Mark Green's Atheopaganism Blog

The return of Donald Trump and his appalling gang of fascistic cronies to power will have worldwide impacts. There no other way to put this: those of us with decent, kind and life-affirming values are decidedly out of power in the United States as of January 20, 2025, and the likely environmental, human and economic harm that will result both domestically and internationally cannot be understated.

Atheopaganism has always been transgressive. Our relationship with the Overculture has always been one of pushing back on core values like the idea of the “inherent sinfulness” of humanity, our exploitative relationship with our fellow creatures and the fabric of life on Earth, and the cruel bigotries that the Overculture propagates…not to mention the simple proposition that a supernatural being is running the Universe.

We embrace marginalized people and ways of living as valid and worthy, while Trump’s gang centers whiteness and cis heterosexuality. We hold the Earth as sacred, while a top priority for them is to drill as much oil and gas as possible on our public lands.

Now, the most powerful nation on Earth is going to be driven by the exact antithesis of Atheopagan values. Cruelty, bigotry, destruction of past progress, and rapine of the environment are core values for the Trump gang.

Worse, they have announced their intention to go after those who oppose them, using the legal apparatus of the nation and even the military against the American people.

So what do those of us who live here do?

We persist and resist.

First: persist. If you are a part of a vulnerable population, hunker down, build community to support you, and stay safe. There is no shame in going quiet to weather the coming storm. Do what you can while keeping yourself and your people secure.

If you, like me, are positioned and/or privileged such that you can or must speak out and act–I lead a conservation organization, so I can’t very well not–I urge you to build networks of support if you don’t already have them and be strategic. There are going to be a slew of terrible policies implemented in the coming years, and you can’t fight all of them. Pick a set of battles you can manage, and fight those.

At first, it will probably seem that the Trump administration won’t care about public opinion. They have seized power in all three branches of government and will take this as license to carry out their draconian initiatives. But as it dawns on many Americans that these people really are fanatical and unbalanced, opinion will begin to shift and they will have to pay more attention.

There will come a day when this will be seen as a terribly dark period in American history, and those who facilitated and colluded with it will reap history’s scorn. But for today, we have to do what we can to keep our values alive and to save as much and as many as can be saved.

I won’t lie: this is a terrible development for this nation and for the world–particularly the world of democracies.

People survived the 1930s and 40s. We can survive this.