While the very real possibility of our beloved country becoming an oligarchy looms, and livelihoods for thousands, even millions of federal workers are being disintegrated, we, as a human populace, can always find time to be distracted by popular culture.

This is not a criticism. The human emotional bucket can only hold so much and starts to spill over. We need to cry. We need to rage. We need movies.

Our lives, our perception of our own place in this vast, shaking world, all of it is just too much to contemplate. So we focus on what is in front of us. We bring up anger about the 62 year old actress Deni Moore portraying a desperate woman transformed into a monstrosity losing Best Actress Oscar to a 20-something first-time actress portraying, essentially, a 20-something girl. Yes, we know older women in this society are despised, and older women in Hollywood are doubly despised (remember Harvey Weinstein?) We think we can change this culture by our anger, expressed out loud where Hollywood sees- on social media.

We focus on this as #JusticeforDemi, while other forms on injustice are unfolding around us. Perhaps if we could get the attention of Hollywood. Perhaps if we boycott movies. Perhaps, if we boycott Netflix. Perhaps. But we have no effect on what is going on around us. Our letters, our social media comments, only make us targets. Remember who we are dealing with.

But, after we have exhausted ourselves, it is time to think clearly. We have freedoms and capabilities and powers that cannot be manipulated, if we do not allow it. We can change the way we look at the scenario. Yes, things are falling down all around us. But, we can rebuild it (metaphorically) to be better.

This starts with us. Yes, an Oscar was not awarded. Yes, Demi Moore deserves recognition. Ironically, she is now getting more recognition than if she had quietly accepted an Oscar, which would have been forgotten in the next months. Winners and Losers are a game. We live in a world where winners are only defined as winners if there are losers. There will be other awards, and the Oscars are starting to show a little rust, anyway. Every year, there is some form of controversy about the spectacle. And, it is a spectacle.

We, as movie consumers, can choose to promote Demi Moore’s movie, through our own networks. We can keep her name alive and active, in our social media. We can give her what the Oscars could not—fans, and lots of them. Once we do this, we will start to recognize how we can break away from the Winners vs. Losers Game we have been forced to play all our lives. We can see Winners and other Winners. Some win this, and some win that. No two are the same.

After we feel confident about our abilities to see Winners all around us, we can turn our attention to our country. Our situation depends on a fearful populace—fear of losing money, fear of losing jobs, fear of being taken away in the middle of the night to an undisclosed prison, fear, fear, fear.

We are in a different game, on a larger gameboard. Yes, there are Winners and Losers, and The Game depends on our playing by the rules. The rules require we be afraid, very afraid, to bow down to authority, to fear each other, as well as our own government. But, we can now stop being afraid. There is no failure. There is only change. Loyal federal workers who lose careers out of the whims of a capricious, cruel minion of our current leader, can see this as a form of liberation.

What if the loyal federal workers left? They know they are not valued. They create their own work. They abandon their loyalty. They create new lives elsewhere. They sell everything and leave with their families to somewhere they can feel community. They leave gaps. No teachers for the children of the oligarchy. No restaurant workers, therefore, no restaurants. No subservient secretaries. No cleaners. No grocery stores. No fancy hotels as no workers for them. No vacations on ski slopes, as the mountain lodges are empty and closed. And for the current leader and his cruel minions, there would only be their own company and the company of their subservient women. That will get old very fast.