As I read news, articles, blogs–the stuff that comes across my screen every day–I often save articles that might merit a blog post at some future time. One that I saved was a column in the Washington Post reacting to President Obama’s farewell speech.
It was surprisingly upbeat. (Also thoughtful, literate, coherent…elements I miss more than I ever thought I would…)
“Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted,” Obama said, in his best line of the night. “All of us should be throwing ourselves into the task of rebuilding our Democratic institutions.” At another point, he noted: “We all have to try harder.”
To that end, Obama urged people to volunteer. To organize. To run for office in their own right. To swap social media fights for in-person conversations.
Obama’s warning against taking democracy for granted made me think of the old story about the little boy who never talked. As a baby, he didn’t babble; at two and three his parents took him to specialists, none of whom could find anything wrong with him. He simply never talked.
One morning, when he was nearly five, his mother was giving him breakfast when he suddenly blurted out “This toast is burned.” His mother was amazed. “Why haven’t you ever said anything before!” To which he replied, “So far, everything’s been okay.”
We Americans have been a lot like that little boy. As long as our toast wasn’t burned, we’ve ignored the signs that the toaster was malfunctioning, and left the job of tending our democratic institutions to others. We can’t afford to do that anymore. We can’t afford to simply commiserate with like-minded friends and criticize those who dismiss the threat to our Constitutional system and the rule of law.
Discussion is important, but ultimately insufficient.
I’ve mentioned the Activism Engine site before. It’s important because it is a way to turn information into engagement. As the site has undergone its “beta” rollout, it has been made even easier to use–and specifically, easier for people to share information about concrete actions that can be taken.
Now anyone can go to the site and post an item about proposed legislation or an upcoming direct activity–no account or training needed.
Try it! To add information about legislation, go here. For other kinds of direct action, post here. And even if you don’t have an action to suggest, make checking it a part of your routine to see what actions you can take.
In the month since “no drama” Obama turned the White House over to “all drama, all the time” Trump, many of us are no longer taking American democracy for granted, but there is a difference between concern (okay, panic) and consistent, constructive action.
We know the toast is burned. Now we need to fix the toaster.
My thought for the activists:
PLEASE register people at Each and Every event. Registration for new folks. Updating registration for existing voters. Build the voting rolls NOW. It will never be easier to register voters.
Yes, because more than half of the eligible voters in the country sat out.
We need to be engaged.
It was the Harper’s Index that said that there were 160 people that #45 had insulted on Twitter by Dec 2016. How many more before the 2017 is over? Are we going to just ignore that disgraceful treatment of citizens?
Get involved. Don’t let up. Talk to your neighbors. Engage. Follow the links. Good luck!
I just sent a question to the Activism Engine site; fully trusting the matter of local CVS firing of all undocumented immigrants will be looked into.
The list of questions and comments at all levels of government will, I fear, overload that site. I had another question which I decided to post here, among my friends. Does anyone know of a rally or march in Indianapolis supporting “Trump Is Not My President”? I have commented before that there seems to be little, if any, notice of upcoming local protests and rarely are they reported in local news after the fact. This make it appear that Indianapolis, long a Republican stronghold, is doing nothing.
“Yes We Can – But It Won’t Be Easy” brings me to that old adage, “If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”
I remember that old “burned toast” joke; the problem today seems to be that Trump & Co., rants, “alternative facts”, “walking back” his lies and their actions such as his 2020 presidential re-election campaign, seem to be overpowering those of the opposition who are trying to do something but many are being ignored. He monopolizes the media while disparaging it and they just “go along to get along” and air his every uttered idiocy. The fact that media coverage helped to elect him and will do so again, is beyond the awareness of the media – or they are practicing “one-upmanship” against the master. They are losing and will continue to cause more losses in what is, to Trump, a game of public relations to feed his ego.
It is disheartening to those of us in the “resistance” to hear family and friends moan and groan about Trump yet make lame excuses for not taking any action to combat the attacks on our democracy. For others on this blog who are also encountering such timidity and self delusion in their circle of family and friends, may I suggest a strong dose of Shakespeare, namely Henry V and the St. Crispin’s Day Speech?
Thanks for the reminder to check the Activism Engine site Sheila!
To JoAnn Green and all: You’re right–there doesn’t seem to be a Not My President’s Day event in Indianapolis. But there is a big one planned in Chicago starting at 12 noon today! Not that far away! Check their Facebook page; Not My President’s Day-Chicago for more information, directions, etc.
The Trumpet’s comment that alluded to a terrorist attack in Sweden, has the Swedes scratching their heads. Trumpet > “You look at what’s happening in Germany. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” the president said at a rally in Melbourne, Florida, on Saturday night.
The Trumpet when challenged on his statement had to back track and then reveal his source was FOX News. Here is the President of the United States who is relying on FOX News for his daily briefing. All is not lost though, the Trumpkins are now convinced there is a cover-up by the News Media. This fits nicely into the narrative of “dishonest media” excluding FOX of course.
Theresa Bowers –
Thanks for the plug for Henry V, whom we used to call “Hank Cinq”, and the St. Crispin speech. If it leads readers to find Henry, you will have served well.
I can’t think of any part of the play that does not inspire as well as entertain.
It is available on DVD from my public library with Laurence Olivier as Henry. The “groundlngs” should flip over Henry’s wooing of Princess Catherine of France whom Henry of England made his queen. The battle scene at Agincourt after Henry and his archers breached the town wall followed by Henry’s victory speech on St Crispin’s Day mark the end of the 100 Years War.
Sheila’s emphasis on saving our democracy cannot be overstated, and we have to be aware of Trump’s diversionary tactics in talking about how he won in a landslide, how his administration is running like a well-oiled machine etc., to which he added yesterday that Sweden is suffering from refugee overdose – all lies, of course, which brings me to the topic of new norm. Are we becoming so enured to endlessly repeated lies that such chatter has degraded truth to such a point that lying and misrepresentation have become the new norm? Are we being herded into Trump’s world of illusion and narcissistic impulse and losing our way in the truth and logic of the real world where two and two are still four; and on a practical level, don’t we believe that Putin’s annexation of the Crimea as approved by Trump was bad and, if not, why not? Are we being brainwashed by constant reiteration in Goebbels fashion?
Why are Republicans and Democrats allowing this to happen? Where are the patriots in either party who call out this disturbed person by drawing a line in the sand and telling him no more at the risk of losing his job? In short, where are those who are Americans first and politicians second in dealing with the Bannon-Miller authoritarian rule in the offing by a disturbed person who lives in an alternative world? Can anyone imagine what Republicans would have done with a statement from Obama about the moral equivalency of Russia with the United States? How does Trump get by with such a statement, and why? Are we falling into his new norm trap and becoming oblivious to our surroundings where today’s outrage expunges that of yesterday?
Democracy is fragile and relatively new in the human experience. It must be nurtured and defended every day by those who prefer self-government over authoritarian rule and it appears that we are being hoodwinked via diversion by a wannabe dictator who has brought the new norms to bear while we sit on the couch and bemoan the small talk of the day. Rome fell from greed and lust for power from within in its final sacking of 476 A.D. What does 2017 hold in store for us as our democratic institutions are being “sacked” in 2017?
I think it is time to storm the ideological Bastille, reject lives in an alternative world, and reaffirm democracy as our rule and guide. So is the system I envision without blemish? Of course not, but then Hitler’s reign had a few blemishes, too.
OMG –
Imagine what some future Shakespeare will do with the reign of Trump the First. Ah, the knavery, the secret messages to Moscow, the treason… not to mention the sex, the greed and the flying yellow hair!
Among all of the disheartening things the last 4 months of revealed there’s one that’s been refreshing and that’s been the behavior of the media. Enough of them just aren’t buying the bullshit that pours out of DC daily. They’re reporting the facts, they’re calling the fouls, they have not been intimidated, and they are asking the hard questions. Bannon/Trump/Pence/McConnell/Ryan are feeling the pressure of the press and people and having to leave fantasy land and face the music.
Facebook “friends” who fell for the siren call of power at the expense of freedom are having to defend the indefensible and are finding that people aren’t falling for it anymore.
It’s a start, a foundation to build on, but we and our new media allies must persevere. American Spring, our season of rebirth.
One essential point must be crystal clear. They are temporary but we are not. We will clean up their mess as soon as possible. We aren’t buying the Kool Aide.
What a great service blogs like Sheila’s will provide.
Our Fake President, Donald Trump, is incapable of telling the truth … about anything. Most of us have a tendency to list the subjects he’s lied about. It would be more effective and require less energy to make a simple statement. Last week, Fake President Trump talked about 50 different subjects and lied about 55 of them.
Very apropos.
https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/holding-trump-accountable/amp
I too was like the little boy. I voted in the general election, skipped the primarys and took things for granted. No longer will I be so naïve. In another article I read recently someone gave a quote attributed to the Japanese Admiral Yamamoto afterbthe Pearl Harbor attack “I feat that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve”.
Well the giant is awake now and we need to direct the resolve.
Abstract from research yet to be published from University of California.
Please excuse the line numbers.
“31 To benefit from information provided by others, people must be somewhat credulous. However,
32 credulity entails risks. The optimal level of credulity depends on the relative costs of believing
33 misinformation versus failing to attend to accurate information. When information concerns
34 hazards, erroneous incredulity is often more costly than erroneous credulity, as disregarding
35 accurate warnings is more harmful than adopting unnecessary precautions. Because no
36 equivalent asymmetry characterizes information concerning benefits, people should generally be
37 more credulous of hazard information than of benefit information. This adaptive negatively-
38 biased credulity is linked to negativity bias in general, and is more prominent among those who
39 believe the world to be dangerous. Because both threat sensitivity and dangerous-world beliefs
40 differ between conservatives and liberals, we predicted that conservatism would positively
41 correlate with negatively-biased credulity. Two online studies of Americans support this
42 prediction, potentially illuminating the impact of politicians’ alarmist claims on different
43 portions of the electorate.”
JoAnn, this is not a march or rally, but is a national #notmypresident event that will also help support the US Postal Service:
http://www.oneequalworld.com/2017/02/08/theidesoftrump-postcards/
I’m planning to send a series of postcards with short blurbs addressing various issues (“We are ALL immigrants!” “Does President Bannon know you’re tweeting this?” “Loser-in-Chief”)
I wish I could do more than just writing my Congressmen, donating, etc., but the active stuff will have to be done by the younger and healthier.
Our toast is burned, yea charred, even, and scraping won’t help. Let’s think seriously about a fresh piece of bread for next time and try not to burn it. This action will take all of us…ALL OF US!
Doesn’t burnt toast give you cancer? Did I not just read that recently?
ALG, You bet! Good one!
Well, there is a better solution. The Democrats (DNC) poleaxed Bernie, figured Trump was a non starter, and then fought to keep the Libertarian candidate from appearing on the Presidential Debates. In other words, setting it up so voters would have NO CHOICE but an extremely inferior Democratic candidate. 88 million voters (who watched the first debate) may have appreciated seeing Gary, the best candidate among the 3. Supposedly Trump had no problem with more choice – only Hillary did. Why not check out the Libertarian Party instead of joining another Democrat front group? In Marion County we meet monthly Monday at the Antelope Club, just north of downtown. We may be closer to your thinking than you realize. Hopefully you have common points, but we have no Libertarian popes, and few of us speak ex cathedra. So interest is welcome, and you may enjoy meeting more intellectual folks. Other counties and states have similar organizations as well. N.B. Reason Magazine and blog gives a good feel or Libertarian thinking. Thanks!