Adams’s benediction

"May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof" —John Adams

Letter to Abigail Adams, 2 November 1800

https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L18001102ja

Citizen’s guide to defending democracy

"…If the results come down to one or two states, they could experience protests or even riots, threats to election officials, and other attempts to change the results.

This prospect can feel overwhelming: Many people are not just upset about the possibility of a lost or stolen election, but oppressed by a sensation of helplessness. This feeling—I can't do anything; my actions don't matter—is precisely the feeling that autocratic movements seek to instill in citizens, as Peter Pomerantsev and I explain in our recent podcast, Autocracy in America. But you can always do something. If you need advice about what that might be, here is an updated citizen's guide to defending democracy..."

Anne Applebaum
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/citizens-guide-defending-2024-election/680254/

In dog we trust

"Fred was an unbeliever. He worshiped no personal God, no Supreme Being. He certainly did not worship me. If he had suddenly taken to worshiping me, I think I would have felt as queer as God must have felt the other day when a minister in California, pronouncing the invocation for a meeting of Democrats, said, "We believe Adlai Stevenson to be Thy choice for President of the United States. Amen."

I respected this quirk in Fred, this inability to conform to conventional canine standards of religious feeling. And in the miniature democracy that was, and is, our household he lived undisturbed and at peace with his conscience.

I hope my country will never become an uncomfortable place for the unbeliever, as it could easily become if prayer was made one of the requirements of the accredited citizen. My wife, a spiritual but not a prayerful woman, read Mr. Eisenhower's call to prayer in the Tribune and said something I shall never forget. "Maybe it's all right," she said. "But for the first time in my life I'm beginning to feel like an outsider in my own land."

Democracy is itself a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have. And so when I see the first faint shadow of orthodoxy sweep across the sky, feel the first cold whiff of its blinding fog steal in from sea, I tremble all over, as though I had just seen an eagle go by, carrying a baby."

— Essays of E. B. White by E. B. White
https://a.co/6BGuL0j

Words matter

Blood poison, vermin, the 'enemy within': The language of the the 1930s has not been used successfully in modern American politics. But maybe that's because no one, before now, has tried.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-authoritarian-rhetoric-hitler-mussolini/680296/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK3_BAdwxgTnhDQOES_Ka50h0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Vox populi

  I early-voted at Hillwood High School this morning.

“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
― Winston S. Churchill

When I early-voted in 2020 I posted these reflections, which still seem all too relevant:

Still in the game

We finish Falter today in Environmental Ethics. It would be nice to think we’re all about to finish faltering, as a democratic nation under siege of pandemic, political chaos, and climate denial/indifference. For a brief while yesterday morning, queuing to vote in the pleasant middle Tennessee sunshine outside the Bellevue branch of the Metro Public Library, I believed. 

The simple act of casting a ballot feels constructive and empowering, the very opposite of faltering. It feels like moving forward. The feeling would linger if only we could lose the electoral college that effectively denies some of us proportionate representation. Ranked-choice voting in the primaries would be good too. 

But never mind, for now. Yesterday was all about the invigorating sense of democratic dignity that free people expressing their will in free and fair elections still, for now, get to enjoy in this country. Conjuring Chris Stevens’ invocation of Einstein (vs. Randian selfishness) from the memory vault yesterday I’ve also recalled his paean to democracy in little (fictional) Cicely, Alaska. “You see, the act of voting is in itself the defining moment.”

My friends, today when I look out over Cicely, I see not a town, but a nation’s history written in miniature…we exterminated untold indigenous cultures and enslaved generations of Africans. We basically stained our star-spangled banner with a host of sins that can never be washed clean. But today, we’re here to celebrate the glorious aspects of our past. A tribute to a nation of free people, the country that Whitman exalted. (reading) “The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives and legislators, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.” I’ve never been so proud to be a Cicelian. I must go out now and fill my lungs with the deep clean air of democracy. Northern Exposure Season 3, Episode 15-“Democracy in America” 

A lung-full of freedom is bracing. Breathe deep. Vote. Resist democracy’s destabilizers and dismantlers while you can. The great game of self-governance has never in my lifetime felt so imperiled, or more worth fighting for.

But as Bill McKibben acknowledges in Falter, resistance comes at a cost. “I know so many people who have given over the prime of their lives to this fight.” But he also knows “many people who’ve found their lives in this work, in burgeoning movements that are full of love and friendship.” The tired cliche about finding meaning and purpose in causes larger than oneself is not wrong, the vivifying and ennobling benefits of personal and shared commitment are real. Resistance may be frustrating and may finally fail, but it’s not futile. Remember Grantland Rice, a game well-played is its own reward. You don’t have to fly the “W” to be a winner at life. 

Still, though, to lose democracy, humanity, and Gaia to indifference and inattention would be tragic and stupid. Resisting the apathy and amused-to-death distraction that permit the plutocrats to plunder the planet for personal profit, is in that light not radical or subversive. You might even call it conservatism, if that word weren’t already so tainted, to want and work for “a world where people are connected to the past and future (and to one another) instead of turned into obsolete software.” Solidarity simply means the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Ask the Scandinavians, who consistently top the World Happiness Report. In 2018 the USA was #18 on that list. If we say we believe in humanity that should embarrass us... (Up@dawn Oct '20, continues)

Wilmington

In 1898, white supremacists waged a deadly coup to overthrow Wilmington, North Carolina's democratically elected, multi-racial government.

AMERICAN COUP: WILMINGTON 1898 premieres November 12 at 9/8c on @PBS → https://to.pbs.org/3Y5AfkK AmericanCoupPBS

Of course it was

It was on this day in 1892 that the Pledge of Allegiance was recited en masse for the first time, by more than 2 million students. It had been written just a month earlier by a Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy…

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-saturday-82c?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

L of C “Chronicling America” database

It's National Newspaper Week! 📰 The Library's "Chronicling America" database contains 21 million+ pages of historic newspapers. Papers through 1963 are digitized, so the most impactful news stories from the early 20th century & beyond can be searched for & read about online. 🧵

https://www.threads.net/@librarycongress/post/DA1aXghPU81?xmt=AQGz3G-twrOZsVE0qxqFQ-0l8hDmXgPPaDOqkOs0VI89hA

Freedom & AUTOCRACY IN AMERICA

The fifth and final episode of AUTOCRACY IN AMERICA has dropped. The subject: Freedom, a word that in American history has sometimes meant freedom for some people and the repression of others.

Apple podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/autocracy-in-america/id1763234285
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/0ujIGO5bvCO6NkevvgsWTL
The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/10/the-danger-of-politicizing-freedom/680117/