George Packer said this: “Free people will disagree about just about everything. The art of self-government depends on a capacity for argument, persuasion, compromise, and tolerance of disagreement.”
This has been a hard lesson for me to learn. If I look back on my engagement with politics through voting, I remember thinking, “If we can just elect this person, everything will be fine.” Or “If we can just get the courts to approve this issue, everything will be fine.” Or “If Congress will just pass this law, everything will be fine.”
That’s never true, even if we elected “that person,” even if the courts approved “that issue,” even if Congress passed “that law.” In a democracy, nothing is ever final. No issue is permanently resolved. Just look at reproductive rights. Look at the voting rights ensured by the Voting Rights Bill that the Supreme Court has now gutted. Look at the long-established rejection of politicians who blatantly lie—that’s gone.
Democracy is frustrating for that reason. As Packer said, it requires a tolerance of disagreement. I’d like to add that it involves a tolerance for disappointment, for frustration, for anger, for feeling some days like you are just futilely banging your head against a brick wall.
Despite this, I wouldn’t want to live under any other type of government. And I think we need to give ourselves some credit for making this ‘experiment’ last as long as it has. Is it perfect? God, no. Have Americans messed up along the way? Big time.
But Eric Liu reminds us, “What we are doing is hard because it is unprecedented. We are trying to be Planet Earth’s first multiracial, multicultural, and multifaith democratic republic at scale. To those who conclude it’s not possible, I would say it’s too early to say that. And by saying that, you’re dooming the project. The only way to determine whether this project is possible is to act as if it’s possible—-that is, to commit over and over again to become that country we’d like to see.”
My faith in Americans—and in democracy—was restored this last election. Enough voters chose democracy over election denial and wild conspiracy theories and chaos that our experiment continues…until the next election!
One Response
If and when we stop fighting for democracy is when we loose. Until then we should all fight for the right to vote and that our vote is counted fairly.