Cassidy Steele Dale writes to equip you with the forecasts, foresight skills and perspectives, and tools you may need to create a better, kinder world.
And one of those ways is to put right-back-up-into-your-face what you already know is true.
I’ve been jumping around back and forth in my construction of my own Strategy Chart/Strategy Wall according to how the Spirit moves me. For a moment I’m jumping to Column (5) Responses Needed for Emerging Needs. Everything in that column should start with a verb and in many cases on my Strategy Wall the first verb will be say. What I mean is that action without explanation can be confusing. You have to say what you believe and why you’re doing what you’re doing in order to explain your effort to help.
And that doesn’t have to be snarky or sassy or funny or necessarily profound. It can be delivered flat — as a flat truth. Or a list of truths delivered flatly. Sometimes it’s about flatly restating the obvious. Hang on a minute: you’ll see what I mean.
Like you the past few weeks I’ve been ass-deep, then tits-deep, then nose-deep, then way-head-underwater in opinions on why she lost (real answer: the economy) and What Democrats Should Do Now (real answer: protect/improve the economy plus stop calling bigots “bigots” for a while, apparently — or, more precisely, to win over the Big Middle of the country again).
One feature about all these articles, though — some of which are great and true — is that (right now) they’re more about what Democrats should do to win than about how to make democracy win. If democracy wins, then Democrats and Republicans can sort their own shit out after the fact.
Now, to be clear: the current champions of American democracy are the Democrats and their Republican allies. And it’s not even close. Also, winning the Big Middle of the American electorate does not mean tacking toward the center; it means tacking toward the foundational.
Still, though, because I’m a professional futurist and because I can’t help myself I’ve been banging my brains around trying to find a structure to craft scenarios for the future of the Democratic Party because it still has a chance to revive and reinvent itself — it still has dynamism — while the Republican Party has no future. The GOP has already burned down, Trump stirred the ashes, and then he set the ashes on fire again with kerosene. And Trump has no successor. No real one, anyway.
It finally hit me (again) this week: There is no set of scenarios to make for the future of the Democratic Party. Instead, the only futures left are the possible futures for American democracy and I already wrote those and they’re here. I couldn’t think of what to do because I already did it.
Because I was wiser and smarter in the past. I’m dumber now.
But it did give me half of an incomplete idea that I’ll state flatly, half-ly, and incompletely:
The future of American democracy depends on who wins the race to argue and to prove what I laid out in that project as the propositions of American democracy — and the “victory conditions” necessary for American democracy to survive. For American democracy to continue the following things must be (or become) true:
Voice
All United States citizens can vote.
All votes will be counted.
Who wins the majority of votes wins an election.
Political change can be made nonviolently; the peaceful transfer of power is guaranteed.
Opportunity and Fairness
Anyone from anywhere can become a United States citizen.
Anyone from anywhere can make their fortune in the United States. Anyone from anywhere can rise beyond the station, class, caste, and constraints of their origins.
Anyone from anywhere will be treated fairly and equitably by the American government, system, and people.
Nature of Government
American governance is of, by, and for the people rather than its elites and powerful.
The legislative process in the United States hears and is responsive to the will of its people. The legislative process functions and can work. Change can be made through legislation.
Freedoms and Rights
Americans’ freedoms and rights will be protected – from majority rule, minority rule, the powerful, and even from the United States Government.
The only exception to this is that one’s free exercise of one’s freedoms and rights must not unduly impinge on or jeopardize other Americans’ free exercise of theirs.
These are flat truths flatly told. They’re things we’ve taken for granted and thought were safe and automatic but we shouldn’t have.
The good news is that most Americans on both sides still believe those things should be true and should be the reality. The bad news is that some Americans do not. Some Americans do not believe in a single one of those.
Read them again and it will be plain as day who wants to fulfill those and who wants to throw those away or ignore them so they can gain permanent power and more mountains of money. And it will be plain which ones we’re currently fighting over.
Want a quick way to tell who believes those things and who does not? If you say these things to someone, the ones who don’t really believe them will say But… and the ones who do will say Yes and furthermore…
So.
What should Democrats do? What should people who want American democracy to survive do now?
Make those things true. Not just in deed and policy like you’ve been doing all along but in word now too. Say them out loud again because you can no longer assume that people presume you believe them or that those things are what you are working to fulfill and protect. (Democrats’ deepest flaw is believing voters are rational actors who will reward good work and good policy at the ballot box. So instead they’re being outrun and outcompeted by liars and the loud.) So persuade. Tack back toward what’s foundational.
It may not be as tough a task as it seems right now because most Americans, especially Trump supporters, will soon be forced to reckon with the fallout from what he does next. And thus become extremely persuadable.
Yes, I know a lot of those folks wouldn’t listen to Jesus if he hit them in the face with the gospels and the glory of God. Again. And yes, I know it’s unfair to be fair to the unfair.
Which reminds me — if you are a Christian then there’s some things to add to the list: (1) Every one of us is a child of God and is of equal worth to God. No matter who you want to exclude and who you don’t want around. (2) God wants you to help rather than to hurt. (3) God loves everyone and listens to everyone’s prayers. And the earthly version of a prayer — if you’re lucky enough to have a government that aspires to be anything good or to listen to people as God listens to his children — is the vote.
All of this is why alllllll of those things aren’t mere propositions; they’re articles of faith. In democracy, in each other, and more.
Make what must be true true yet again. It’s not too late to do it. It’s not nearly too late. Even if you can’t believe it yet.
Sometimes what the wise and the cynical say it’s too late for is not.
History doesn't always repeat itself, but does rhyme with regularity. America has seen these threats before and pulled itself together. The Gilded Age. The Great Depression. Both were times when it appeared that the majority of people were being turned into serfs, while multimillionaires ate foie gras sandwiches and spent millions on parties. And, of course, the Civil War was all about allowing a few multimillionaires to actually own human beings, and the Southern poor whites were suckered into fighting to allow that to continue. There is still a strong leaning in the South that the pre-Civil war world was one long Stephen Foster song as in "tis summer, the darkies are gay..."
Each time, though, Americans fought, via muckrakers (journalists with some integrity and a lot of guts) and a lot of constant organizing and pounding on doors and spreading the word, to get America back to what it should be. We can do it again. Keep writing.
The only thing I’d argue is our collective insistence on calling oligarchs and the disgustingly wealthy “elites.” They’re not elite at anything more than psychopathy.