irreparable injury if Trump’s action goes forward.
Permanent Injunction: After hearings, if it’s clear that only a permanent injunction can remedy the harm to the plaintiff, a permanent injunction is ruled.
Can Trump’s minions ignore the courts? You can bet on it. But the judge can escalate such disregard to Criminal Contempt and even has marshals and jails. Bannon went to jail for contempt, and Wilhelm Reich (who started this piece) died in jail for contempt of court. We are witnessing a complete breakdown of the law by putting an untouchable felon in charge. Stay tuned.
What about the Supreme Court?
In the first two weeks, 2-3 suits have been filed per day. My calculation translates up to 1000 per year, or 4000 in four years.
SCOTUS hears sixty cases per year — and they hate Presidents using Executive Orders to legislate.
Watch this scroll, courtesy Just Security Litigation Tracker to appreciate how many suits have been filed in just under three weeks:
Hazard
The universe makes it up as it goes along. Risk enters all sides of the equation. Here are examples:
Planes falling out of the sky (three already)
Bird flu destroying our food supply.\
Crops rotting in the field after deportations
Mexico, Canada, and China implementing retaliatory tariffs
Thousands of children dying if anti-vax children spread measles
Iran sending a plane into the new World Trade Center in reaction to Gaza ethnic cleansing
Incompetence
From Tom Nichols in the Atlantic:
“Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.”
A recent mind-blowing example:
On February 1, Trump declared that there is nothing Canada, Mexico, or China could do to delay the February 1 tariffs.
Canada called Trump’s bluff. Canada started pulling American liquor from the shelves, raising energy prices and lumber costs, and even threatening to cut electricity exports to Michigan, Minnesota, and New York. Ouch.
On February 3, Trump folded, saying, “Tariffs will be delayed.” More consequential: The world saw they were dealing with an easily manipulated fool.
The Shit Show Vector
Americans who voted for a stage act may quickly tire when the show gets stale. Next shiny object, please.
Like tequila, take a few more parasympathetic breaths.
The Metaphysics: “Attention”
From the Toronto Globe:
“How did Americans vote for: “the candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics?”
“Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.”
Good question.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes’ new book The Sirens’ Call says something fundamental has changed in the human psyche. Unlike the robber barons who commanded fortunes from coal, steel, and oil, today’s tech barons are spending billions to extract and manipulate our attention.
“Attention is the very thing that makes us human…Extracting it requires cracking into our minds.” ~ Chris Hayes
Watch Stephen Colbert interview Chris on this reshaping of the human psyche:
We laughed when Trump claimed Haitians were eating our pets, but for his base, he was mainlining their malleable attention with fear:
Are we experiencing a big cosmic shift?
On November 19, two weeks after the reelection of Donald Trump, Pluto moved into Aquarius until January 2044. Whatever you think of astrology, the earth turns, and the stars move relative to our spot in the cosmos.
Trees are beginning to bud this week — not because a merciful god has chosen to lift the curse of winter (it feels that way), but because the earth's inclination creates seasons. The cosmos also has seasons — some very long, like the 20-year transit we have moved into.
Author, astrologer, and former corporate leader Pam Gregory has a unique talent for putting these shifts into language we can understand. She describes this period:
“It's going to be a whole new world. It's going to be a very different episode for humanity. So I think a very big question to ask yourself at this time, a great question to go into 2025, is, what does it mean to be human?"
Gregory understands how the tech barons are forcing us into a brave new world faster than we can absorb. She warns of AI:
“What appears to be short-term convenience can turn into something very different.”
She also hints that this wave of corruption and destruction foretells transformation and rebirth:
The symbolism of Pluto is death, transformation, and rebirth. My favorite way of explaining this is when a tree dies and falls in the wood and rots, it rots down because it died. But it produces fertile soil. It transforms its state to produce fertile soil for new life to begin. So it's death, transformation, and rebirth.
She also sees advancements:
"...around not only freedom, but human rights, civil rights, freedom of speech, greater equality, technical innovation, innovation of all kinds.”
And most promising
"Frequency and energy are going to be the source of all healing, whether it's sound, technologies, music, or energy being received in different ways.
The video below is excerpted from her YouTube channel.
The tree’s rot is part of the cycle of life.
Backed by many trombones, musician Louis Cole celebrates the second law of thermodynamics — that “things will fall apart.” If you are still with me, turn this up loud and move your body:
Unlike the hapless gang inside our government, humans have the anti-entropic capacity for healing, reinvention, and uplift. I wrote extensively about “the hidden engine for continuous renewal” in my book:
Don’t give up on a better world.
Jon Stewart and AOC are always helping us retain our heart and humanity in the face of corruption and evil:
“Make a basic decision… this is a kind of person I want to be.”
How did a peanut farmer from Plains GA become the most influential statesman and humanitarian of our time? An older and wiser Jimmy Carter explained to his bible class that we have to make a decision — “this is the kind of person I want to be.” Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson also chime in:
I can’t predict how this will go…
but one of the features of accelerated time is that it surprises everyone. There is always another shoe to drop.
I can promise that our safety and resilience come from each other. Every act that chooses connection over isolation maintains our humanity.
If you find this piece hard to understand, I’ll make it simple: Cynicism has no power over innocence. The children at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland etched butterflies into the walls. And it was little Toto who pulled the curtain on the Great and Powerful Oz.
Throw some beans in the pot and host a poor man’s dinner party. Turn off your Audible and call a long-lost buddy. Meet a friend at a pub to check-in. This is how we pull the curtain — through caring, connection, and love. I call it Bondo.
“Humans exist on the earth in order to produce energy of a certain quality and intensity, and this energy is liberated through their experiences of joy and suffering, and through their response to the forces of death and birth.”~ J.G. Bennett
Thank you for taking the time…
…to reflect on this moment from your own life experience.
As you can imagine, researching, editing, clipping videos, and working into the wee hours is a sacrifice of love — not money. I make $75 monthly from my Substack channel and $35 yearly from my books. There are no paywalls, perks, or revenue games. My personal growth is the payoff.
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LINK: Buy Bruce Miller a Cup of Coffee
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/5098642-why-exactly-are-tech-billionaires-kissing-trumps-ring/
https://steemit.com/tabletop-rpg/@loreshapergames/using-archetypes-the-fool
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engineers/