Make Hope Great Again
Tomorrow is the big day. Seriously, it could well define this world for generations to come, or at least for the next 10-20 years. The results of this American election have consequences far greater than we understand or can perhaps even contain. A president and a political party that refuses to recognize the great institutions of democracy could, in effect, erase generations of social and cultural memory. And maybe that’s what they want – to wipe history from our minds and be confronted with just a never-ending present in which nothing Is certain, everything is up for sale, and morality is, well, of no consequence. The threat to the country’s future is so real that the Economist published one of its strongest statements ever:
We have known of other nations that made similar trade-offs: the past for loss of memory, freedom of conscience for flouting of law, humanity for hubris, the moral for the material. But we know them as authoritarian, places where power was so concentrated that to fight it meant the loss of life itself, or at the least the ability to live it as citizens wished it to be. In fact, we could run them off at will – Cambodia, Russia, China, Chile, North Korea.
“While one can debate the merits of Trump's tax cuts, judicial appointments, and other partisan wins, he has repeatedly desecrated the values, principles and practices that made America a haven for its own people and a beacon to the world ... In this election America faces a fateful choice. At stake is the nature of its democracy. One path leads to a fractious, personalised rule, dominated by a head of state who scorns decency and truth. ... In his first term, he has been a destructive president. He would start his second affirmed in all his worst instincts."
But America? Really? Weren’t Western democracies supposed to be on-guard against such things.
The present drama started only a few years ago, where it was something of a moral or spiritual hint that something was wrong. Women were objects, immigrants were dangerous, greed was lauded, politics was plunder, and fabrications were everywhere. People had trouble imagining a national leader so bent on self-aggrandizement and the humiliation of others, but nevertheless believed that politics and democracy would perform the equivalent t of a national root canal and right the nation.
When after a couple of years of it became apparent that right and wrong were really inconsequential to the government, and even officially instigated opposition like legal cases or impeachment seemed insufficient. The moorings of democracy had come loose. We’d never seen anything like it before, kind of totalitarianism in the supposed land of the free. It didn’t fit in our minds, but the world watched, feeling helpless.
The threat only became real and actual to us when an invisible virus took the world in its grasp and brought us low. It took America too, and suddenly in that moment, what politics seemed unable to do – slay the demagogue – that unseen foe forged a narrow opening of fate. A reenergized democracy snuck through and people began to glimpse and alternate ending, one in which they might play a part. Fear became faith. Horror transcended into hope. Politics became principled again. It wasn’t just about us anymore but all Americans, and as the pandemic cut through America like a scythe in harvest time, citizens and organizations began uttering long forgotten phrases, like e pluribus unum, as if a new future, an alternative possibility, could be in the offing.
Everything became about one word: make. One roaring voice, filled with rage, used it as the opening of his catch phrase – Make America Great Again. But a growing number began saying that we could make a better, more inclusive and equitable future. It energized them enough to bring them out early to the voting booths in great enough numbers that there was the growing admission that something was up – something new, unknown but promising, was happening across the country. Truth, transparency and trust suddenly gained legs and walked, maybe even marched, to the greatest place of rebuttal against tyranny: the voting booth. This was every democracy’s sacred shrine – nothing great like a statue or a capitol, but a small box in which resided the glory of democracy.
America is asking democracy to forgive it once again for becoming so distracted and perhaps even resentful, to give a new birth of freedom, so that history might once again stumble back onto the progressive pathway. It’s not about Republican or Democrat, but the ability of citizens to find a way forward together without burning all before them.
Perhaps the outcome could prove to be the opposite of what we wish for, but in this brief moment where a non-violent revolution seems possible, we latch on to a different hope and renewed possibility, as Americans envision once again their better selves.