American Democracy, Dirty hands, and potato salad

The tale of Ben Franklin assuring Mrs. Elizabeth Powel that we would have a Republic, if we can keep it, is the quintessence of American political phraseology: poignant, true, and doomed to misinterpretation by posturing yahoos. Franklin and the other founders had any number of character flaws (their tendency towards human trafficking comes to mind), but when it came to creating their new government they showed far less hubris than the people who today swear to keep their spirits alive.

With autocrats vying for power at home and abroad, we seem to have forgotten that in this country you don’t have to use your ouija board to ask dead guys if they would have allowed something to be legal, the burden is on the government to prove they have the right and authority to make it illegal. We get everything. They have to prove that they can take it away.

But it feels like what they’re more interested in taking away is the Republic itself. I’m not okay with that. So this week we’re going to talk about tragic optimism, dirty hands, and potato salad.

Democracy and America

My mind is regularly consumed with thoughts of democracy and America. It’s part of the job of a political scientists, but it’s also why I decided to study law and politics in the first place. My grandmother was a second-generation American and many of the ladies in my neighborhoods were immigrants themselves or first generation; they all spoke of the US as the land of opportunity for them. (I suppose it’s worth noting that I lived in the projects a lot to underscore the types of opportunity, but in the 70s and 80s, poor in Central/Eastern Massachusetts was better than poor in Central/Eastern Europe).  

They spoke openly about freedom and the importance of liberty. One neighbor remembers Soviet troops threatening to shoot her family because they found out her mother was bootlegging vodka so she could trade it for food, which she then used to bribe them. Hitler’s troops shot her cousin where he stood when he refused to fight with them. These kinds of stories stick with a kid about what should and should not be tolerated.

I value democracy. I appreciate my country. I want to work to keep those two things as closely together as possible. I may call myself suspiciously optimistic, but I’m really more of the tragic optimism school of thought: I’ll find meaning even as I anticipate tragedy. It’s probably a moral choice more than a character flaw, but it’s how I feel about the US as we we celebrate our birthday this year.

 It’s okay if you don’t get America present, but you still need to vote

Look, it’s okay if you don’t want to get America a present this year. No fireworks, no parades, no red, white, and blue Rice Krispie treats (which I did make because I lost a bet to my kid). A lot of us are going into cookouts where people are politically frustrated with the candidates (Biden isn’t going anywhere, and we need to deal with that), the Supreme Court (eff those guys), and the state of partisan politics in general, and we may not feel like eating flag-inspired cuisine. I’m the designated potato salad maker for all cookouts (secret ingredients here), so I recommend sticking to the classics: potato salad, burger, and eye-rolling when people aren’t looking.

 The US has been ticking a lot of us off. It feels like no one in a leadership position is really trying other than the right wing working to overtake the government and replace it with Christian Nationalism, a Christo-fascist Supreme Courtmade up of dominionist judges, and Project 2025 to stamp out any vestiges of a free country. Other than that, though, no one seems to be trying.

Democrats may be better on civil rights, but it doesn’t feel like they’re trying very hard either. It’s not just that they’re all so freaking old and won’t retire. It’s that they keep pretending to champion the progressive values while refusing to close financial loopholes they and their billionaire donors benefit from, they want us to accept that they are using our tax dollars to fund a genocide because they’ll wave a pride flag while they do it. They’re playing the same fiddle they’ve played for decades while the world burns.

But at the end of the day, a dumpster fire is easier to clean up than a nuclear test site, so I’m going to vote for the dumpster fire and hope Democrats find a few vertebrae between now and then.

Miles to go before we sleep or a race to the bottom

You may ask yourself why I am optimistic in the middle of this. It’s because that’s life: “Secur[ing] the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” is our life’s work. It is every generation’s  work. We’ve forgotten that.

 We’ve relegated struggles for freedom to our history books and told our students that they were done. Rosa Parks sat down on a bus and then the next day there was no more racism. Yay US! We got sloppy because getting real meant telling ourselves, our children, and our parents, some uncomfortable truths.

Freedom isn’t easy. It’s messy. It’s compromise. It’s me saying to you that I will get my own hands dirty with the dumpster fire because pretending to keep my hands clean only dirties them with the nuclear waste site and makes me an egotistical jerk who pretends she has clean hands because “I don’t care about politics/they’re all the same.” Enlightened centrism, it turns out is neither.

 But like a lot of Americans, I’m torn. Voting Biden is realist and pragmatic, but it also feels like I’m rewarding political bad behavior. Constantly voting for the “lesser of two evils” has me feeling like it’s a race to the bottom where each party has to have either the least bad option or the best bogeyman. It seems like our politics has gotten worse by accepting a little less each year, but that’s necessarily true.

There was Nixon. After Lincoln’s assassination Andrew Johnson did everything he could to maintain segregation and kill civil rights. Rutherford B. Hayes is basically responsible for letting the right wing turn into what is it today with the Compromise of 1877 pulling Reconstruction troops out of the South, giving way to “home rule,” and allowing the KKK and other paramilitary white supremacist groups to retake the Southern states. Andrew Jackson was a complete wanker.

America doesn’t deserve a cake, but you do

Given the way America has been behaving, I can understand why you might not want to celebrate its birthday this year (just read Frederick Douglass’ “What the Fourth of July to a Slave?”). Celebrating this year feels a lot like voting for Biden: there’s almost something good there but it’s passed its expiration date. It’s like when some culinary reprobate show up to a cookout having put raisins in potato salad (if you do this, you belong on the terrorism watch list or at an in-patient facility).

So, if you’re still in the good fight (and you don’t put raisins in things), you go get a cupcake. Have some food. Celebrate the best parts of the US, so that tomorrow we can remember why we fight.