S2. Chapter 29: a Case for Regime Change in the USA
Is the revolution something you force… or something you stop preventing? Lloyd Dobler makes the case for regime change in the United States—not as a partisan power shift, but as a complete dismantling of the underlying system: billionaires, war economies, corporate media narratives, and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s possible.
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What if “regime change” doesn’t mean what you think it means?
In Chapter 29 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu warns against trying to control or “improve” the world. But what happens when the world feels like it’s on fire?
Featuring reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin, Arundhati Roy, and the uncomfortable truth that real change may begin not with overthrowing governments—but with refusing the stories that sustain them.
This is a Zen-punk meditation on power, participation, and the question no one wants to sit with:
Is the revolution something you force… or something you stop preventing?
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Welcome back, for Chapter 29.
In all the uncertainty of this moment, one thing feels clear to me: the regime running the United States of America has got to go. Cut out. Dismantled. Overthrown. Dumped in the ash bin of history and left there with the other bad ideas that got people killed while cable news called it stability.We need regime change in the USA.
And here’s where I may lose some of you who were nodding along while listening to me in your earbuds on the commute, or on the treadmill at Planet Fitness, or hiding in your car for ten extra minutes before going inside your house: I do not mean swapping out Trump for a more polite manager on the other side if the isle of the same collapsing empire.
Yes, regime change starts with ending the Trump administration. Obviously. But it does not end there. And it is not coming through the ballot box, even if Democrats retake the House, the Senate, and drag out the impeachment playbook like one more performative, ceremonial gesture in the Church of Managed Decline.
When I say regime change in the USA, I’m talking about ending the rule of billionaires, scratch that, ending billionaires full stop; dismantling the war machine, and walking away from a system that has been strip-mining human dignity at home and exporting violence abroad.And electing better Democrats will not do that.
I’m talking about dismantling the entire operating system—Wall Street economics, Pentagon foreign policy, and corporate media narratives.
And electing better Democrats will not do that.
The regime change I’m talking involves refusing the story that this is the best we can do. It's about refusing the idea that empire is inevitable—and beginning the long, messy, human work of building something that doesn’t require exploitation, domination, and permanent war to function.
And electing better Democrats will not do that.
Hi.
I’m Lloyd Dobler… yes, that Lloyd Dobler. Still not buying, processing, or selling anything. And this is the Tao of Lloyd, a podcast where I try working through the ancient wisdom of Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, chapter by chapter, and using it as a sort of spiritual Molotov cocktail to throw at the Overton window so we can, together, usher in a future that does not look like the final installment in the Mad Max franchise.And today’s episode is brought to you by a question I genuinely don’t know how to answer:
Is wu-wei, the Taoist principle of not forcing… of acting without doing, is that still a strategy in the late stage everything shitstorm of Trumplandia?
In Chapter 28 we discussed the interplay and balance of things. Know the male, yet keep to the female. Know the white, yet keep to the black. Yin and Yang.
And it’s hard to see that balance if you open up that dopamine slot machine that is your phone and the algorithm feeds you a gaggle of war-drunk clowns in power treating geopolitics like a cage match sponsored by Raytheon.And into that moment…
I’m supposed to sit here,
read Lao Tzu,
and let my mud settle?Let’s settle in, for our Tao reading and mediation. Clearly I need it. Maybe this will be useful to you as well.
Close your eyes…
And take a breath in through your nose, and sigh it out like you just had to lick Donald Trump's undercarriage after he played 18 holes of golf.Good.
One more deep breath in, breathing in the here and now
And let it go, breathing out the sudden stab of regret for the drunken rage tweet you sent at Stephen Miller at 2 am last night.
It couldn’t be just me.
This is chapter 29 of the Tao Te ChingDo you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.
The world is sacred.
It can’t be improved.If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.There is a time for being ahead, a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion, a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own wayand resides at the center of the circle.
And that was chapter 29 of the Tao Te Ching.
So, before the reading, I was advocating regime change. Full of Yang I was, wasn’t I. Which can be unbecoming without a little Yin to balance things.
But I still think that the operating system, and by that I largely mean the stories we tell ourselves about what is possible, the Overton window that I reference all of the time: our sense of what is possible, the window through which we experience reality: which is a big part of what we would call our consciousness, I was, in this very episode suggesting that we dismantling the entire operating system.And then Chapter 29 shows up, calm as hell, and says:
Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.
The world is sacred.And now I’m stuck.
Because on one hand—
the system is producing violence, inequality, collapse.And on the other—
the Tao is saying:“Your attempt to control it is part of the problem.”
So here’s the real question:
In an age of war, collapse, and nuclear brinkmanship…
is wu-wei wisdom—
or is it complicity?Let that sit.
Let’s not pretend this is easy.Because this is where the teaching either deepens—
or completely falls apart.Does wu-wei mean… do nothing while bombs drop?
No.
And if it does, throw the book out.
But I don’t think that’s what Lao Tzu is saying.
I think he’s saying something much more uncomfortable:
The same consciousness that created the crisis
cannot solve it through force.Not military force.
Not political force.
Not ideological force.Because every time we try to fix the world like it’s a machine—
we tighten something…
and something else breaks.Every force creates a counterforce.
You push—
it pushes back.That’s not strategy.
That’s physics.And here’s the trap:
You cannot defeat domination
with better domination software.That’s been the bipartisan project for decades.
And look where it got us.
So no—
wu-wei is not passivity.But it’s also not control.
It’s something harder:
Action without domination.
Participation without possession.And this is where I have to get honest.
Because part of me wants revolution with a bullhorn.
And I’m not going to lie: I’d love to be on the poster, the one children of the future will have on their walls glorifying this regime change I’m talking about, shouting into that bullhorn. But that kind of white male savoir urge: the need to be the hero is part of the problematic story that needs to be tossed out with this regime.
Speaking of stories: I’d argue that is where it all starts: the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
It was the writer Ursula K LE Guin who said:
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in the art of words.”
This is the kind of thinking that has to fuels the regime change I’m talking about.
Because we hear “regime change” and we think tanks.
We think coups.
We think flags changing hands and the same violence wearing a different uniform.But Le Guin is pointing somewhere quieter.
And honestly… more dangerous.She’s saying the first regime that needs to be overthrown is the story.
The narrative where you tell yourself:
this is inevitable.
this is permanent.
this is just how the world works.
Another writer, Arundhati Roy, in her famous speech speaking to the World Economic Forum on the eve of the US Invasion in Iraq in 2023 when she said
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”So maybe regime change doesn’t start
with overthrowing governments.Maybe it starts with you, me, and someone you forward this podcast to asking ourselves:
Where am I still participating
in the patterns that keep producing this world?And then:
Who else is trying to live differently—
and am I willing to join them?And then:
Maybe the revolution isn’t something you force.
Maybe it’s something you stop preventing.
From the Edge of the Empire and the Center of the Self
This is the Tao of Lloyd.
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