To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
Voiceover - 00:00:14:
Welcome to Revolutionary Optimism. Living at this time in history, we are challenged with the convergence of crises that is affecting our daily lives. Issues like economic hardship, a teetering democracy, hatred racism, and the worsening climate emergency have left many people in the United States and around the world feeling more despair than ever. To respond to the challenging times we're living through, physician, humanitarian, and social justice advocate, Dr. Paul Zeitz, has identified revolutionary optimism as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a revolutionary optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, hashtag Unify with Others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace. Always keeping love at the center. On this special episode of the Emergency Opportunity Podcast, or EOP, Dr. Zeitz calls for a peaceful revolution with love at the center that aims for constitutional transformation for our collective repair, justice, and peace. Dr. Zeitz succinctly provides his diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of the dying heart of the United States, and he invites you to help transform our country by building hashtag UnifyUSA into an authentic people's movement to reimagine, redesign, and recreate the social, economic, and political systems of the United States and the world. At its core, hashtag Unify is driven by a simple yet profound principle, love at the center. This guiding principle serves as a compass for a rapidly expanding political movement, dedicated to repairing what's broken, seeking justice where it's long overdue, and living on the path of love to foster peace within ourselves, in our families, communities, and beyond. Today, Dr. Paul Zeitz is introducing hashtag UnifyUSA, a groundbreaking movement that has the potential for profound transformation in our social, economic, and political systems. Here's Dr. Zeitz with more.
Dr. Paul - 00:02:19:
Dear friends in the United States and around the world, greetings from Washington, D.C. I feel humbled and honored to share this message with you today from my heart to your hearts. I am speaking to you today in the mode of an emergency opportunity podcast in EOP. As a father, a grandfather, physician, person of faith, and as a revolutionary optimist, I am calling for all justice-hearted people to rise up and support a peaceful revolution to put love at the center of our lives, our democracy, and our social, economic, and political systems. I am here to invite you to help build together, hashtag Unify USA, as a new inclusive and healing movement that could fill a niche that is not existing right now to drive forward for constitutional renewal so that we can actually create the United States as a more perfect union. In its next phase of our experience. Perhaps the crises that we're facing right now in our democracy, in our climate emergency, in the economic inequality, in the hatred racism that is raging through our hearts and country, perhaps these crises are the evolutionary spark. That can create the possibility for a big transformational, revolutionary leap in how the United States and humanity organizes our social, economic, and political systems. So let me start with my diagnostic review about the dying heart of the United States. A large number of our fellow people living around the United States are living in an exhausted state of fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and despair. The economic challenge of just daily survival, paying the rent, buying food, paying medical bills, paying off student loans, and more challenges is draining the energy and the sap out of so many of us. I'm angry about this because I believe we can do better. The U.S. Is facing urgent, complex, and intensifying local, national, and global polycrisis, and we are failing to respond. Hate, greed, racism, patriarchy. Is spreading around the world, increasing. Authoritarian despotism, neo-fascism is emerging here in the United States and around the world. The climate emergency is rapidly accelerating, and our response is impotent and unacceptable anymore. We see the oppression of women and other people of gender diversity. All these polycrisis are the result of what I am calling constitutional rot. The U.S. Constitution was written in 1787. 236 years ago today. And I just want to share with you the opening preamble as was written at that time as the intention of that document that was created. It says, We the people of the United States. In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America. Well, I hope you can see that we're very far away from that original intention. And it's not completely surprising. This document was written by white male oligarchs, landowners, who designed the Constitution to ensure that there was a minority ruling the people. They wanted to protect their economic interests. They wanted to make sure that they could make slavery legal. And they wanted to make sure that their pockets got filled. They were greed-driven, most of them. And so I think what we are seeing now after 236 years of a greed driven US constitution. That it's still working like a charm for oppressing people, economically, oppressing women, and oppressing people of color. Another sign of constitutional rot is the threat of government shutdowns, which we've experienced this fall, and we'll continue to experience in this broken constitutional order. This will lead to further difficulties for people in the United States that are already struggling. They won't be able to get their food. They won't be able to get health care. Veterans won't get their benefits. Soldiers will be complicated to get their payments. This is a horrendous development, and I think every government leader, both Democratic and Republican. Have to take responsibility. For this tragic failure. Of basic governance. In addition to that, we have candidates for president in the upcoming 2024 election, which are more evidence of constitutional right. We have an intractable battle between the Democrats and the Republicans, when most Americans, including me, would like to see us come together and develop and implement common sense solutions. President Trump, who was impeached twice, who's under investigation and indictment, and who clearly incited a insurrection at our U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He is ineligible to run for president as far as I'm concerned. And many other people agree with me. We cannot let this man and his movement run our government. We have to stop it at all costs. And this is because Donald Trump is a symptom of the constitutional right. He didn't create these environments where he could thrive. It's the Constitution that allows a person that spews hatred, that violates his oath on the Constitution over and over again to still be eligible to run for president. Can you believe that? And then I want to honor the presidency of Joe Biden. And I also want to acknowledge that he has broken his promise. In Gettysburg during the campaign, he said he was going to heal the soul of America. Look at what it is today. We're fighting, we're divided. The government shut down. The economy is hurting. People are imprisoned all over the country needlessly. In torturous conditions. And President Biden also broke his promise on addressing the existential threat of the climate emergency. He committed in his campaign to no drilling on federal lands. And in two years and 10 months of his presidency, he's provided more permits than Donald Trump did in his whole four years. We can't continue on in this way anymore. So that's my diagnosis of the situation of constitutional rot that we're living in. And as a physician and a person that studies politics, there is opportunity for trans, they call it the cycles of constitutional time. When you go through a renewal and a transformation of the constitution, and then at some point it gets rotten and you have to do that again. So I think we're on the cusp of the enabling conditions for a constitutional renewal and transformation. And yes, this is a historic crossroads for the United States of America. And I believe that we are the ones and we have the sacred opportunity and responsibility to take this bold leap forward. We can recreate our constitutional guiding document and replace greed, which is killing the heart of America, with love, by putting love at the center. And I invite you to ask the question. What would it look like if you put love at the center? Of everything you did. And if our government used that same question in terms of determining how it would operate. We are at a crossroads. We have to choose either repair or destruction. And I'm very excited to offer to you my treatment plan, which is the launch of Unify USA, which is a new, newly forming movement in the United States. And it could be replicated around the world. That will bring together people of all types, all Americans who are patriotic, who are principled, who are justice-hearted. Can join UnifyUSA. And our idea is that we can start with a call for constitutional amendments. For renewal and transformation of the United States. So I invite everyone in the United States to please send me your ideas for constitutional amendments for the renewal and transformation of the United States. This is a call for all people, all classes, all faiths, all ages, all races, all genders, all political parties. As together we are one people dedicated to liberty and justice for all. So the idea is that if we can mobilize ourselves, then in early June 2024, we can come together and participate in a national people's convention. And we can review the proposed amendments and we can see how to update or transform the document that we're living under now that is leaving us in this situation that we're in. So I invite you to rise up, to mobilize, listen, take action, march, and support or participate in peaceful civil disobedience to interrupt and disrupt the status quo. And then imagine and co-create together. How we can work together. To create a more perfect union. So now I'd like to share with you a missive that I wrote about revolutionary optimism. From my heart to your hearts. Love is the force of all life and all that exists. We belong in a stance of righteousness. Interlocking our hearts. Fast with compassion. Feeling joy in being deployed. We are chanting our truce. Demanding bold action. We are putting love at the center. With her every step and every breath. We are living the path of love. We are standing bravely with loving defiance. We choose love. A trim tab of love. In the face of opposition. In the eye of the sniper's rifle. In the face of police forces, in the face of arrest, torture, and detention. In the face of resistance. In the face of derision. In the face of denial, we choose justice. We stand for repair over destruction. We are sparking a peaceful revolution. We are igniting with love within us, between us, and all around us. We are marching for our collective repair, justice and peace. Feeling joy in being deployed. We are committed to being all in for all life. We are building sacred community. We are doing it now. When? Now, now. Messengers of love, peacefully unite. We are rising. We are demonstrating. We are marching. We are synchronizing. We are uniting. We are igniting the spark of humanity. In honor of our ancestors. Ourselves. Our children. Grandchildren. All future generations. We are liberating ourselves. Feeling joy in being deployed. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Life. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We are braver angels. Listening first. Aiming for a more perfect union. Surfing the winds of renewal and transformation, feeling joy. Amidst the rising tides of grief and terror. Our tears reveal suffering underway. And they flow for all that is to come. Feeling clear and safe. We are in this together as one. The boundaries of separateness are dissipating. All people. All classes. All face. All ages, all races, all genders. As together we are one people. Dedicated to liberty and justice for all. E pluribus unum. Wow! Radical amazement in serving as healers of love. Souls unifying, willing to sacrifice. Willing to live. And willing to die. Your love is as fierce as death. All love. Loving all, serving all. Our victory, our victory is in sight. It's go time, now now. Feeling boundless joy, we choose peace. Thank you and have a great week.
Voiceover - 00:17:08:
Are you ready to be part of a peaceful revolution? To learn more about revolutionary optimism, please visit drpaulzeitz.org. To explore building hashtag, Unify USA, please visit unifymovements.org. If you like this show, be sure to follow on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. Revolutionary Optimism, transforming the world one episode at a time.