Well, we are here. An
election year. Shaping up even before the nominations to be decided to be the
most polarizing, dirtiest, unpleasant, important and most critical election in
the history of the nation since…four years ago. And four years before that. And
the one after that will be, though I’m relatively sure both sides of the
spectrum have already made it very clear that if the other side wins, it will
be the last election our country faces as a democracy.
I have been ever so
gingerly the last year weighing in on political issues on my column. I have
done so more out of reluctance than anything else. I’ve learned even before I
started writing here that taking any position
on the political spectrum will make you a pariah in the eyes of the people who
believe just as fervently in the other and that whichever side you take will
always be the wrong one, not only in the eyes of the people who disagree with
you but increasingly even the ones who should agree with you. This can be clear
even when you’re dealing with it on cultural or historical issues; to do in
political ones is, well, it’s actually a zero sum gain at best.
But as my readers
have slowly but gradually built up over the last couple of years, I have
realized something that is wonderful: there is a frustration with the extremism
and there is an audience for such ideas as human decency, compromise and
civilized discourse. It will never be as large as the ones that have the
loudest voices in the room but since they only want to talk to each other
anyway, I feel little loss in not having them among my listeners.
And its not like I’d
be able to ignore what’s going on in Presidential politics even if I were to
write only about pop culture anyway; no matter how much I would like to ignore
it, everything has become a political flashpoint the last decade and to pretend
it’s going to just go away in films and TV shows that are filming as I write
this article would be naïve, something my readers know I am not. Too optimistic,
maybe, but I am a realist – something the extremists on both sides of the
spectrum I am painfully aware are not.
So what will follow
is an occasional series about the political debates that will be intensifying
throughout the next year. I should mention much of it is not so much an
alternative narrative to what you will hear on cable news, mainstream media,
social media and every political fundraising email or text that you’ve been
getting and will increase exponentially with each coming today telling you the apocalypse
is coming in November unless you vote either for Democrats or Republicans
across the board. (I’ve received emails from both parties informing me as such
already.) Rather it will tell you some basic truths that both sides need to
hear but will never learn because they are so firmly ensconced in their
respective bubbles that they consider the slightest variation on their way of
thinking as proof that you are either woke or MAGA, depending on who you’re
talking to at the time.
This series will
have the underlying theme of, though it will not seem so at times, of that old
British sign: “Keep calm and carry on.” For as long as I have been able to
vote, every campaign season I hear from one or both sides that whoever’s in
power will destroy the world as we know if he or she wins or if the other party
takes power away or if it regains it. I honestly think that the other side is
disappointed beyond belief when the country just keeps functioning.
No I’m not saying
things have been fine the last twenty five years – as I said, not naïve. I’m
fully aware of how horrible things have been even though I’ve been luckier than
most of them. I get it, 9/11, two disastrous wars, the financial crisis that
led to what seemed to be an economic collapse, the pandemic, all of the racial
strife, all of the examples of gun violence, January 6th, the Supreme Court’s often foolhardy decisions–
I’ve witnessed them. I’m not denying their existence. To be so would be the act
of a fool, I’m not one of those. I also know all too well the increasing polarization
between are politics, the rise of populism, the rise of hate crimes, the rise
of an unwillingness to even talk with another person of a different political
party. I get it. Things are shitty. They will get worse before they get better
and the idea of it getting better seems impossible.
What I have yet to
see during all this is someone writing the obituary for our nation as a
democracy. What we have been increasingly reminded of is that old saying: “Eternal
vigilance is the prize of liberty.” How
much of today’s problems are due to the fact that for a long time, many
Americans just stopped being vigilant is hard to say. There’s just as much a
reason that so much of today’s hysteria is an overcorrection and as a result we’re
being too vigilant about every single thing that happens. Certainly so much of
cable news and social media, which magnifies everything in a way past
generations did not have the ability to do, has made it seem that way: the last
eight years have certainly amplified that feeling exponentially.
There’s also an argument
that so much of that vigilance has increasingly become fragmented based on identity.
This website itself makes that argument very clear: there are countless columns
at this blog that are directed to bringing ‘into the light’ the offenses very
real or perceived that the country and the world have done to those of a
different race or gender or sexual preference. I won’t deny these complaints
are not warranted given the history of the nation and the world at large But this vigilance is too frequently melded
with a desire to distrust, if not outright hate, ‘the other’ and far too
frequently too ignore them at best and
view them as the enemy at worst. I see this all too often in the rhetoric both
in the articles and the comments section around them.
And I think a
larger problem is the current generation that has been unfairly burdened with
many of these issues but whose reaction is to often be resentful that it’s
their job to be vigilant now. I’ve covered how the rise of the internet and social
media has done much to lead to frustration and impatience among the young who
can not understand why great racial and social changes can’t take place as
easily as asking for them on Siri. There are other factors involved (I’ll get
to them in a different but related series) but they seem irritated that the past
does not have the behaviors and norms that they have grown accustomed too. They
seem angry and upset that people who are older than them can’t understand
things that were invented five minutes ago,
Most of all, democracy takes time, cooperation and is dull when done
properly – three things none of today’s youth could tolerate, considering how
impatient they are if Netflix doesn’t drop their entire series so they can
binge watch it.
One of the biggest
talking points by the left, historians, identity groups, journalists has been
that the American democratic system is unsuited for today. What they don’t get
is that would have been true even if the Founders had done a better job than
they had. No one can see the future; all anyone can do is the best they can
with the information available and hope it works. Yes they did not think to
consider African-American other than as three-fifths a person and had no desire
to have women in politics. They also couldn’t have imagined a transcontinental
railroad, the automobile, the airplane, radio or television, much less the
innovations of the last century. All of these inventions have done as much to lead
to the America we have today. You want to blame Jefferson and Franklin for a
lot of things, but they didn’t invent Fox News or Twitter.
The democratic
experiment has soldiered on through 250 years, through the constant invention,
collapse and reformation of political parties, Civil War and World Wars. We were
the first democracy to have a Presidential election during wartime and we’ve
done it every time since. We’ve had them during economic collapses, we’ve had
them after terrorist attacks. We’ve had election where the results were
disputed and the courts had to intervene. I realize after January 6th
there were no doubt many progressives who would have liked all Republicans to
be branded as traitors and have every elected official who challenged the vote
locked up without trial. That didn’t happen and I imagine many of them are
still bitter that Joe Biden did not do just that. (Trust me, I’ll be dealing
with that as some point.) There have been fights for the suffrage for over a
century and people have been fighting to vote and just as many want it taken
away. That has been going on for two hundred years; I don’t expect to stop any
time soon. But no one has ever seriously said we should just stop having
elections at all.
The thing that has become
harder to deal with in the last decade in particular is increasingly voices on
each side will not accept defeat. One side is increasingly unwilling to concede
defeat when elections over which is troubling. Equally troubling is those on
the other who increasingly argue the only acceptable result is a victory for
their side.
If nothing else
that is the message I want to try and make the underlying theme for this
series: the world will not end if your side loses an election. It may seem this
way with each increasing cycle, the rhetoric keeps getting stronger each time
out. But the world did not end for Democrats on election night of 2016. I imagine
many Americans - regardless of their
party affiliation – were sure it would. But we all got up and kept going. One
way or another, people need to understand that the world will keep going no
matter who wins on election night this year. I realize many of you do not
believe this and will probably tell me so in the comments section. I heard all
of those dire predictions leading up to the 2022 midterms – that even if it wasn’t
the end, it was the beginning of the end. The general reaction of the left was
that you were more disappointed in the results than the Republicans were.
Again I don’t
pretend democracy is flourishing, healthy or even in the best shape. But maybe
I have more faith in its resilience then the doomcryers, pundits and politicians
who can not see beyond the next four years. Or maybe because I’m not secretly
rooting for it as it seems so many of those same people actively seem to be.
(And yes, I am talking to some of you on this blog.) I don’t pretend there will
not be difficult nights ahead tomorrow and next week and next month and all the
way to November. I will be worrying along with you much of the way. But I also
have just enough faith in the system to know the world won’t come to an end
either way.
Oh and one more
small thing. I’m also registered to vote and will be voting in this year’s
election. Doesn’t seem like much I know but based on the attitudes of many of the
loudest voices on this blog, it’s more than most of you are willing to do.
Next article, I
tell you my political leanings. I guarantee you they’re not what most of you
have told me they are.
No comments:
Post a Comment