We are the champions, my friends. Not the White Sox or Cubs or Bears, all struggling valiantly for municipal glory. Certainly not Trumpty Dumpty as he flounders, falters and flails, falling flat on his face.
No, we are the champions because we rise to the reboot — like the one I underwent this past week on my heart. An ablation they called it, not the same as ablution, i.e. cleansing yourself. Whatever ablation is, it felt like a reboot. I hope it lasts, just as I hope for an ablation (and ablution) of our body politic, to disrupt and dispel the malicious irregularity known as the Republican Party that has this nation’s hyperdriven heart aflutter, bordering on fibrillation.
With reboot in mind, I met with a friend, recently returned from the Summer Institute at the College of the Atlantic on the coast of Maine, where she experienced elation instead of ablation.
The theme, befitting the nation’s 250th anniversary, was “Toward a More Perfect Union.” The Institute annually gathers an array of nationally prominent journalists, historians, scientists, artists, civic leaders, and public servants — the kind of people whose very existence keeps a seething president awake at night, a sweet act of resistance in itself, not to mention poetic justice. These bright lights dare to “explore questions that resist easy answers,” such as, “How do we strengthen democratic institutions?” They conducted a five-day “conversation” based on 10 principles:
1) Dialogue is the foundation of a shared society.
2) We must tell the truth about our history and ourselves
3) Complex problems require integrated thinking
4) We share a common world
5) Reimagining the world begins with attention
6) Art invites us to see differently
7) Discovery requires humility
8) Democracy is built through imperfect action
9) Hope must be grounded in reality
10) Our setting shapes our conversation
The lineup included Nicholas Kristof, Samantha Power, Ken Burns, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Stacey Abrams, A.O. Scott, and Kara Swisher — to name just the ones I’m familiar with (and 13 more I’d like to know better).
My friend came back fired-up and ready to go, as Obama likes to say, seeking an answer to the question, “What can one person do?” as we head toward the all-important midterm elections in November. (Here’s a tip: Google Stacey Abrams’ organization Fair Count, which works to protect voting rights.)
My friend fired me up with thoughts of bringing about a better world. I left our conversation feeling more confident, which happens whenever I connect with good people, who remind me how many are out there doing what they can. The following morning, I reinforced that sentiment exponentially by visiting Oak Park’s Farmers Market, which always feels like a reboot for my soul.
I don’t go there for the produce. I go there for the faces, seeking the essential goodness of people, written in their features, amplified by snippets of conversations as they amiably amble past, and observing their congenial interactions with vendors. They cluster and exchange laughs and updates and no doubt share ways to keep a seething president awake all night long. But smiles and hugs are their singular currency, the crowd diverse in ages and stages, in life experience and cultural history, color and colorfulness, sizes and shapes, short people who are long for this world and long people with much shorter futures, dressed without a worry about the weather because on a dazzling day like this, surely life will last forever.
And then I think, can one misguided, damaged, debased human being, and his conniving cohort, really wreck all this? Or will they only force us to rise to a higher level, inching our way toward a more perfect union, though it’s hard to imagine anything more perfect than the union found at Farmers Market on a lovely morning, ripening in the late August sunshine.
If we’re up for it, we will rise and be better for all we’ve been through, especially after we reboot democracy this November and give thanks for our elation ablation.
But first there is imperfect work to be done, building back democracy: voters to register, voting rights organizations to join and support, gathering with friends for conversations that fire us up, ready to canvass undecided voters, persuading people who don’t usually do so to vote, and convincing those who usually vote for the other party to vote just this once for the one that has actually proven it knows how to govern.
Then, after voting the reform-minded, pro-government party back into power, we can look to one another and say:
We are the champions of democracy.
(Champions don’t always win. They just never give in.)