A few days before November 5, I opined on social media that democracy isn’t a crockpot – you can’t set it and forget it. It’s more like a risotto: something special and quite wonderful, but needing constant attention unless you want it to turn mushy or burn altogether.
The outcome of the election seemed to reinforce this notion. I guess it would be more accurate to refer to the November 5 elections, as turnout data indicates that every county in the United States, from California to Colorado to New York, moved rightward. The national popular vote bore this out, as did the results of many contests for the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate, and myriad state and local races.
By the time the sun rose on November 6, it was clear that the right had risen well. We’d failed to stir the risotto; now it was sticky as all hell.
A constellation of signals throughout the long summer and fall of 2024 foretold this. A month before Joe Biden left the race, the National Low-Income Housing Coalition’s “Out of Reach” report indicated (again) that no family in any county in the country earning a minimum wage can afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. As of Election Day, Americans held $1,700,000,000,000 in credit card debt. Just in time for the holidays, the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development announced what many residents and local leaders already felt to be the case: unsheltered homelessness had exploded on our cities’ streets, increasing 18% since last year.
Wherever the hierarchy of needs has cracks in its base, authoritarianism finds its way in. As a self-made billionaire commodities trader once told me in passing, “When people get hungry, they get grouchy,” and anyone who finds their basic needs aren’t consistently met will be remarkably open to new ideas and modes of governing. Never mind that the authoritarian’s actual policies can’t and won’t do that – and will almost certainly make things much worse.
Making the case that a liberal economic order that abides by the rule of law can actually improve people’s lives won’t be easy or quick. This is the work of generations, not election cycles. We’ve got a lot of scorched risotto to scrape off the bottom of the pan.
Still, I think there are a few steps that each of us can take, wherever we are, in whatever way we can, toward progress. These may not be new things to do as they are old practices to honor and ideas about one another to remember.
- Remind people that politics is no longer right and left – it’s up and down. Every available piece of data we have from the November elections shows that MAGA built a broad, diverse, multi-ethnic working-class coalition of supporters. Sound familiar? That’s what Democrats thought they had been building for years.MAGA knows that most voters – and news consumers generally – don’t necessarily differentiate between their concerns over rising crime, a broken immigration system, and economic anxiety: these dysfunctions are pieces of a whole. Convincing people near the bottom of the economic strata that other marginalized people are to blame is the very essence of fascism. None of Trump’s proposed economic “policies” or cabinet picks indicate any concern whatsoever for Americans living in the lowest-earning quintile. When more Americans of every ZIP code, faith tradition, race, age, and gender identity realize that billionaires and their courtiers from Silicon Valley and Wall Street don’t share their interests, a pluralistic, pro-democracy vision for the future may again take shape.
Start by pointing out in your community how exclusionist, xenophobic immigration and trade policies drive prices up and hurt small businesses. If Trump follows through on any portion of his campaign promises, we’ll be able to see this in our grocery store checkout lines soon enough.
- Commit to our work is up close, personal, and off-line. In Falling Upwards, Fr. Richard Rohr says: “We all become well-disguised mirror images of anything we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while.” He wasn’t writing specifically about the heavily-online #resistance theatrics of the first Trump presidency, but he may as well have been.Too much time on social media, battling with anonymous political foes – or worse, loudly agreeing with anonymous political allies – does nothing to advance our politics or heal our communities. It only wastes time while flattering the very egos of our opponents.
(I say this, by the way, from a place of deep humility bordering on humiliation; I’ve lost friends, clients, and days of my life to hopeless Twitter arguments. I’m not proud of it!)
The years ahead can be about putting our phones down and working to build community at a small scale. Have you voted in every local election? In Chattanooga, where I live, we’ll have a fresh chance to do just that in just a couple of months. Have you thought about volunteering an hour or two for a local campaign – or even running for office yourself? MAGA is eager for us to lose faith in our institutions. Whether they get what they want is entirely up to us.
I understand if you’re thoroughly disgusted with politics now. You may find that it’s helpful to stop thinking of politics as an assignment we wearily undertake once every four years and start thinking about it as a way we engage the community around us every day. Start with your block — heck, start with your next-door neighbor. What do they need? Do they have enough to eat? Is their power on when the weather gets cold? And how are you talking to them about what you need?
When ICE agents or federalized Sheriff’s deputies come to your workplace with a list of names, have you decided what you will do? What about when you hear casual, cruel, bigoted comments at the bar, in your church, or in your local paper?
Think right now about the smallest, bravest thing you can do to demonstrate your values to yourself. Remember that empty virtue signaling and tone policing never gave somebody bus fare or a hot meal when they needed it.
- Any work you undertake at the local level is not an excuse to ignore what’s happening in your state and federal government. This sounds counterintuitive, but turning your attention toward local concerns is a path to a more expansive and curious politics – once you see the tight connections between state and federal policymaking and how it affects you and your neighbors.Since November 5, I’ve seen a lot of posts online about the importance of acting locally. As Strong Towns says, “Everything you are passionate about at the national level has a local analog that needs your attention.” This may be true, but taken too far, this kind of thinking creates a dangerous and false binary. Mostly, it just lets bad political actors at the state and federal levels off the hook.
It is absurd to pretend that a city can address challenges like building more affordable housing, creating more food security, protecting the environment, or fixing our criminal justice system without the sustained, willing partnership of its state legislature or numerous federal agencies.
If we’re going to make a convincing case for democracy, we will have to do so in a language that is discernible by those who have shown that they’re willing to reject it. Among the many statistics that indicate what a twitchy, cynical, economically anxious populous we’ve become is a raft of data that shows just how lonely we are. Recent studies reveal that loneliness affects 61% of young adults aged 18-25, with 20% of U.S. adults experiencing it daily; the U.S. Surgeon General warns that its health risks rival those of smoking 15 cigarettes a day..
Therefore, the work we do to stand up for our values, preserve democracy, and take care of each other can and must be joyful. Fascism wins when good people lose hope, or worse yet, lose interest. Take comfort in the knowledge that you’re not alone. Find happiness in the relationships you will need to form and revive. A decent and liberated world where everybody feels safe and free is a worthwhile goal. We will all feel deep joy when we get there. We’re allowed to feel it along the way.
- Political Commitments 2025 – by Kerry Hayes - January 2, 2025