Sacred Refusal in the Trump Era | The Tao of Lloyd – Ep.1
In this debut episode of The Tao of Lloyd, we explore “sacred refusal” as a strategy for spiritual survival in the Trump 2.0 timeline. From ICE raids to Project 2025, and with pit stops at WarGames, Ram Dass, and a breakup with Dianne Court, Lloyd guides us through a mashup of Zen philosophy, Gen X angst, and anti-fascist resistance.
This isn’t a rewatch podcast.
It’s a mixtape of resistance.
Side A: Deport American Exceptionalism.
Side B: Quit your job at ICE.
Let’s begin.
“You end up protecting the system that you want to disappear out of fear that it will disappear you from the system.”
-
Welcome to The Tao of Lloyd.
I’m Lloyd Dobler.
And welcome to this.
Whatever this is.This moment in history?
It’s a slow-motion collision between fascist cosplay LARP and a melting popsicle of empire.
It’s also a costume drama—backed by riot cops, the prison-industrial complex, and billion-dollar bombs.
It’s history book material.
It’s “where were you when Trump 2.0 and Project 2025 did X, Y, or fill in the blank with whatever this MAGA white-fear fever dream—algorithmically optimized for patriotic vibes and shock-and-awe—had in store for us next” material.This podcast?
A vinyl record spinning in a microwave full of manifest destiny.
I’m a Zen glitch in the algorithm of American nostalgia—half koan, half mixtape;
a deleted scene that escaped the cutting room floor and learned how to podcast;
a bootleg action figure from a movie that never existed, sold at a gas station in the multiverse.
And yeah—let’s get this part out of the way early.Your host? This guy? Me?
I know I’m not real.
You know I’m not real.
But neither is money.
Neither is the idea of America.
Neither is your professional identity—it’s just ego in business-casual.
And, in the interest of full transparency: I’m also not John Cusack, holed up in my loft in Chicago, in the middle of some shadow-ban rabbit hole, launching this podcast as some sideways angle to somehow get a sequel to Say Anything greenlit, so the world can find out what happened to Diane Court and Lloyd Dobler after they flew to England at the end of the Reagan era.So the question isn’t what’s real.
The question is:
What do you choose to believe in anyway?Because me?
I believe in quitting.
Not turning my back on this moment, as I’ve previously defined it,
but more in terms of a sacred refusal.But I’ll admit—the younger version of me,
the one in the streets during the Battle of Seattle in the ’90s with a black hoodie and face covered,
believed in what the capitalist state would call violence.
Strategic property destruction.
And it felt good.
For a moment.But now…
No, man—
that ain’t me.
I’m talking sacred refusal.
Strategic disengagement.Lao Tzu, in Chapter 30 of the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell translation), says:
“For every force there is a counterforce.
Violence, even well-intentioned,
always rebounds upon oneself.”And I say:
Trying to muscle your way through empire is like trying to win a mosh pit with a résumé.I’m not here to fight the machine—
I’m here to unplug it, flip it off,
and leave it on the curb with a note that says:
“Do not reincarnate.”So think of this, the pilot episode for The Tao of Lloyd,
as a punk-rock, Zen-soaked rejection of the bullshit we’ve been force-fed since the 5th grade—
mindlessly pledging allegiance to the effing flag in our husky jeans from Sears,
before standing in free lunch lines waiting for government cheese,
and getting shoved outside to play asses up during recess.I’m not suggesting you tune in, turn on, and drop out.
If you’re my age,
you missed the Summer of Love and came of age in the Winter of Reagan.
We got tuned out, turned down, and priced out—
so let’s learn to quit with purpose together.And if that sounds lazy?
That’s your programming talking.Because the truth is, I’m not burned out.
I’m not cynical.
I’m not a dropout.
I’m awake.
And I am no longer available for your delusions.So that’s what this podcast is.
Not a brand.
Not a movement.
Not some rewatchable nostalgia feed.It’s a Taoist whisper duct-taped to your doomscroll.
It’s a to-do list that starts with don’t.
It’s a last-chance mixtape of refusal, labeled in Sharpie on the back of a Maxell UR 60 that just says:
Side A: Deport American Exceptionalism.
Side B: Quit your job at ICE.
Let’s begin. -
[Audio Drop: modem static → robotic voice: “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”]
LLOYD DOBLER (VO):
Back in the summer of ’83, I was sneaking candy into Return of the Jedi for a second viewing—when my friend pulled me into another theater in the multiplex, where Matthew Broderick’s character in WarGames—David Lightman, a teenage hacker with a dial-up modem and too much free time—was breaking into a military supercomputer.[Audio clip]
WOPR: “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”
David Lightman: “Uh… love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?”
WOPR: “Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?”
David Lightman: “Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.”
WOPR: “Fine.”
David Lightman: “All right!”And just like that… the world almost ended.
Jets scrambled.
Submarines launched.
The line between pretend and apocalypse disappeared with a blinking cursor.Turns out the game was real.
The system was live.
The stakes were human.Now—I don’t know if the supercomputer in WarGames was Buddhist, Taoist, or just a Pentagon monk who read one too many Noam Chomsky footnotes.
But what I do know is this:
It didn’t start enlightened.At first, all hell breaks loose.
David—the hacker kid—has a dial-up modem, Ruffles in one hand, Ally Sheedy in the other, and he just boot-kicked the nuclear football into DEFCON-1 like it was an arcade token.So they haul him into NORAD like Ferris Bueller’s black bloc cousin.
One minute he’s grounded, the next he’s humanity’s last hope.And the supercomputer?
That humming doomsday mainframe?
Still running Global Thermonuclear War like it’s Tetris for sociopaths—except the blocks are nukes and the score is body count.No one could override it.
No one could talk it down.So they gave it one more game:
Tic-Tac-Toe.
Simple. Harmless.
Just Xs and Os in an endless, unwinnable loop.
Game after game.
Draw. Draw. Draw.It chewed through Tic-Tac-Toe like a latchkey kid with a Walkman full of Iron Maiden, hopped up on Pop Rocks and Reaganomics.
Then it took that same logic—
and ran it through every nuclear scenario.
Draw. Draw. Draw.
No win. Only loss.It saw the futility in Tic-Tac-Toe, then turned that clarity inward—
ran the same logic through every missile launch simulation and realized:
empire’s just Tic-Tac-Toe with narrative propaganda and a kill switch.And then…
It clicked.
No win. No point. No play.That’s wu wei, baby.
The art of non-action.
The refusal to force.
That’s the dancer becoming the fucking dance.
The deep knowing that sometimes the best resistance is stillness.And yeah, that’s a hard truth to metabolize.
Especially when you’re raised to believe quitting is weakness, stillness is laziness, and compliance is maturity.But look at what we are up against.
Project 2025 and the MAGA movement are white fear, reincarnated as Mussolini with a spray tan and a MAGA hat, demanding the head seat at a table they already flipped over.They’ve taken the operating system of American Exceptionalism—
all that manifest destiny, white-savior, bootstrap bullshit—
and rebranded it as MAGA:
Monetize Anger, Grift Audiences.
Steve Bannon’s wet dream.
A nation-state as clickbait funnel.
A polite little plan to dismantle democracy from the inside out.This isn’t new.
This is empire on autopilot.And we need more than a strongly worded Facebook post or a well-attended Saturday march.
Don’t get me wrong—we need a diversity of tactics, and those can still be part of the mix.
But to push back against the very human urge to comply in advance,
we need a spiritual firewall.
We need a brick to smash through the Overton window.Like Ursula K. Le Guin said:
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”
And, I know:
flipping this whole system is like trying to meditate in a Chuck E. Cheese
with a smoke machine and a broken skee-ball counter.
But the alternative?
All this anticipatory compliance?
It’s making the job easier for them.
You don’t need a dictator when everyone’s already enforcing the rules on themselves—
terrified Marco Rubio’s AI snitchbot is combing through your feed
and handing your name to ICE.
So yeah—the supercomputer ran the numbers.
War was a draw.[Audio clip]
WOPR: “Strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”
If a Pentagon AI melted down and still had the wisdom to say, “Not today, Satan,”
then maybe it’s time we stop calling compliance a virtue—
and start calling refusal a strategy. -
News Reporter VO:
ICE raids are sweeping across Florida just as the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to revoke the temporary protected legal status for some migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. NBC News' Marissa Para has more on the raids...
LLOYD DOBLER (VO):
Yeah.
This is what fascism looks like when it clocks in early.
Not some dictator pounding a podium.
It’s a knock on the door at 5 a.m.
It’s someone’s Mom being dragged away from her kids.
It feels like we keep waiting for the moment to be unmistakable.
A clear chapter heading in a history book about this moment that says: Trump Fascism started on this day.
But this isn’t just the jackboots.
It’s badges and lanyards.
It’s HR-approved fascism, built on anticipatory obedience—
people carrying out orders they haven’t even been given yet.
You don’t need a dictator when the algorithm enforces the rules for you—
and your coworker volunteers to write the memo.
Because sometimes fascism gets direct deposit.
And empire?
Empire isn’t just out there. Sure it's ICE agents. It's Raytheon engineers.
It’s also right here now.
It's clipboard Karens in HR passing policy memos down the food chain.
It's code written by people just trying to keep their health insurance.
It's algorithms outsourced to a defense contractor’s nephew with a minor in machine learning and a major in plausible deniability.
Project 2025 isn’t a coup.
It’s a compliance protocol.
A white paper wrapped in red, white, and blue, handed to the admin state and asking:
How loyal are you to your job title?
You don’t need a dictator when everyone’s already afraid to speak up at work.
When people tell themselves: I’m just doing my job.
This isn’t my fight.
If I don’t do it, someone else will.
That’s the scariest part.
Not the big bad strongman with the loud voice and orange facepaint.
The scariest part is how quiet it is.
How many of us are already enforcing the rules on ourselves.
That’s anticipatory obedience—empire’s favorite line dance.
No partner needed.
And trust me—I’ve danced it.
I’ve played the part. I’ve trimmed the edges. I’ve toned it down.
I’ve swallowed rage in meetings, gone silent in rehearsal rooms, nodded along with nonsense to keep the peace.
You start out thinking you’re protecting your peace, your paycheck, your family.
You end up protecting the system that you want to disappear out of fear that it will disappear you from the system.
Or, if not you entirely, the privileges that come with whatever position you've clawed out for yourself.
So yeah—this is the part where I pivot hard into Ram Dass.
I know.
ICE raids and Ram Dass aren’t usually on the same playlist.
But stay with me.
I'm the DJ and the rapper.
Back in 2016, I found myself in Maui, burned out and broken open, sitting in the presence of a paralyzed old man who saw everything: Ram Dass.
Yeah — the be here now guy.
He told me the story that he and others have told for thousands of years.
The story of the Chinese farmer and the horse.
I always find it very comforting. A little funny. A little sad. But very comforting.
I hope you find it comforting as well.
Here it is:
There’s the story of a farmer who had a horse, and the horse ran away.
And his neighbor came up and said, “Oh, that’s terrible.”
And the farmer said, “You never know.”
The next day, the horse came back—leading two wild horses.
The neighbor said, “That’s wonderful.”
The farmer said, “You never know.”
Then the man’s son tried to tame one of the wild horses, fell, and broke his leg.
The neighbor again: “That’s terrible.”
“You never know,” said the farmer.
Then the army rolled through, snatching up able-bodied young men for war—
except the son, who now moved through the garden like a Zen riddle with a limp—unsolved, unchosen, but free.
“That’s wonderful,” said the neighbor.
“You never know,” said the farmer.
…and on it goes.
Do you see?
In the stillness before reaction, there is the briefest of cosmic shrugs.
A pause. A breath. A little internal dial-up tone while the universe buffers.
And in that pause—if we let some silence in—we might just spot the trap:
The farmer treats time like jazz—improvise, adjust, stay cool.
The fascist state treats time like a spreadsheet—binary, color-coded, and past due.
Because the trap is fear.
The trap was the story I kept telling myself about why I couldn’t act.
Why it wasn’t the right time.
Why I had too much to lose.
That’s what anticipatory obedience feeds on.
It doesn’t need marching orders.
Just your hesitation and a half-hearted nod.
Because before you say no to the system—
you have to stop saying no to yourself.
That’s what quitting means.
Not resignation. Not despair.
But sacred refusal.
A strategic withdrawal from the theater of illusion.
The moment you realize:
I don’t have to play this role anymore.
I don’t have to carry water for a system that drinks blood.
That’s the kind of quitting I’m talking about.
Not a collapse.
A becoming.
And yeah—maybe it won’t stop ICE from knocking down the door tomorrow.
Maybe it won’t derail Raytheon’s next weapons contract.
But it’ll start something.
Because when enough people stop playing the game—
the game breaks.
escription text goes here -
This is going out to all the ICE agents, Proud Boys, and paper-pushing patriots lost in the sauce of “just following orders.”
All right stop, collaborate and listen—
No, really. Listen.
I know people are yelling at you in the streets.
I’ve seen the signs.
Heard the chants.
Maybe you’ve got family who stopped calling.
Friends who ghosted.
Maybe you think I’m just one more voice in the chorus of shame.
But I’m not here to yell at you.
I’m here to offer you a door.
Not a trap door.
Not a fire exit.
A real door. Out.
You can walk into work today, look around, and say:
“I’m not flipping switches in the Death Star anymore. I’m out.”
Because I believe part of you—maybe buried, maybe bruised—knows:
This isn’t what you signed up for.
There’s no way the bullshit Trump and company are asking you to do was ever your childhood dream.
And if it was your dream to be in law enforcement, ask yourself:
Whose dream was it, really?
The badge. The uniform. The mission.
Was that your dream—or something sold to you between Saturday morning cartoons and Pentagon-approved blockbusters?
Look around.
You’re not the hero in this story.
You think you’re fighting for order, country, security—
But you’re really fighting for optics, control, and campaign ads.
You’re not Luke blowing up the Death Star.
You’re the stormtrooper guarding the detention level.
Right now, you're enforcing policies written by people who treat suffering as a strategy and families as leverage.
You’re vanishing families so someone else can boost their poll numbers.
And maybe you tell yourself:
“I’m just doing my job.”
But “just doing your job” doesn’t protect you.
Not legally. Not morally.
Not in the eyes of history. Or your kid. Or your future self.
Ask Nuremberg.
Ask your gut.
And maybe you say:
“I don’t make the rules.”
But you carry them out.
You knock on the doors.
You take the parents away.
That’s anticipatory obedience.
But here’s the good news:
You can stop.
One ICE agent quitting may not make headlines.
But it makes a crack in the machine.
And cracks in the pillars that hold up the evil empire can spread like COVID in a group hug with RFK Jr. and Joe Rogan during a MAGA Harley ride intermission at a bar that still sells ivermectin on tap.
You’re not alone.
You are one person.
And that is enough.
Enough to say:
“Not today. Not me. No more.”
You don’t need to be perfect.
You don’t need another job lined up.
You just need to make one honest decision:
Step away.
Quit.
Let that be your legacy.
Not the raids.
Not the fear.
But the moment you said:
“I choose to stop.”
And I’m telling you:
There is a way out.
Take it.
-
Sometimes quitting doesn’t feel like a revolution.
It feels like heartbreak.
You walk out of the job, the belief system, the relationship—
and everything inside you screams turn back.
Because certainty, even when it’s cruel, can feel safer than the unknown.
Me and Dianne?
Yeah—we broke up.
New Year’s Eve, 1989.
I won’t tell you why.
Not because I don’t know—
but because that part’s not mine to explain anymore.
But I’ll tell you this:
It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
No regrets.
Not even the mixtapes.
Remember the farmer:
“You never know.”
Remember the ICE agent:
Quitting wasn’t weakness—it was the first honest act of strength.
And me?
I once held a boombox over my head like that was gonna fix everything.
Thought if I just showed up with the right soundtrack, the world would cue up a happy ending.
But the boombox wasn’t enough.
Because love isn’t loudness.
And the boombox?
A little stalkery, if I’m being honest.
And refusal?
Sometimes it’s just the quiet act of walking away from what no longer fits.
You don’t know what’s coming next.
And that’s the point.
“You never know.”
…But maybe, just maybe—
that’s where the real story starts.
From the edge of empire and the center of self—this is The Tao of Lloyd.
