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New Thought (5/29/24)

On the radio this morning, a black voter in North Carolina wondered whether it mattered if she voted or didn’t vote. She said that after the emotional elation of President Obama’s election subsided, “You still feel stuck.  You still feel like this is hard.”
She is right. Climbing the mountain is slow, hard work; but you keep on going because you want to reach the top.  But if somebody pushes you while you’re standing at the edge of a cliff, the fall is faster than you can imagine.
Not voting at all or not voting for Biden, you’re just standing at the cliff waiting for the push.  And you need to vote for all the other positions, too—the Representatives, the Senators, the state legislators, the Governor, the Mayor, the Sheriff, the city council, the county commissioners.  They are all part of the climbing party or the pushing party.
It is hard.  It was hard for Lincoln.  It was hard for Dr. King.  That is the nature of Democracy: The work is never done until democracy ends.  We are at the point, 164 years after the last time, where we may face the question, whether the proposition that we all are created equal shall perish from the earth.
The Democratic Party campaigns, at every level, need to give greater weight to this existential danger by reminding the Nation of the People that We are the foundational authority of the governments of our country.  Our votes do matter.

Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bullingbrooke ascends my throne,
The time shall not be many hours of age
More than it is, ere foul sin gathering head
Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think,
Though he divide the realm and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all.
He shall think that thou, which knowest the way
To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,
Being ne’er so little urg’d, another way
To pluck him headlong from th’ usurped throne.
The love of wicked men converts to fear,
That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
To worthy danger and deserved death.

Thus 425 years ago Shakespeare’s King Richard II to the Duke of Northumberland after being deposed from the throne, which event occurred 200 years before that. Our Founding Framers knew whereof they spoke when they considered how to constrain the passions of humans in positions of political power. [Act V, scene i, 55-68]

Discuss

Discussion involves a back and forth exchange of views on a range, whether narrow or broad, of topics. It allows you to test your own ideas and to learn about ideas perhaps new to you. It promotes understanding by enlarging one’s perspective. It shuts down immediately when the language turns to personal attack.

Debate

Debate, informally, involves a more or less specific topic on which each participant argues for the merits of one or the other opposing view. It requires perhaps a bit more formality (and patience) than Discussion to allow each person time to present an argument. Debate also ceases the moment the language turns from the topic to the opponent.