Truth is, I started this post four Octobers ago. I rewrote it after the insurrection, when nobody was sure what was going on and an inauguration wasn’t guaranteed. I rewrote it every fall or winter after that. Now the clocks have gone back and the first Tuesday in November is upon us again.
For some of the folks I’ve spoken to recently, it’s like last time. They describe the lead-up to this week as long and anxious, less like the expectant hope of Advent and more like the dread of Grendel approaching after dark. For others, it’s not at all like last time. Those who found their own way to do something are relieved that Tuesday’s finally here. All their labor meets its moment now.
I’ll head out in the morning to hand-deliver my ballot, and after that? I’m not making plans. This week, though, I do expect a few things:
Earnest interpreters in pressed khakis gesticulating at green screens. Red, blue, and path-to-270 maps well past midnight. Waiting for the tallies, for the analysis, for some incumbents to get on out; waiting for the protocols, the ceremonies, and a transition of power in two and a half months.
I hope it turns out to be so peaceful that it bores us all. I’m not clear that’s likely, and I’m down to pray. On Election Eve, none of us should have had to appeal to heaven for boredom, but I’m tired of living in unprecedented times. I’ll try any recipe.
Yet I know that elections are a bureaucratic process, not a holy rite. The pastors of Congress tell us that a vote is a prayer and is sacred. I don’t believe that, certainly not this year of all years. But it’s still useful. Sometimes it can even be good.
Democracy: still loading?
A political volunteer recently stopped by my house with some campaign lawn signs in hand. Would we post the signs in our yard? We’d be sending a message: our senatorial race is a real contest, not a slam dunk for the familiar name. We’re still thinking about it.
If it works as intended, bureaucracy may be more like electricity than lightning from on high. It’s invisible but for its effects and marked by little more than our ability to meet our needs. It costs in delivery infrastructure and maintenance bills. It includes inefficiencies and redundancies, and it passes through a million hands before it comes to any one of us.
I do enjoy the occasional bureaucratic game—like surviving a knotty customer support phone tree and reaching an actual human or threatening to cancel internet service to win a reduced rate—but corporate and civil bureaucracies aren’t gods to love. They’re structural tools. You don’t worship them any more than you’d worship a hammer. You work with them as long as they work for you.
Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.” —Hannah Arendt
When I first read this quote about a month ago, I thought the key phrase in it was “Assume responsibility and save it.” Now I think the key phrase is “except for renewal.”
Except for renewal, Arendt says, ruin would be inevitable. Fall composts spring and summer, and decay snatches back what design once gave.
Except for renewal tells me that entropy is a main character but it’s not the whole book. There are signs of life besides.
Four years ago, when a governmental transition finally kicked in, I looked for those signs of life. I saw people with concerns and convictions writing memos on the policy solutions they’d researched with others. I saw them set up community listening meetings to review principles with the incoming executive branch. And organizers, too, barely recovered from the previous year’s uprisings and outreach campaigns, turned quickly from choosing their adversary to challenging the new administration to make good on promises and live up to just principles.
As we should, every time.1
Because, again, salvation doesn’t come by ballot. Voting isn’t the deus ex machina rolled in at the end of the story to fix a skewed plot. Democracy is a play we improvise live for the record every day. And there’s no studio audience, really. There’s just us.
Overheard
It’s always going to hurt to have things be illegal. It’s always gonna hurt to have things blocked. But if we’re relying completely on the government in order to help us, then we’re always going to be stuck in this idea of What can an election win? rather than What do people deserve? —Robin Marty (The Cut)
We can get unstuck as we remind ourselves that our assignment is not to keep this old system steady. Our assignment is to renew the world, and that’s—God help us—a group project. It’ll take everything we have.
So whatever uncertainty and anxiety rise for you this week, pause. Breathe into your center. Map a tree with your eyes or fingers. Taste your food before you swallow it. Check on a friend, on a neighbor; check in with yourself. No autopilot, no avoidance. Feel all your feelings.
And let that grounding nourish and propel you into the weeks and months to come. I’m not sure of many things. But I am sure we’ll need you.
Until next time,
Keisha
As April Rosenblum, NDN Collective, and others put it recently, “vote like a radical.”