Our Poor Power

I have been putting this off for a long time.

First there was the last primary, then the convention, then the day itself, then that incredible night, and, now, the moment itself is almost here, the end of the beginning and the beginning of something terribly uncertain and potent.

All of this and I still haven’t published a word about it.

It isn’t that I don’t have anything to write. There is a stack of scraps and notes and other papers next to me at this desk, written at work and on the subway; at first light and well after the last; at bars and coffee shops; at airports and on planes; in Washington, St. Louis, and a handful of other cities from here to the other end of this continent. I’m not looking at them because anything I don’t remember from them isn’t worth putting down, but they stand as a reminder of how important this is to me and how badly I need to say something about it, even if it doesn’t answer every question and straighten every inch of the path ahead.

At times there seems to be too much to say. This has been a brutal decade, and not nearly all of that is the fault of the politicians, although it is easy to believe that sometimes.

It’s hard to separate the personal and the public, too. I’ve seen more than a few beliefs obliterated in the last eight years—and as many more pressed to the point that I almost lost them as well. And I refuse to blame the president for love’s labor lost and vice versa

The buck stops here.

But there is still the question of what to do with unrequited expectations—for everyone from the highest leaders to the closest friends. I don’t know who I would be if I abandoned my hopes, but is the daily agony of idealism worth the inner peace of righteousness?

Not a new question, and not one I propose to answer here. But it is always there, especially in the greatest moments of anticipation and excitement—including this one. Should I expect anything at all from anyone else? And what? And from whom?

Again, I do not know for sure.

But I am alive, which, as Camus reminds us, is always the first choice—and surely a sign that hope hasn’t been extinguished entirely.

And there are so many stellar people in my life—people who meet and exceed my expectations every day. So there is that, too.

I don’t know how much farther that trust extends. I don’t even know if it reaches down the street to the podium where the man (whom I certainly consider one of those stellar people as an individual) will stand today and grasp the reins of our union for the first time—or to the epic lawns and streets of this magnificent city where so many will gather to watch and weep and cheer as it happens.

And I count myself among the many that I don’t trust, as a part of that great mass known as the American people—or that greater mass known as humanity.

But if there is one more person I believe in among all of this it is the individual.

Perhaps the most profound report I heard throughout the entire election was an NPR profile of John Lewis, an original Civil Rights leader and congressman from Georgia. Speaking on Election Night, he recalled not the sweeping oratory or the towering figures that so often mark the Movement, but ordinary people who stood up and did something extraordinary—something so bold that others were willing to kill them for even trying it, on this soil and no more than half a lifetime ago.

As Lewis put it, “My mind just started going back to the people who stood in those unmovable lines in Selma, Alabama some short years ago. The people who were beaten, shot, and killed in Mississippi for attempting to register to vote. Those who died and went to their graves, who never ever had an opportunity to vote for anyone, or even have an opportunity to register.”

In the chaos of hope and suspicion that is public life, it is moments like that that I cling to. Moments when people stand up for their beliefs no matter what the cost.

The report also quoted a man in Grant Park on that same night, another ordinary individual, who said, with extraordinary poise and conviction, “I’m looking forward to a change where we will say, I don’t care where you’re from . . . when you’re here, we’re going to treat you like a human being.”

A world away from Selma, to be sure, but in the same spirit nonetheless. An individual deciding to shoulder his portion of the burden. And just because he wasn’t beaten or killed for it doesn’t make it any less important. Belief in a better world begins not in the alabaster halls of our nation’s capital or even in those diners that the national media just can’t seem to get enough of, but in the heart of every individual.

As Robert Kennedy put it so profoundly the day after Martin Luther King was killed for his own extraordinary fight, “The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.”

 

 

So much of politics is unreal. A great game, an entertainment, a blood sport. Despite the surge that sometimes rises at the sight of such a spectacle, none of it seems to really matter.

But as I walk the streets of Washington this week and ride the overcrowded Metro cars, I find myself overwhelmed—despite all my suspicions—by how visceral politics feels again. There is so much love and hope. Everyone is brimming; all is one.

RFK began his MLK speech by saying, “It is not a day for politics.” But his words, for me, touch the very nerve of politics in our country. We must first strive to love and trust one another. As long as that struggle continues, anything is possible, but without it, none of our dreams can proceed.

For all of my foreboding, as I see more and more smiling faces in this city and hear more and more hopes proclaimed, I agree more and more with the words of Rep. Lewis, who remarked on Election Night that “Barack Obama is saying to America, we are one people, we are one house, we are one family.”

But Barack Obama is only one person, and it will take all of us, not just him, to fulfill that promise. 

To be, in the words of Walt Whitman, “superb persons.” 

To “refuse to believe,” in the words of the man our country honored yesterday, “that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.”

I cannot speak to policies or statistics. I cannot grasp the facts of this new administration with any expert knowledge. But I can appreciate what it means to treat my fellow Americans with dignity. I know what it means to strive to be better to those around me. 

And if we each take up that struggle the victory will be profound indeed, if only because we have already seen the desolation of the mindless menact of violence and we know we want something better.

I do not know where exactly such a struggle will take us. All I know for certain is that we simply cannot survive anywhere else.

###