Being together this Thanksgiving with good friends reminded me of the importance of friendship, honest conversations, and laughter. It led to a powerful discussion about our fright and despair over climate change and new COVID variants⎼ and over our need to act politically to save democracy and our world. But I can’t say we totally agreed.
Many other people showed up in the discussion. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, novelist Ben Okri, Buddhist teacher and author David Loy, environmentalists Joanna Macy and Paul Hawken, Gandhi, John Lewis, George Floyd, and others.
Michelle Goldberg wrote an opinion piece in the NYT on 11/22 called The Problem of Political Despair. She said “marinating in the news is part of my job, but doing so lately is a source of full-body horror.” She writes about obvious GOP efforts to undermine voting rights and end democracy, to lie and attack anyone who opposes their efforts at tyranny or who support anything that might make Democrats or democracy look good.
It’s natural, she says, that democrats pull back, take a break, after such a contentious election, the traumatic previous 4 years of DJT and almost 2 years of a pandemic. But there’s more going on. A burn-out, a sense that the relief from autocracy or tyranny that we now have is just temporary. We cannot assume that things will one day become ok. Things are not ok. And she worries that progressives and others will retreat from active participation in the fight for democracy.
In our discussion, I shared what I wrote in previous blogs about Joanna Macy and Paul Hawken’s books, about the despair over the inability, so far, of this nation and our species to do what’s needed to slow down, or end global warming. To end global warming would mean each of us helping not only to save our world but convince others about what is needed to do so. This is not an exaggeration, not a doomsday fantasy, just reality.
Hawken said we need to digest the fact that passing voting rights protections, improving health care, promoting equity in law, education, and the economy, ending warfare is saving the earth. We must get Democrats to pass legislation that makes people’s lives better so the mass of people will support efforts to increase democracy and fight climate change.
Buddhist teacher David Loy introduced me to the writing of both Joanna Macy and Ben Okri. Okri recently wrote a piece for the Guardian about the need to find new forms of creativity and imagination to face the crisis we are in. He called for “existential creativity”, creativity at the end of time. We are facing the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced, and we must adjust our philosophy and way of life to fit these times. Artists must not waste a single breath or word or tube of paint but focus their work entirely on making people aware of what we face and of actions we can take.
We are not wired to grasp long-term changes and threats as easily as short term ones. And many of us live so much in our ideas, stories, personal dramas we don’t feel present in our bodies or at home in the natural world and so don’t digest deeply enough the threat of climate change.
We are also on edge constantly because the GOP under DJT have been trying to shock us into a state of fear and anxiety. They lie about vaccines, masks, COVID-19 to keep the pandemic alive and de-stabilize the nation under Democrats. They also lie about the election being stolen so their supporters will feel angry, outraged, and direct that anger not just at Democrats but democracy.
The GOP are difficult to fight not just because of their ruthlessness, but because of the great wealth backing them, and because simply acknowledging the threat they pose is threatening.
And many of us, certainly the post-World War II generations, grew up during the time of the biggest expansion of the middle class in US history. From the late 1940s to late 1970s we experienced the greatest increase in equity of income. For a short time right after World War II, the poorest fifth of all households did the best of any group in terms of income growth. Also, in the 1960s, there was a big expansion of voting rights. Then came the counter-revolution. Reagan was especially responsible for beginning to roll back all of this, increase inequality and concentrate the wealth of this nation in a few hands. What was happening was almost too shocking to believe. And then came DJT.
During our Thanksgiving discussion, one of my friends said that, considering the dire threat posed by global warming, we must do anything possible to win the next few elections. It would be insane to act otherwise. Despite the majority of registered voters being Democrats, the GOP control most state legislatures. To counter the GOP gerrymandering, counter their attempts to eliminate voting rights for people of color and seize control of the counting of votes, we, Democrats, he said, must do things like gerrymander districts to favor Democrats.
But other friends said we couldn’t, shouldn’t and don’t need to do this. We can’t save democracy by undermining it. Since the GOP do control most state legislatures, we can’t gerrymander in favor of Democrats. And we don’t need to because Democrats (narrowly) control Congress. There is already a bill in Congress called the Freedom to Vote Act which bans gerrymandering and includes other voting protections. There is also the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. We have to call, pressure Senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrats who are now holding up the bills, to agree to eliminate the filibuster so the legislation can pass.
If people realized their lives, and the lives of their children or grandchildren, the life of the earth, depended on it, would they make the call?
Yet somehow, despite or maybe because of the heaviness, my friends and I found things to laugh at, crazy things. For example, think of the GOP lies and distortions, which are often so obvious in their spite and deceitfulness as to be, well, shocking, yet comic. They attack mask mandates and vaccines while getting vaccinated themselves, and then they blame Democrats for the continuing pandemic. We found ourselves laughing uncontrollably at their shamelessness. It was the only sane thing we could do then. It almost hurt to laugh so hard. But what a relief. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard for years.
It’s conversations like this, it’s such friendship and love, that commit us to persisting and clarifying what we must do and why. Suddenly remembering what it is to laugh, and to find something uplifting even in the most dreadful of realizations, shows us the value of our lives, all our lives.
It shows us that our only response right now is to do whatever we can to save the world. To make politics an everyday concern, like eating and greeting friends. We must now not just adapt but grow as individuals, expand our sense of who we are, so who we are is a conscientious force for the preservation of the environment and fostering democracy.
—