Democracy Is a Marathon, not a Sprint
We need to change our approach if we're going to keep it
The older I get and the more I read about American history, the more I realize the American Experiment has always been messy.
The American colonies weren’t even united in their fight against the British. About 20% of the colonists did not want to split from England. They thought their lives were pretty good as was, and they certainly didn’t want to fight a war to split with the king.
Many of the colonists were uncertain about which way to split. They were just trying to survive life in the colonies. Their concerns were putting food on the table, keeping family members healthy from the next epidemic, and hoping the next battle wasn’t close to their homes. They wanted to avoid encounters with hungry and lonely soldiers who might take advantage of their hospitality.
Even those fighting firmly on the side of the patriots weren’t entirely sure what they were fighting for. They wanted out from underneath the tyranny of a mad king. They wanted the freedom to make their own decisions. They said they didn’t want taxation without representation. But what kind of government could possibly unite 13 distinct colonies with their own identities and economies?
It would take a failed Articles of Confederation in 1777 and then a long fight to ratify the Constitution with ten immediate amendments in 1788, before our Founding Fathers had a tiny inkling of what a new form of government meant for citizens. It would take a Civil War seventy years later before citizenship was given to all American citizens, and even longer before the people who were here first were seen as genuine citizens worthy of recognition and protection.
We have monuments and books and museums and even musicals that highlight all the good in America, and yet our nearly 250-year history is messy, an experiment that has sent people back into the political lab over and over again.
After all, Benjamin Franklin warned we had been given a Republic, if we could keep it.
It appears we’re once again in the “if we can keep it” part of the American Experiment cycle.
There has been a lot of post-mortem discussion about what went wrong in the 2024 election, but as usually happens when someone is living through unprecedented times, it will take years and possibly decades before we fully understand what went wrong and why. And while it is fair to say we don’t have time to take the time to figure it out, it is still important for us to take a beat and have conversations with the intention of moving forward instead of running in circles. The harsh truth is that even if MAGA had suffered a significant defeat in November 2024, we would still have a lot of work to do.
Where should we start these conversations?
Every Elected Position Matters
On Election Day, I asked which of my few seniors had voted. One student who wasn’t old enough to vote said, “I mean, who cares about races like coroner?”
I responded, “You do. If you lose a loved one in a tragic way, you care about who the coroner is.”
And that was my mini-civics lesson in the middle of a Monsters and Monstrous literature course.
I didn’t vote in my first election until I was 21. Even though I had taken the requisite American Government class my senior year and then took another civics course as a college student, I somehow missed the memo that election cycles were about more than just the president of the United States.
When my husband and I voted in 2004, we lived in northwest Indiana. Because of our proximity to Chicago, all we ever saw on television were political ads for Illinois politicians. It’s super embarrassing now, but I didn't even know who was running for Indiana governor that year. And because I had been raised a good conservative, I just voted Republican down-ballot for races I didn’t know and didn’t understand.
I’ve learned a great deal in the last two decades to show me just how wrong I was in my approach to voting, but it is an attitude far too many people hold. After all, those who stayed home in 2024 didn’t just hand over the election to Donald Trump, they also gave up their voice in the local politics that have far greater impact on their daily lives.
In the
episode, “Ballot Measures from Abortion to Property Tax,” Beth Silvers said, “We must have better state legislatures if we want to feel happier about the conditions we live in…That’s where it is.” Many of us may be unhappy and even scared about what the next four years hold, but we are a democratic republic. Our government structure is far too complicated to completely dismantle in four years. Seriously damage? Yes. But completely destroy? No. And that is because we still hold a lot of power locally. Join your local political organizations and get to work. Progress historically moves up the political food chain, not down.Citizens, Not Consumers
I am not an anti-capitalist. There are a lot of things about Capitalism I like and I still think it’s the best in a series of imperfect economic systems.
But I will also readily admit that American Capitalism is toxic and has gotten completely out of control.
I’m not even talking about the billionaires with too much money who do not meaningfully contribute to society. I’m talking about us. I’m talking about our need for new stuff all the time. I’m talking about our desire to go out and spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on the day after Thanksgiving because we’ve become convinced that we “need” that new item to replace the old item that still works.
Unfortunately, that attitude has attached itself to our politics.
I have heard Sarah Steward Holland repeatedly say on
that we’re citizens, not consumers. The more I hear her say it, the more I see it in the discussions I see online and the attitudes from loved ones who are willing to throw away their own ethics and moral code to gain a perceived political “win.”We’ve shoved aside JFK’s directive to “ask not what your country can do for you.” Instead we only see what we can get out of our politicians. If we aren’t getting something from them, then they have to go. We cheer them on when they hurt the people we don’t like, forgetting that society is interdependent and those policies could very well hurt us down the line. We see our taxes as only worthwhile if they are directly helping us. We need to start changing how we see our roles in our communities if we want to see changes at the top.
End Purity Politics
We have to end purity politics, period. No politician can be all the things for all the people. They can be some of the things for all the people. They can be most of the things for most of the people most of the time. And sometimes it is important that they be most of the things for some of the most vulnerable people because those individuals need someone to speak for them.
I would argue that as long as their best qualities aren’t that they hate the same people you do, being only some of those things you need from a politician is a good enough reason to vote for them, especially if their opponent is unqualified or unfit for the office.
Politicians are human beings. They are flawed. They will come up short. They have different lived experiences. They might see certain issues differently because they also contain multitudes. It is perfectly reasonable to hold our elected officials accountable for moral and legal shortcomings. They should be held accountable when they act as if the law or human decency is beneath them. But we need to stop holding purity litmus tests for those governing and respresenting us in the highest offices. We are electing leaders who are charged with looking out for the interests of all of their constituents and that is going to look different in different parts of the country.
Big Changes Take Time to Build
Shortly after my husband and I moved to the south side of Indianapolis for the first time (2005), the town of Greenwood, where we did most of our shopping and restaurant going, outlawed smoking in public spaces. And while smoking in public spaces did not become illegal in Indianapolis until 2012, when it was outlawed in Indiana, all of the places we frequented on the south side did ban it well before then because they were competing against other places of businesses that had already banned it. When we moved to Fort Wayne in 2010, we still didn’t have to deal with smoke-filled establishments because the city banned it in 2007. While my husband and I grew up walking into smoke clouds everywhere we went, our children, born in 2009 and 2011, have never known a world where smoke-filled rooms were even a consideration.
We both lived in Michigan in 1985 when wearing a seatbelt became mandatory. Drinking and driving did not become illegal until 1988. And yet I honestly don’t remember a world where I didn’t know I had to wear a seatbelt and I didn’t understand the dangers of drinking and driving.
There are some changes that take forever to be realized, but once they are realized, going back seems unthinkable. But if you look back at footage from before these laws went into place, people are losing their minds over “freedoms” being taken away from them.
Big changes can take a lot of time to build, but eventually they pass a tipping point (thanks for the term, Malcolm Gladwell) and the avalanche of change happens.
When Kamala Harris had her town hall interview with Charlamagne Tha God, she said, “You can't let anybody take you out of the game by not voting. The solutions are not gonna just happen overnight ... the things that we want and are prepared to fight for won't happen if we're not active and don't participate.” Ending slavery took a war. Women’s suffrage took nearly a century. The Civil Rights Act took decades to form and get passed. With momentum we can speed up the timeline, but nothing happens without work. Nothing happens without time and persuasion and reaching that tipping point.
Because change is hard, and people have to see the benefits of making those changes before we start to experience an avalanche of change that makes all of our lives better. We are going to have to keep that in mind as we start the long, hard process of deprogramming our loved ones, which has been made even more difficult thanks to the outcome of the 2024 election. What we are experiencing now is severe backlash to the progress of the early 21st century. But every time our country has fought past severe backlash (like the end of Reconstruction), we have eventually come out stronger. We can make progress, but we have to work together to do so.
Note: if you’re looking for someone to follow regarding what it takes to make progress, especially in rural and/or red spaces, start following and read her Substack. She is honest, inspirational, and full of good ideas for where to start.
So now what?
In the end, this is my request: I don’t want to go back. It’s one thing to use the past to inform our present. It’s a completely different thing to keep rehashing our past mistakes over and over again. During Kamala Harris’ campaign, she brought in the slogan, “We’re not going back,” and I want that to be true. I want to move forward into a better future. Right now, there are days it feels impossible. There are moments I wonder if we are just headed down a darker road from which we will never emerge. But then I remember my lessons from history. They didn’t just provide warnings for this particular moment, they also provide a roadmap for how to get out.
We just need to take the first steps.
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Thank you for your voice! Great analysis of things we must do better. Happy holidays to you and your family!