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# Make America Inspired Again
November 02 2026
Written by Liz Amsden.
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ACCORDING TO LIZ -MAIA is a mother figure, the midwife of humanity, appearing in both Greek and Roman mythology.
In Eastern philosophies Maia or Maya can represent the force of constant change, that the physical world cannot be locked in place, of illusion.
Today, the United States desperately needs a mother figure to care for people and country, to inspire change and improvements, to use its power to stimulate more creativity and innovation along the lines of DARPA rejecting goal-specific research, bureaucracy and paperwork in favor of the pure joy of finding exciting prototypes for improving lives, and sharing them generously with Americans and the world.
And, in doing so, welcome back its mantle of big-hearted, open-handed, and beneficial leadership.
For that, we need trailblazers and advocates who can imagine such a future and chart the paths to get there. Who have the courage to accept the risks and reject current biases that favor people who pay to play the system rather than inspiring those with innovative ideas to improve our world. Who build up with vision rather than tearing everything apart.
Who are willing to break away from Wall Street with its 90-day windows and from the two-party American electoral machine with politicians perpetually fixated on running for office. Tactics that concentrate on instant gratification but generate suffering because neither are instant or satisfying to the soul.
Who are willing to commit time and money, to double down on investment and accept personal jeopardy to open the doors to ultimate success. Acknowledging that the low-hanging fruit, the sure things are not as ultimately satisfying as finding new ways and staying the course to ensure proposed changes are both useful and investment in them scalable to help everyone.
In office, innovators should make all government financing contingent on meeting specified benchmarks, not necessarily immediate success but documenting advancement. And, especially for private enterprise, that lackadaisical results while skimming off tax dollars for personal profit spawn stringent consequences, not an automatic write-off.
Doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same unsatisfactory results does not inspire. Newly-found alternatives – solar panels, hello! – can inspire excitement, expand employment, drive consumer spending, and boost the economy, generating taxes for the government to invest in other projects.
To protect the public investment, those in power must review and remove all non-performing tax incentives. Good-bye Big Oil bonanzas!
And require bonds be posted in advance to fully protect urban areas, farms, and the environment from damages caused by companies pursuing profits… no matter how many bribes are offered to politicians and regulators.
No wonder countless numbers of Americans are depressed: between a lying administration, endless wars, an increasingly corrupt president, and the ongoing ICE exhortations to hate thy neighbor.
With the president focused on personal profit, ginning up the racism behind the MAGA movement and giving it full rein, his behavior not only grossly offensive to an increasing number of Americans but to most world leaders, not to mention his breaking of laws, and total disregard of societal norms…
An egoist with no self-restraint, empowering his inner coterie whose sole existence depends on the degree to which they can adulate and fawn to ignore laws and disrespect we-the-people, forming an unquestioning Greek chorus in an American tragedy… It’s astonishing more people aren’t hiding their faces in shame.
But both parties perform in that chorus to a greater or lesser extent.
He may have had other failings, but Obama got one thing right with his commitment to hope; leadership needs to embrace compassion and care for everyone. And unconditional love.
Remember Corinthians 13:13 “these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Moving forward, it must be a team effort; Americans can no longer buy into the Eureka myth and lionize heroic individualists.
There’s a desperate need for the Democrats to work together and construct an Endeavor 2029, one that shows the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for the Trump administration to be the elitist greedy grasping document it is, and provides all of us, everyone living in the United States and the world, with something superlative in exchange.
That takes the insurrectionist nature of the Trump regime seriously, and kicks out its rotting underpinnings. Not to restore what once was, which wasn’t much better, but to birth something new and beautiful in its place.
Trump is trying to rig the election and subvert the results, but he is only hardening people’s hearts and minds.
A 135 years ago, Lincoln wrote in reference to slavery and the Civil War, “Broken eggs can never be mended, and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken.”
Over 72 years later, Joseph Nye Welch famously confronted the life-crushing cruelty of Joe McCarthy with the immortal words “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
From the depths of the struggle for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
All Americans need to confront not only Trump and his minions about the wholesale destruction of lives and the fabric of American society but also their enablers many masquerading as the Democratic Party.
As individuals, perhaps Americans cannot do much more than vote.
But they can choose to vote wisely.
Whether Democrat or Republican, voters must ensure that winning candidates sent to represent them in Washington embody their views and values, are open to listening to their concerns and, when necessary to fulfill the obligations owed to those who put them in office, are willing to take a different tack than what their party leadership dictates.
Within both parties, those with a humanitarian-centered view of where the country should be headed must depose the old guard with their sclerotic and elitist ways, tear down the tenets and the constant denunciation of those with different views and beliefs, those that are contributing to this downward negative spiral that too often spills over into everyday life promoting violence and anger.
Americans need to turn away from MAGA and embrace MAIA. What good is greatness without goodness?
Inspire a positive vision for the future of the United States and a real democracy.
That the country may be reborn in a better day.
***(Liz Amsden** is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at ****.)*
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