America in ‘24: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

Francis Scott Key watches bombs bursting in air over Ft. McHenry during the War of 1812.

For most* of us, being an American is still winning life’s lottery. Unemployment is at historic lows. Take-home pay is rising. We are the home to incredible breakthroughs in medicine and technology. What happens here is still watched (and wanted) by the rest of the world. In human history, no greater amount of wealth, innovation, and freedom has occurred like it has in the last century of the United States.

*Please don’t write that I’m ignoring fundamental problems; I’m not ignoring them, I’m highlighting why none of them get solved if November goes the wrong way.

Yes, we’re all upset, all the time. Call it polarization, the ennui of empire, the stretching and straining of demographic and economic disruption, or late-onset weariness of a century playing Atlas to the rest of the globe.

Perhaps we’re still in collective mourning over a pandemic that killed 1,000,000 of our fellow Americans and sickened millions more; disrupting the economy, our kids, and the world in a way that few of us could have imagined and none of us will ever forget.

We find ourselves, as our forebears did, in an eddy of our own time. History ebbs and flows around us. Think about America’s founders. Their wisdom was forgotten almost as soon as they were gone, if not before. Their devil’s bargain came due with an unimaginable butcher’s bill: The Civil War.

The fight of today is about everything and one thing. It has its own meaning for all of us, and for each of us on our own. Democracy doesn’t mean you get everything you want. It means you get to make your argument. So it’s a fight to shrink the margins among us, and close the gaps between us. It’s not just about policy, though if there’s any you care about, add them to the list, but the idea that we can even argue coherently, and collectively about who we are and where we’re going.

It’s a battle to restore the American conversation.

Those that call for a ‘national divorce’ are either willfully or blissfully ignorant of what such a statement means. We’ve seen it. We’ve lived it. Half a million Americans gave their lives for it. And while we may ridicule those same chicken hawks, we must not fall into the trap of accelerating our own loveless, resentful national relationship.

We can and will disagree with some of our countrymen: On politics, on policy, on culture, even on what it means to be “an American.” Those out of bounds with decency, democracy, and reality should be called out. Leaders that stoke the fires of anger must be defeated at the ballot box.

History tells us when the talking stops, we hear not silence, but violence. When we’ve run out of words, ideas, and ideals, the darkness begins its steady march over us. When right no longer has a voice, the jackals of might howl at the moon. Nature abhors a vacuum, those that would end the American experiment as we’ve known it for 250 years stand ready to occupy it.

We Few, We Happy Few…

The campaign of the next six months will see the most amount of money and technology applied to politics in human history. Conversely, that money and those gizmos generate only a short-term return on investment. Too much noise, from too many places, from too many people a voter doesn’t know will overload their brains; like walking through an art gallery for more than 45 minutes. There’s no cognitive space left.

Therefore, Campaign 2024 will also be a return to the old-fashioned. Battalions of field organizers across the country will knock on doors, call and text cell phones, and do all they can to first persuade, then turn out their universe of voters.

As Al Murray and James Holland describe in their excellent World War II podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk, the fight for Italy in 1944 was elemental. Too cloudy to fly, too muddy to for tanks, too rainy to shoot straight. It came down to individuals doing their individual part; perhaps for their God, or their country, but most likely for the men to their left and right.

This fight, too, will come down to the most basic of our acts. Every state, every county, every zip code and precinct will matter six months hence. We must create the strategy, identify our voters, convince them of our cause, and ultimately turn them out when the time comes. There are plenty of intellectual aspects to the fight. Ultimately, we must win the hearts and then the heads of those that will save democracy: Individual citizens.

More than 150 million Americans will vote in November. Of that number, precious few will work on a campaign, ring a door bell, set out chairs at a polling place, or register a voter. Those of us daily in the fight should wear our participation, our efforts, our endurance, our belief, as a badge of honor. We are lucky to be in this place, in this time, in the fight for our time.

This fight will create advocates out of the apathetic, and heroes out of field mice. Even the occasional activist will blossom from his younger days as simply a political hack. If you’re reading this, you’re already among us. If you know someone is waiting to be called, ring them up, get them off the couch. There are no inconsequential roles to play.

Yes, the fight for our country is colossal. We can, will, and must grow to meet the challenge.

If we’re successful in November, our reward will be more work.

If not, the fight will go on, uncertainly, in smaller places and spaces, and for much, much longer.

We cannot trade agency for the arbitrary.

We cannot trade the rule of law for the ego, whim, and mood of one man.

We cannot allow America, the uncompleted work, to become just lines on a map; a great nation on its way to terminal decline.

We cannot trade being actors for being observers.

We must never stay quiet to avoid trouble when this moment demands that we stand up and speak out.

There is too much to be done, too much opportunity, too much to put right, too much to look forward to. We must give everything we can while we can. To do otherwise is to betray ourselves and our birthright.