The President waves a questioning hand, and suddenly the unthinkable trembles like a leaf in a storm. When the Federal Reserve’s cherished robe of "independence" frays at the edges, something deeper tears with it—a seam in that myth we all nod along to, the cozy tale of a steady, dependable reality. Turns out, this grand arrangement—our democracy, economy, and institutions—is nothing sturdier than everybody agreeing it is so. And what happens to myths, friends, when someone sees through the curtain?
Chaos, yes, but also possibility. Sparks scatter, making room for unlikely dreams and mischief makers. The old activists gather, signs waving dutifully: "Save the Fed," "Protect Our Institutions." They mimic protest as it's always been—a comforting choreography too afraid to dance the unpracticed step. But maybe now is not the moment for rescuing yesterday's confidence trick. Maybe it’s time to ask who handed money that peculiar crown, who appointed technocrats our secular popes, whose whispered rules made macroeconomics ironclad, while justice and kindness come wrapped in question marks.
Jacques Ellul, old wise owl, understood. Beneath politics—beneath polished speeches and neatly arranged podiums—lies something darker, something deeper: the invisible hand of money, intangible yet vast as darkness between stars. Money as magic, weapon, priestly authority. Trump's questions make plain what smart cynics knew: the Fed's authority was paper-thin all along, tissue masquerading as steel.
Yet what happens when flimsy myths fall? Do we rush in to prop them up again, desperate carpenters shoring up rotten wood? Or do we stand back, letting the frame collapse into a luminous rubble, and see what strange new shoots might poke through the cracks?
Micah Bornfree whispers of the quantum leap, the clearing opened by chaos, where the possible flourishes before habits harden again. Occupy—remember Occupy?—didn't ignite from careful plans or modest proposals. It was born from a vague, fierce yearning, a sudden communal dizziness that filled the public squares, a leap into freedom sprinkled with wild improvisation. Possibility doesn't await permission; it arrives when reality trembles. The "spark" lights nothing if it can't kindle along unfamiliar paths.
Tactics matter. Protest can't plod the same weary circle. Imagination must become the wrinkle that ruptures the old fabric. What if protests were no longer stern parades defending the old order, no longer pleas to restore comfortable fictions like neutrality and independence? What if protests were storytelling, mischievous tales unraveling status quo logic thread by thread, exposing money as theater, inflation as poetry, banks as temples to vanished gods?
Turn protests into jamborees, performances that unmask contradictions, that say over and over: "Money isn't neutral—it never was. Who mints it, who hoards it, who spends it—these are the quiet masters." Press and poke, stage disruptive dialogues, nonsensical chants that still hold truth. Break the collective hypnosis—awakening, not legislating; questioning, not persuading.
Better yet, don't retreat to polite moderation—go bold. Instead of chants to "Save the Fed," why not demand Public Money for the Public Good, or Direct Democracy Over All Banks? Hold spontaneous, jubilant teach-ins at local branches—less a siege than a carnival. Let your demands outrun reason, spill like stars from a torn pocket, each impossible idea sparking another. Don't bargain within the frame; splinter it.
And in that shuddering moment, as confusion breaks the spell, summon wildness. Gather cross-sector assemblies, humming digital hives, pop-up autonomous festivals. Play at new models: money as a commons, governance as neighborhood gossip circles. Swarm and whisper, improvise and surprise—above all, be unchartable. Keep it loose, unpredictable, no repetitions to dull the fire, no tired marches sinking feet into yesterday's tracks.
Beware nostalgia. Refuse rituals. The paradigm cracks not from carefully scripted slogans or semicolons in manifestos, but from leaps—awkward and glorious leaps—into the unknown. When disruption blooms, our old habits, even our demands for "justice", feel strangely inadequate. Revolution isn't a checklist, nor even a destination. It's a swirling passage: improv, awakenings, heartbreak, joy.
The Fed stands trembling, and behind it something stranger looms. Crypto-economies, AI societies. Techno-giants emerging quietly to replace today's shaky temples. Beware slipping into easy tales, making villains out of names and faces alone. Trump and Powell? Merely bit players, shadows cast on the wall. Look behind—where algorithmic gods whisper new myths.
Every paradigm shift demands the courage to think, to argue fundamentals, to try recklessly, to birth new forms. It means a shift deep enough to change the mind, the heart. Not one institution's passing crisis—but an inward turnaround of the whole world.
Now, friends, your challenge is plain: Don’t just summon an emergency meeting, another “quick action” to arrest the bleeding. Instead, dream a protest both impossible and beautiful—one you hardly dare describe aloud. Maybe it's a ritual offering of pounds of monopoly money burned ceremonially at dusk, maybe it's children hosting pretend board meetings at the marble feet of banks, uniforms scribbled with crayons, maybe it's town-square festivals reclaiming wealth and dignity through song, through swapped stories and whispered secrets. Protest not as complaint—but as joyous invocation, as proclamation of other worlds already alive within our imagining.
Refuse to let reality close back up. Guard the clearing like firelight amid falling night. Ask with a curious smile, a twinkle to your comrades:
What new impossible, beautiful thing shall we do tomorrow?
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