Relax.

Are you f*cking kidding me?

My journey through life, before November 2016 seemed much easier. At the time I was working for Oracle Corporation, living on the Central Coast of Oregon with sweeping whitewater views of the Pacific Ocean. I worked hard (as I did throughout my career) and was well-compensated.

Everything was going pretty well. The 2016 elections were on my mind, however, in spite of the propaganda and right-wing attacks on Hillary Clinton (her emails! Benghazi!) Nate Silver said she was going to win. (I was an elected delegate for Bernie Sanders, however, when Hillary clinched the Democratic nomination, I was all-in for her candidacy and supported her campaign and other key races).

I remember feeling physically ill while watching the New York Times Electoral probability meter shift from Hillary to Trump. When Oracle’s co-CEO was quoted as saying “I plan to tell the President-elect that we are with him and are here to help in any way we can.”, and based upon all of Trump’s hate, fear, and ignorance-fueled rhetoric about Muslims and immigrants, I knew I had to take bold action.

I resigned from Oracle and then published my resignation on Linked In. I did not anticipate the reaction it created. It gained close to 500,000 views and was covered by The Guardian, CNBC, and other news agencies.

I decided to dedicate my time and energy toward strengthening democracy and democratic ideals and threw myself into the Civic Works project (https://civ.works).

From that time to now, I’ve earned some grey (at least among the sparse hair that stubbornly remains). Life has been a blur. Divorce, a move to Tucson, a stroke, a major technology project turnaround for the State of California, and then a move to Europe.

Now would be a great time to enjoy sidewalk cafe’s, leisurely strolls, the beautiful beaches of Portugal, and travel throughout the rest of Europe. Yet I cannot.

As I consider the suffering and sacrifices prior generations made for the sake of democracy, equality, and justice, I can’t relax, I cannot f*cking relax.

With the rise of the anti-democratic right-wing forces such as Putin, Orban, Trump/Vance, LePen, and others, and knowing their policies are all about exacerbating inequality, blaming immigrants, deterring necessary climate action, manufacturing societal consent through eviscerating education and consolidating media, stoking fear and hatred, I cannot and will not relax.

In 2024 the consequences of this election in the United States are profound. The NATO alliance, supporting Ukraine against the murderous thug Putin, bold climate action, fair economics, Women’s right to choose, gender and race equality, Dreamers, immigration reform (versus mass deportations), restoring ethics to the U.S. Supreme Court and the entire judicial system by expanding SCOTUS and removing the corrupt, biased judges like Cannon, public education, religious freedom, gun violence prevention, voting rights, independent news, and a stable United States (as a viable ally and trade partner), and more are all on the ballot.

Why do I write about all of this? Because at present, our actions have profound importance that extend well-beyond my own ability to relax. There are tangible actions we can perform, and groups we can support.

And beyond this, if we manage to save the tenuous American experiment in November by throwing our collective effort into candidates and groups who embrace equality, justice, and democracy, we must commit to long-term actions and progressive infrastructure in America. We must implement a countervailing ecosystem to the wealth-concentrated authoritarian machine Lewis Powell and Heritage have planned and partially implemented.

We need to start dedicating more of our societal time and focus on concepts and ideas from Heather Cox Richardson, Rachel Carson, Dan Rather, Lawrence Lessig, Greta Thunberg, Joel Bakan, Stacey Abrams, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Trudell, Robert Reich, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Timothy Snyder, the warnings from Hannah Arendt, and the insights of Noam Chomsky and John Kenneth Galbraith.

We owe it to the sacrifices of those who passed the baton of justice, democracy, and equality to us.

We owe it to future generations so they can aspire, dream, and consider their own lives as a precious gift of time, and not simply as a student loan interest payment for Betsy DeVos, a line item in Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or Larry Ellison’s profit forecast, or as an expendable pawn in a war waged by Putin, Netanyahu, or Hamas.