“The highest form of wisdom is kindness.”  – The Talmud

I am a lifelong admirer of Thomas Paine; he was a hero to me as a writer and a patriot. His statement of belief became mine as a writer and essayist, and now, a blogger:

“Independence is my happiness,” he wrote, “and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

That’s who I have always wanted to be, what I have always wanted to do. Most of my life, I didn’t or couldn’t.

President Trump inspired me to do it; I acknowledge him and thank him for it.

He helped me to find myself and my purpose.

Rather than spent much of my remaining life arguing, hating people who disagreed with me, obsessing on media, Facebook, Twitter, eating myself up with hatred and grievance and frustration, I decided to take the leap, to my faith, to doing good.

I made a choice.  I don’t wish to live in anger and judgment.

Without quite realizing it, or even intending it,  I became a Thomas Paine modern radical; I followed the path of my hero, I became a revolutionary of a kind, a warrior for compassion rather than division and conflict.

He must have been hiding away in my subconscious, waiting for the proper time to come out.

This is the time.

There are different kinds of revolutionaries. No guns for me, no protests in the streets, my weapons are words, photos,  empathy, and compassion. They are, I believe, more powerful than bullets — no conspiracy theories for me, no snarling on Facebook or Twitter.

I don’t judge anyone but me.

When I look in the mirror, I mean to see self-respect and dignity, and if I do, then I have succeeded. I don’t care what others say or think or choose to do.

I find myself a curious kind of soldier, a warrior in the middle of what I call a Compassion Revolution, a peaceful uprising that is happening all over the country, more positive, uplifting and more powerful than I imagined.

When I look back on these past few years, I am astounded at what we – me and the Army Of Good – have been able to accomplish.

We don’t wring our hands or rage on Twitter.

We are not hateful, judgmental,  or cruel. These things are roadblocks to us, things to get around, to bypass. They are our “other.”

The goals of this new kind of revolution are almost shockingly simple: to do good, as much as we can, whenever we can. It is contagious, it spreads.

To stay small, to be effective, to transform lives without saving them, to fill the holes in people’s lives without trying to smother them or live for them.

To me, this is common sense; those words have just as much meaning today as they did when Thomas Paine launched his revolution by writing them.

Simple and pure.

We seek to support the needy and the vulnerable, once the goal of faith and leadership, now left to people like us. We try to fill this dark and empty and sometimes lonely hole.

As I watched the hatred and divisiveness, I remember my lessons as a media critic.

Hating people rarely stops them, or defeats them, or advances any reasonable cause.

The great and victorious revolutionaries – Paine, Dr. King, Gandhi, Mandela – used words, love, and moral force, the most potent force in the world.

The brilliant social critic Jia Tolentino cautions critics of President Trump to be careful in their contempt and constant criticisms of him. In her new book “Trick Mirror,” she reminds us that people like  Trump feed off of hatred, condemnation, and outrage, it is their very fuel, their goal, the point of them, their strength.

They are never looking to soothe or persuade, outrage is the octane. I’m not feeding him.

We should take care of indulging this too much,  Tolentino writs, it doesn’t hurt him nearly as much as it hurts us.

Every day, in this hideous and destructive ritual,  the President stands in front of a howling, groveling,  pack of reporters and looks for a different way to be outrageous, surprising, hurtful, newsworthy. The more shocking, the bigger the headlines.

Journalism is the art of thoughtful and persistent questioning and accountability; the scrum on the White House lawn has no resemblance to it. It isn’t an aberration, it is his idea of leadership, the media’s decline in the basest reality entertainment.

Every day, in this dance of submission, the reporters oblige in their smugness and timidity, they feed the beast, and he grows and grows, and the wheel turns and turns. It is devouring them, and many of us.

It is not like a  horror movie; it is a horror movie.

George Orwell wrote it, the face that is always on the screen. Anyone who hates and argues is complicit, I believe. Anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy. We all join in this system of fury and make it possible. We support it by hating it.

So how do I keep from being consumed like that? I have found a way for me up on my remote and small farm with a bunch of dogs, donkeys, and sheep. How cool is that?

The more people hate this man, write about him, condemn him, the stronger and more powerful he gets, like some mystical demon who feeds off the rage of others. He can’t be condemned, offended, shamed into submission, or surrender.

This kind of division is nothing new. This is how demagogues work, how they have always worked, this is their food, their sustenance, look at the news: I often watch him and wonder where the Ghostbusters are when we need them.

Do we need another timid Democrat, more moderates, to fight or can we find our own Proton Pack, the energy weapon the Ghostbusters used for capturing demons within our universe?

Empathy and compassion may be our Proton Pack, our Neutrana Wand, our particle thrower? I think so.

That’s what those Trump supporters I know wanted and waited for all these years: compassion It’s what they are still waiting for. To be seen and known, not ridiculed, exploited, and abandoned. To me, that is the lesson of the Trump years.

Perhaps we have no one to blame but ourselves?

“The demagogue,” wrote H.L. Mencken, “is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”

The French poet and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote that demagoguery arrives at the moment when the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity.

I am not quite that cynical and am anything but pessimistic. That’s the upside of Compassionate Revolutions; they practice nope, not despair.

I think something beautiful is happening,  a Great Awakening. I see it, feel it, hear it everywhere I look.  People who were morally asleep for years are being called on to think about what values mean, and what kind of country we want to live in.

Every act of hatred and grievance shrinks us makes us powerless, despairing.

Every act of love and compassion from us makes these hostile forces weaker, smaller, more vulnerable. Mandela, Gandhi, King, and others proved this again and again. Show Mercy. This idea has beaten back the ugliest and most destructive forces in human history again and again.

I decided not to sacrifice myself to this dark side of humanity; life is too short and too precious for that. So I find myself part of a Compassion Revolution a non-violent resistant to hatred and cruelty and division.

We called it the Army Of Good, and we have done more good to more people than I could begin to recount or list here. In the past week, we raised the tuition so a brilliant young man can attend a loving and safe high school; so a teacher has the money to bury his child; so a school has the educational tools they need to teach; so elderly residents in assisted care have sweaters and shoes and socks.

Just one week in the Compassion Revolution, victory after victory, I sleep at night, I hate no one, I argue with no one.  I make my news.

I think Thomas Paine might be proud of me. Doing good is my faith.

Sputtering reporters and Twitter crusaders are peas off of elephants. It’s love that transforms, kills, sucks up evil, and wears it down.

When President Trump was elected in 2016, I didn’t have any idea how bad it would get, how angry he was, how vindictive, and how divisive. I live in rural America, a conservative community, my neighbors and friends almost all voted for Donald Trump, and they were not bigots or fools.

These honest and hard-working people had been ignored for generations; their farms were failing, their children fled to big cities for work, their jobs exported to other countries, their dispirited communities and downtowns engulfed in poverty, drugs, and decline. The self-important media had not noticed or cared much; neither had the political leaders of either party.

If I didn’t agree with them, I certainly understood their point of view.  I still do.

The Compassion Revolution is diverse and hard to define. I see it in the Army Of Good every day. I feel it in Jean’s Place Restaurant, where Maria and I went to have breakfast this morning.

That’s why I love to go there; it is nourishing to me.

In this Revolution,  people like Robin (in the photo above) our friend and waitress,  will lead the charge. In her love of children, and her attention to them, and the time she takes to make them comfortable,  she shows us how compassion is not just a political idea, it is very personal, it begins in our everyday lives.

I don’t look up there for my inspiration.  I don’t look for it from a politician or their news.

I look down here, and deep inside of me. I don’t need an AK-47 to fight it.  There, right at my fingertips,  are all the weapons I need.