“They [Liberals] hate him [Trump]. They hate him to a passionate level. They look at the noise around Trump and miss the signal of what’s really happening, and they can’t get past that, and they’re blinded by it.”

These were Steve Bannon’s words as quoted by the columnist David Brooks in today’s New York Times, maybe penultimate words before his going into prison for 4 months. Yes, the same Steve Bannon who helped Trump get elected in 2016, the Steve Bannon who’s so much smarter than that former president, the man who’s clearly on a mission not to communicate or negotiate or be open, but to win a war. If you can, make sure and read that article, it’s important.

But it’s the quote above that really got to me. Why? Because Steve Bannon is absolutely right. Those of us who’re not part of the Great America camp have been blinded since 2016 and we won’t get our cataracts removed, we won’t even put on our glasses to see better. Too many people can’t see past their hate of Donald Trump.

How could such a narcissistic, self-serving, not-particularly bright guy make it to the White House? How can he get close to doing this again? Half this country is stupid! It’s illiterate! Ignorant dumbasses!

Read Bannon’s words again: “They look at the noise around Trump and miss the signal of what’s really happening.” I can’t tell you how many hateful and contemptuous posts I’ve read by folks I know, like, and respect, who opt to take cheap shots at the man with the orange hair instead of reflecting and investigating what else is there beside the noise.

There are some powerful forces at work now, not just here but around the world. They have to do with huge divides between rich and poor, a perceived loss of cultural and social identity, and alarm over a collapsed social contract. There’s climate change. There are confusion and fear.

I don’t pretend to understand all the aspects of the “signal” that Bannon mentions, but I do understand noise. And too many of us outside the MAGA world have let the noise take over, reacting with our own caterwauling and hysteria, and missing very serious messages that aren’t as loud or as flashy, but way more serious. Signals that will easily outlast Donald Trump. Read Bannon’s words.

I believe that’s the same mistake Joe Biden is making. There’s an obsessiveness there—I’m the only one who can defeat the SOB!—as if that’s the great challenge here. Wrong, Joe. As the Saudi scientist we met in Montenegro said to us with incredulity: “You are nominating someone in his 80s to face these next 4 years?”

I’m all for elderhood. I love the wisdom that comes with years, the hard-earned patience, the soul-gentling, steady and persevering care we learn to give ourselves and the world as our own time here swoons. These are critical voices—but not in the White House. The man or woman who lives there needs the energy, acumen, strength, imagination, and an openness to radically new ways of thinking that aren’t the strengths of people my age or Biden’s.

It’s not just thinking outside the box—the box has gone long ago. It’s seeing the dots and creating new connections. Be it liberal, conservative, whatever, it’s accepting and even welcoming the opportunity to be at the fulcrum of change. That’s who we need, not just someone to beat Donald Trump. The liberal order has much to answer for in their embrace of noise without peering deeper into the signals of our political landscape. If we lose in November, this will be a big reason. We’re not reading the room.

Joe Biden continues with that obsessive way of thinking, which reflects poorly on his judgment and farsightedness.

People sometimes joke about how bad four more years of Donald Trump spending the day looking at Fox and issuing kingly proclamations could be, We survived 2016, didn’t we?

Yes, but now imagine another pandemic. Imagine a climate catastrophe. Imagine a war. Israel is living proof of what happens when catastrophe occurs and they have the worst government in modern history to deal with it. Remember George Bush in 9/11 and the disastrous rush into Iraq?

On Saturday I led our monthly one-day retreat. It was my last retreat at Green River, the last time I would take on a teaching role here. When I come back, it will be to just sit, like everyone else. I’ll probably teach in other forums, already scheduled to teach in Europe next summer, but 20 years here in the Valley are enough. There are fine new teachers who honor the old forms even as they explore new upayas; my job is to support them, not to hold on endlessly.

I woke up this morning with a certain muted excitement and asked myself the same question I ask every morning: What is mine to do today? That question goes hand-in-hand with: What isn’t mine to do today?

As I said on Saturday, for years I sat on a black cushion on a 30”x30” mat. The world was on that mat; still, the mat had four sides and four corners. The idea wasn’t to fall forward on my face or shrink back, but always to sit upright and fully occupy the length and breadth of the mat.

Who am I now? What is mine to do? It’s not managing or leading now. What isn’t mine to do? It’s not to spread hate and vitriol all around me. So what is it?