The solution, of course, is uncomfortable: we need to divest of our power. I don’t know what that looks like, but it is the strongest argument I’ve heard for anarchism (the kind @billieiswriting.bsky.social and @dr-maeforrest.bsky.social talk about, not the pop culture chaos one). +
The problem is that, like Frodo, I’m not sure we know the way. Is it possible to do this work without needing to possess the ring and thus risking (or even ensuring) one’s own corruption? Or is there a way to create the right circumstances by which a ring-bearer would actually go through with it? +
I honestly don’t know the answers to this. But it’s something I think a lot about. The US is simply too powerful to not have authoritarians constantly attempting to take control of it, and it’s not built in a way that can reliably hold them off.
I think this is the point behind the Tower of Babel story in Genesis.
That and the absolute necessity of diverse people, languages, and cultures. Monocultures kill off everything else and then die themselves from the lack of diversity.