The Habit of Democracy

This week’s blog entry is prompted by the events that took place on Capital Hill in Washington, D.C., this week.  But first, I want to relay a story about by own political history that I think is relevant.  

My political life began in 1976, when I was fifteen years old.  It happened one afternoon, sometime before the election that year.  I walked into our home in Ontario, California.  I was coming in from someplace.  I was heading to someplace else to do something.  I don’t recall where I was coming from or where I was heading.  But what happened in between has stayed with me clearly all these years.

Crossing through the family room toward the kitchen (maybe I was coming in to get something to eat?  Sounds right for a fifteen year old), I spotted something on the side table next to the couch.  It was one of those sample ballots they send out that list the candidates and propositions and which give you your polling place, back when you only had one day to vote and only one way to do it.  This one was my dad’s.  His pen was laying next to the ballot on the table.

I don’t remember what prompted me specifically to do so, but I decided to sit down and read through the ballot, and to use my dad’s pen to mark what my choices would be if I had been allowed to vote.  It may have had to do with the influence of the circle of friends I had, all of whom were smart guys that thought and talked about all manner of things, including, especially at times, about politics.  I went through the ballot, reading about who was running or what change in the law was being offered.  After I had checked off my choices, I set it back down and went on my way.  

Later, coming from my bedroom, I spotted my dad sitting on the sofa in the family room.  I noticed the sample ballot on the coffee table in front of him.  When he spotted me on my way to the door, he waved me over.  

“I wanted to ask you something…”  He picked up the ballot from the table.  “Did you fill out my sample ballot.”  

“Uh…  Yeah…”  The way he said it told me something was up.  

“I thought so.”  He gestured toward the love seat catty-corner from him.  “Have a seat.  I want to have a talk with you.”  

What followed was a long, and increasingly heated discussion about every single choice I’d made in his ballot.  At first I tried to just get out of it, answering his questions about the choices I’d made with, “I dunno…” or, “I just did…” with shrugs of my shoulder.  But my father wasn’t having it.  “You just checked it off without thinking?” he’d reply.  I started getting angry at his implication that I wasn’t all that bright, and at the idea I was in trouble because my choices were different that his.  I began to fight back, giving my reasons, arguing back to his arguments, and to his counter-arguments, and then his counter-counter-arguments.  

The final item we discussed was a proposition to include non-smoking sections in restaurants.  The first of its kind in the country.  I had checked off, “Yes,” to the proposition.  My dad leaned in on me heavily.  

“You’re basically telling other people how to live their lives!” he insisted.  “That you don’t want them to smoke because you don’t like it.”  

“No!  I’m saying that I have a right to live my life as I want to.  But if we go to a restaurant to eat, and someone sitting next to me is smoking, then I HAVE TO smoke whether I want to or not.  Is that fair?  We should have separate places so I can not smoke and they can if they want to.”  

After I was done, my dad sat there and looked at me…  Stared at me, it felt like.  After a few moments, he shrugged. 

“Ok.”  He set his sample ballot down.  He got up and moved toward his bedroom.  

But I wasn’t done.  Before he was out of the family room, I called out to him.  “Is that it?” 

He turned back.  “Yeah.  That’s it.”  

“I’m…  Not in trouble?”

“No.  You’re not in trouble.”  

“Ok…  So…  What was this about?”  

He shrugged again.  “A lot of what you choose on the ballot was different that what I would chose.  I wondered where you got your ideas from.  I wanted to make sure you weren’t just picking what other people told you to pick.  That you were thinking for yourself.”  

I thought about that.  Dad waited while I thought.  Then, I asked, “So…  What did you decide?”

“That you were thinking for yourself.”  He lifted his shoulders in a question to me.  I shrugged back.  He went on to wherever he was going.  

Since that time, I became an avid participant in our country’s political process.  I have voted in every national election, every state election, and every municipal election except one.  I have learned what most people learn that the process isn’t perfect.  That your choice may fail in any given election (my record on picking the winner in Presidential races is 5 out of 11), and that you sometimes have choices that make you hold your nose.  But you do it, hope for the best, then move on to the next election.

This is the habit of democracy.  

The people that ransacked the Capital Building do not have that habit.  I remember in 2016, after the election, reading examinations of those that voted for Trump and discovering that a significant proportion of them were new to the process.  People that had, due to feeling disenfranchised, or feeling the system was rigged against them, or other similar reasons, stayed out of the process but came in to support Trump when they heard their beliefs echoed in his words.  And when they didn’t get their choice elected the second time they tried, they became angry and gave into the impulse to destroy the system they had little trust to begin with.  

I had the experience of seeing the first three people I voted for President lose.  Deal with it.  

This doesn’t explain all of those that participated in the insurrection.  There was a news item on the radio that the average age of the people arrested after the violence was over 40 years old.  Much older than the average when similar riots had taken place previously.  Rioting is a younger person’s game.  The indication was that more established Trump supporters had gone to hear him speak, then followed the angry, vocal, and more violently prone newbies to democracy to the Capitol Building, getting swept up in their rage.  

And it also doesn’t quite explain the politicians that are parroting Trump’s lies (and that’s what they are, even if he has come to believe them after repeating them so much) about a “stolen election.”  These people are also following this crowd, hoping to gain their political support for future candidacies they wish to pursue.  This makes them more crass and indecent in their political viewpoints than the disappointed voter who got swept up in the moment, though not by much.  

Which is one of the most important points my experience with my dad taught me, which is lost upon these people.  My father had that talk with me, not to convince me I was wrong and he was right, but to make sure I was thinking for myself.  Once he was clear on that, he walked away, even if he didn’t agree with the choices I had made.  This is something I’ve experienced countless times in my political life in the forty-five years since that conversation.  That there will be people who will disagree with you on an issue or about a candidate, no matter how “obvious” the correct choice seems to you, or how “logical” or “moral” an argument you make with them.  When you meet someone like that the best, the only course of action, is to say, “Ok,” and leave them with their opinion, make your own choice, then win or lose wait for the next election. 

That is the one habit of democracy that is essential to keeping it running peacefully.