The Tools of Democracy Are There
If We Pick Them Up
by Matt McGuire
11/5/22
Matt McGuire reminds us to use one of the most powerful tools given us by our Democracy in this BND paper first published in May 2021. Let’s all get out there and VOTE.
We’ve all heard the phrase “with great power comes great responsibility”…it is a theme that is so culturally pervasive as to be almost taken for granted at this point in history. We can see it anywhere from Spiderman to King Arthur, to Shakespeare’s tragedies, from the Bible to Norse mythology, from Star Wars to Star Trek to the epic of Gilgamesh. The cultural rule “much shall be expected from those to whom much has been given” probably goes back to our earliest ancestors, telling parables over the firelight, feasting on mammoth tenderloin.
We tend to ignore the corollary to this cultural rule, which is “with any power, no matter how small, comes the responsibility to use it for good”. The whole concept of a democratic form of self government rests upon this unspoken truth. If a democratic form of government is to be effective, it is the responsibility of each and every citizen to exercise the power inherent in their citizenship.
We are not taught this in school…
We are not taught this culturally…all the stories mentioned above follow the journey of self discovery taken by a great & powerful hero learning to use his great power for the good of others; saving the poor and ignorant masses, the huddled & befuddled from the forces of evil. We are taught that any progress can only be made by heroic leaders dragging us forward, out of our benighted state and into the shining light of the future.
Imagine our own country’s history…imagine MLK standing alone at the podium giving his “I Have A Dream” speech…do you see the hundreds of people who helped plan the Civil Rights movement, the thousands or even millions of ordinary Americans who marched, who rallied, who voted?
Imagine Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation…do you see the hundreds of abolitionists who pushed for decades to reach that point? Imagine people like Frederick Douglass & William Lloyd Garrison...do you see the thousands of slaves crossing the battle lines heading north towards freedom? Do you see the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans fighting in those battle lines...dying there?
Our mythology is wrong…we are taught to be consumers, not citizens…
In a democratic society all great change is made by collective action; by each citizen exercising their small amount of individual power collectively. Lincoln said at Gettysburg that we are a nation with a government “of the people, by the people, & for the people…”. We are taught this as some dusty piece of ancient American history rather than the basic foundation of our whole system of self government.
We are taught a sort of Great American Mythology of rugged individualism where anything that is good is created solely by great American heroes like Lincoln & MLK, like George Washington & Daniel Boone. The real truth of our history is that progress is made by individual citizens, banding together and making something happen using whatever power they have; government of the people, by the people and for the people. Yes, there are leaders, but a leader without people behind them - both to follow and to push - is just a lost prophet yelling on a street corner.
We are taught that we live in a society of almost infinite choices. If we are thinking in terms of being a consumer…we can choose from among dozens of brands of cereal at the grocery store, or dozens of sources of truth on the internet. We are taught that these choices are somehow empowering to us as individuals. We are taught that our identity as consumers makes us stronger somehow, that being on team Pepsi rather than team Coke, or team Fox rather than team CNN says something about us other than which cola we like better, or which news source we choose to believe. Harking back to the ancient Roman saying, we now live in a time where we must earn our bread, but we can choose our own circuses, and by choosing our own circuses, we are invited to ignore the thing that is most important to our survival as a self-governing society.
There is not a choice of truths…it does not come down to a matter of personal choice… either something happened, or it did not, either something is true, or it isn’t. Self government is not equivalent to your choice of fast food to eat, or beer to drink, or movies to see. We cannot survive as both a nation of citizens and a nation of consumers. We have the power to choose which we want to be, and now is the time of choosing. As the great Washington DC punk band Fugazi wrote in the mid 80’s, “never mind what they’re selling, it’s what you’re buying”…
We are at an inflection point in our national history, just like we were in 1860, or 1932. We are faced with the choice of whether we want to continue on our path toward self government, or to grant power to those who would destroy self government for their own gain. We should remember that when MLK made his “I Have a Dream” speech, it was not simply a recitation of some calming words about a post-racist future…When Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, it was not simply a eulogy for those who died there…These speeches were calls to action…If we want truly to achieve a better, more fair & equitable future; if we want to see government “of the people, by the people, for the people”; it is on us, the huddled & befuddled masses, to make it happen.
With power, no matter how little, comes responsibility…let’s pick up the tools.