Uninstall the Establishment

Remove ICE and the causes of ICE from your life.

Friends, bison, countryfolk,

In this time of reckoning, I want to share a few realizations and realignments around how I relate to the now rapidly falling neoliberal world order and institutions of our society, the same ones that gave us Trump, Miller, Bondi, Kegsbreath, and Noem, and will give us much worse this year. While writing on this topic, two beautifully resonant sirens came across my radar - the filmmaker Ava du Vernay’s sentiment on uninstalling capitalism from her work, and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos begging world leaders to uninstall the superpowers, most notably, the United States. I invite you to consider a similar inquiry.

There is something in the water. Is it time to stop complying with the system that is trying to destroy us? Is it time to stop feeding it?

As I articulated in Part 2 of Bison Medicine, every sector of society works at cross-purposes to the nation’s singular purpose “All… Created Equal”. Our government makes no effort to fulfill our purpose. As a course of business, it makes us less safe, equal and free, and in these times, it is upping its game with outright ethnic cleansing via martial law, extrajudicial killings, and depriving people of their rights, livelihoods, food, education, and life-saving healthcare.

Businesses make us less prosperous. Education and journalism make us more oppressed, less wise, and less able to think critically. The healthcare, automotive, and agriculture sectors destroy our bodies and communities.

Religion makes us less spiritually aware and evolved. Psychology helps us understand our trauma, but its task is largely to help us cope with it, to carry the burden so that we may continue to be good little establishment workers, consumers, and tax payers for the capital caste. It doesn’t initiate adults, heal trauma, or integrate ego parts (with a few notable exceptions, such as IFS and Gestalt). To actually heal and become adults, we need group processes and rituals within intact communities, and psychology makes no attempt to do this. That would be bad for business. Non-profits exist only to address symptoms of these failures and thereby normalize and edify them.

We need a new everything. But first we have to uninstall the old. We have to stop feeding the beast.

It recently occurred to me that my faith, Unitarian Universalism, where I, up until last week, was an active member and served as a Worship Associate, isn’t able to meet the moment, respond, and reform. I had lots of hope and I’ve tried a bunch of different ways to encourage them (and the religious sector more broadly) to understand the human condition, frame the spiritual and cultural problems we have more accurately, and leverage best practices for personal and spiritual transformation and community building. This effort has fallen on deaf ears.

My congregation’s leadership is more invested in being a social club for aging white liberals, an affinity group for virtue signalling academics, public servants, and protesters, rather than meeting this dire moment with the wisdom and courage it requires. They are not invested in understanding the the human condition, accurately framing the problem, generating integrous objectives, and taking wizened action on them. As such they are little more than an emotional pharmacy selling moral self-licenses to the aged in the form of rainbow flags, pronouns, protests, sermons, and songs.

def. Moral self-licensing (source: Wikipedia)

Self-licensing (also moral self-licensing, moral licensing, or licensing effect) is a term used in social psychology and marketing to describe the subconscious phenomenon whereby increased confidence and security in one’s self-image or self-concept tends to make that individual worry less about the consequences of subsequent immoral behavior and, therefore, more likely to make immoral choices and act immorally. In simple terms, self-licensing occurs when people allow themselves to indulge after doing something positive first; for example, drinking a diet soda with a greasy hamburger and fries can lead one to subconsciously discount the negative attributes of the meal’s high caloric and cholesterol content.

And it’s working for them, so I get it. They have a steady membership base and solid finances. I get why they don’t want to do what is right when it’s easier to do what gets them paid. In this sense, they are the religious equivalent of the Democratic Party - unread, unserious, unadulted, ineffective, and in the way. So, after much deliberation, I’m out. Thank you, UU, for this opportunity to learn.

I will continue to support and be active in the ManKind Project, where I serve in a spiritual leadership capacity leading men’s grounding and renewal ceremonies, and explore ways to build a beloved community, one sourced by Nature’s God, and embodied through rites of passage, and deep connection.

This decision had me further investigate my support of other institutions that have similar issues around complicity with the beast, failure to reform, etc. So, I’m ending my support of all of those too, with the exception of the American Prairie, an org that works with First Nations to acquire and protect the habitat of our National Mammal, the bison.

This establishment uninstall led me to cancel the New York Times. I’ve been a subscriber since before Trump’s first term when I felt I needed the soothing of reassurance of establishment thinking. I no longer need their soothing lies. I’ve been increasingly queasy with the paper, especially in light of their support of the feckless centrists (Clinton, Biden, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg) over real leaders with real policies designed to fulfill our purpose (Sanders and Warren), in 2016 and 2020. Then their support of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Then the Kamalamenon, ensuing hand-wringing, and the gross “Abundance”, DNC apologist bullshit. Then I saw a picture of David Brooks with Jeffery Epstein. Then I saw their interview with Trump. And then. And then. And then. And then.

NO “AND THEN”. Enough. I’m out. I’ll keep reading The Atlantic and The Guardian, but I can’t take the morally squishy, genocide-complicit Times anymore. This continues the tradition of uninstalling the establishment I began in 2004.

In 2004, after reading Natural Capitalism (1999) and realizing the fundamental premise of global capitalism (prosperity, peace, equality, and liberty) was invalid, that half the political economy creates externalities that the other half fixes and profits from, that we’re consuming 7 earths worth of resources each year, I decided my MBA wasn’t worth the paper it is printed on and that I would never pay back my MBA student loans.

In 2005, I switched from MSFT/Office to OpenOffice.org, and in 2010 from PCs to Chromebooks.

In 2006, I switched from automobiles to bike and public transit in 2005, and in 2020 from bike to e-bike.

In 2012, I uninstalled the DNC and switched to Independent (although I briefly switch back when I need to vote in a primary).

In 2013, I switched from Bank of America to Patelco Credit Union.

I broke up with Amazon Prime for the first time in 2021 and have relapsed 4 times, but have been Prime-sober now for 6 months. I cancelled Audible (Amazon) and I’m in the process of switching from Spotify (that’s running ICE recruitment ads) to Google and Librivox. My last connection to Amazon is Whole Foods, and I’ll boycott them soon too.

In 2023, I switched from Verizon to Mint/T-mobile. I’m in the process of switching from the Reich’s social media allies (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Twitter).

I deleted my Twitter in 2024, and in 2025 began moving to Substack for creating, sharing, and discovering content, and from Facebook and Whatsapp to Signal and Telegram for groups.

I added the companies that directly support ICE such as Hilton, Charter, Dell, Comcast, and Microsoft, to the list of major Reich conspirators and funders such as Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Penske, AMG, Chick-fil-a, Instacart, AirBnB, Intuit, J&J, etc.

To that end, I moved everything out of the financial market in 2012. As the S&P 500 is currently trading at 39 times earnings (2.5x higher than historical average), this means that the equities / index funds you hold are worth $.40 on the dollar. So, please join me in boycotting the US equities market (and all the feckless profiteers who run them), and consider shorting it, or at minimum just moving your funds to the nearly risk-free municipal bonds of well-managed states, such as Washington, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Colorado, Vermont, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Utah.

And this brings us to the big one - the federal government. Our government has one job - stand up a political-economy that fulfills our purpose, by regulating the behavior of sectors, institutions, and individuals. But it’s not doing those things, and hasn’t for at least a decade. Right now it’s unashamedly doing the opposite of our purpose.

As such, I have joined the Tax Strike. I’m not holding out for the surface centrist positions of impeaching Trump or abolishing ICE, but the deep center position of adopting a new Constitution that represents the will of the people to effectuate our singular purpose - to create all of us equality, to ensure we have the rites, rights, resources and relationship to realize the fullness of life, liberty, and happiness, and actively shapes a national civic faith and culture of brotherly love (E Pluribus Unum).

The contract is broken. We all know it, and it’s well beyond time to stop honoring it. It’s time to start going to marriage counseling and renew the covenant. If we don’t, say goodbye to everything that is or was good about the nation. We are well within our rights to burn it all down, and will most definitely do so.

In the interim, I will gladly suffer the financial and credit consequences of this decision. I can no longer throw good money after bad. The world is watching.

We Californians are the least represented citizens in the union (after folks in Puerto Rico and DC), so even before this Reich, we were failed by the Constitution. As such, I call on my state to lead the way to a new federal Constitution. I’m not paying California state taxes until California assumes a leadership role in bringing about a new Constitution, something akin to what I articulated in The California Plan.

The intention of these “hard no’s” is to create space, to realize greater integrity and alignment, to liberate time, money, and energy for what does work and what does matter. This means more time for Nature’s God. More time for soulful connection. More time for riding bikes, making love, and playing music. More time to shape and co-lead the National Pilgrimage. More time to read books and write. More time for facilitating Bison Circles, centered on purpose, belonging, wisdom, and impact.

Please let me know in the comments what this brings up for you and if you want help with your establishment uninstall.

Big bison luv:)

Brandon

Some updates:

• I’m heading to DC next month to co-facilitate a gathering of health experts with my dear friend and colleague, Susan Lucci. In light of the official opposition to life, liberty, and happiness, we’re helping folks from various universities and government agencies set priorities to improve the food security, health, and nutrition of our nation. I will scrub my phone, browsing history, and powerwash my Chromebook in advance to ensure a safe return.

• Tomorrow I head to San Jose for a blacksmithing class.