We finish Falter today in Environmental Ethics. It would be nice to think we’re all about to finish faltering, as a democratic nation under siege of pandemic, political chaos, and climate denial/indifference. For a brief while yesterday morning, queuing to vote in the pleasant middle Tennessee sunshine outside the Bellevue branch of the Metro Public Library, I believed.
The simple act of casting a ballot feels constructive and empowering, the very opposite of faltering. It feels like moving forward. The feeling would linger if only we could lose the electoral college that effectively denies some of us proportionate representation. Ranked-choice voting in the primaries would be good too.
But never mind, for now. Yesterday was all about the invigorating sense of democratic dignity that free people expressing their will in free and fair elections still, for now, get to enjoy in this country. Conjuring Chris Stevens’ invocation of Einstein (vs. Randian selfishness) from the memory vault yesterday I’ve also recalled his paean to democracy in little (fictional) Cicely, Alaska. “You see, the act of voting is in itself the
defining moment.”
My friends, today when I look out over Cicely, I see not a town, but a nation’s history written in miniature…we exterminated untold indigenous cultures and enslaved generations of Africans. We basically stained our star-spangled banner with a host of sins that can never be washed clean. But today, we’re here to celebrate the glorious aspects of our past. A tribute to a nation of free people, the country that Whitman exalted. (reading) “The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives and legislators, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.” I’ve never been so proud to be a Cicelian. I must go out now and fill my lungs with the deep clean air of democracy. Northern Exposure Season 3, Episode 15-“Democracy in America”
A lung-full of freedom is bracing. Breathe deep. Vote. Resist democracy’s destabilizers and dismantlers while you can. The great game of self-governance has never in my lifetime felt so imperiled, or more worth fighting for.
But as Bill McKibben acknowledges in Falter, resistance comes at a cost. “I know so many people who have given over the prime of their lives to this fight.” But he also knows “many people who’ve found their lives in this work, in burgeoning movements that are full of love and friendship.” The tired cliche about finding meaning and purpose in causes larger than oneself is not wrong, the vivifying and ennobling benefits of personal and shared commitment are real. Resistance may be frustrating and may finally fail, but it’s not futile. Remember Grantland Rice, a game well-played is its own reward. You don’t have to fly the “W” to be a winner at life.
Still, though, to lose democracy, humanity, and Gaia to indifference and inattention would be tragic and stupid. Resisting the apathy and amused-to-death distraction that permit the plutocrats to plunder the planet for personal profit, is in that light not radical or subversive. You might even call it
conservatism, if that word weren’t already so tainted, to want and work for “a world where people are connected to the past and future (and to one another) instead of turned into obsolete software.” Solidarity simply means the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Ask the Scandinavians, who consistently top the World Happiness Report. In 2018 the USA was #18 on that list. If we say we believe in humanity that should embarrass us... (Up@dawn Oct '20,
continues)
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