There is a deep tension felt by the people of this country. We are holding onto the necessities and joys of our daily lives in the presence of heavy government corruption and wrongdoing. There is no balance. We long for the deep breath of relief that could come from governmental choices made with wisdom and mature understanding of where it is we live and who we are in the web of things.

Government should not be in power to manipulate the facts, to control the media, to buy power, to engage in endless war. What sort of people can they be, we wonder, who would behave in that way? Who would create power and wealth for themselves at great cost to others? What spiritual tradition teaches that?

And what kind of people are we who allow the corruption to continue? What is the psychology of the enabler? Is our need to be led so great that we fear the loss of leadership even when it takes this bizarre, often criminal form? Or can there be truth in the view that some of us enable on the off chance that we might rise to share in the wealth and power?

Whatever the cause, it’s time for more and more of us to get over it, to stand up and say ”Enough! No more cooperation with corruption!”

Many of us have continued to hope that the president would find a way to stand up to corporate power; that he would know and respect what the natural world asks of us, that he would care more about the Earth and about the people who live here than about maintaining an awful status quo. We feel anxious that our government is tragically overlooking all we’re learning about what the future needs us to do.

Making war to get what the corporate interests see as their short-term self-interest is looking very adolescent these days. The very policies that corporate leaders are so eager to protect from change are the same ones that are destroying our environment and our economy. And, in the bargain, our wars do a fine job creating new and more determined “terrorists.” It seems we are blindly addicted to violence, carelessly in love with our technologies. Can fortunes not be made from new and constructive technologies?

We know in our hearts that making friends is more effective in reaching our long-term selfinterest. Treating people with violence has been going on for 5,000 years. Have we learned only imitation from that history?

Treating the Earth with violence is an unavoidable result of our wars against people. Drilling and spilling and fracking and blowing the tops off mountains are other kinds of violence against the Earth. Can we still believe we have a right to take what we want from her?

When a nation behaves in a way that is counter to every spiritual tradition, every moral expectation; when that nation creates laws to punish dissent, a very brave few are forced into action as whistle blowers. Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning — these men are modern-day heroes. They deserve our nation’s gratitude and our support.

Thankfully, there is reason to believe that the days of violence and dominance are drawing to a sad and troubled close. Humans do best when they use compassion and cooperation to produce compassion and cooperation. It’s time for the strongest nation to lead with kindness.

So what are we to do with our frustration, our anger, our disbelief and our feelings of powerlessness? We would so much like to admire our leadership but that’s hard to do when they punish those who speak the truth, when they invent laws to take away our right to object, and when they use unmanned drones to kill anyone, anywhere.

There is a growing movement in this country that steps out of the mainstream to create a way of life that values life and love and honor. There is an important shift under way toward a new culture we think will become irresistible.

Beyond the Beltway and the corporate boardroom, the people are taking America back to a sustainable place where we can live with a capital “L.”

We’re joining credit unions and CSAs. We’re creating worker owned co-ops that build jobs we can count on, and even cooperative health insurance plans. We’re going local, where our efforts put us in touch with our neighbors, where the food we eat is grown nearby without chemicals, and where the work we do today is sustainable for the next seven generations and beyond. We’re building a people-centered culture that’s rooted in connection with each other and with the planet.

We invite you to join us in focusing on another kind of power that comes from celebrating the human spirit and leads from imagination and empathy. ROSALIE PAUL lives in Georgetown.