Tag: democracy

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Un-Conventional

The flash commanded immediate attention, filling the bay window for a dazzling instant. And then came the signature.

KRA-KA-BOOOOM!

If you were in Longmont on Friday evening, you know exactly what I’m talking about – a window-rattling, house-shaking thunder burst fit for a Beethoven video. The sort of close strike that makes you wonder what just blew up, or when the invasion began.

I gave a nervous glance to my front yard maple tree – untouched, thank goodness – and to social media, which was lighting up even faster than the sky had. But the skies themselves had other business; with their Big Boom out of the way, the agenda had moved on to a gentle rain rather than an extended battle.

Which in turn meant peace in Chez Rochat. Our mighty dog Big Blake, known to cower under desks on the Fourth of July, was on to his usual food-swiping and eye-begging ways within moments. Our disabled ward Missy, who jumps and yells at the sound of a backfiring motorcycle, kept rocking out to the tunes on her stereo.

There had been plenty of buzz. Lots of chatter. But no lasting effect.

This time of year, that seems especially appropriate.

Right at the close of convention season.

I spent 16 years as a newspaper reporter, most of it covering governments of one kind or another. I used to joke that it was a lot like following a soap opera: when you first sit down, the actions seems utterly incomprehensible, but over time it becomes addictive as you start to understand the characters and the plots.

Even so, I never saw the point of a national convention. To torture the metaphor a little further, it always felt like a “sweeps week” – a chance to juice the ratings and draw in some casual fans with a gimmicky plot that had little relation to the rest of the season.

Granted, that’s a recent thing. Once upon a time, the national party conventions were the ultimate bargaining table. History could be made with a quick deal that swung enough delegates behind your candidate. A potential president might emerge to find half his cabinet already filled from backroom promises or standing on a party platform with a few curious planks to bring in the stragglers.

These days, thanks to the greater weight of primary elections, everyone knows who the major-party nominees will be long before Day 1 of either convention. The event is no longer a bargaining session – it’s a week-long ad meant to generate a “bump” in the polls. And with one convention following hard on the heels of the other, the bumps have been getting smaller and shorter-lived.

It’s a thunder burst. Flashy. Noisy. But not really good for anything except a moment’s brief attention.

The lasting work in any storm comes from the rain. The sustained effort that actually grows something.

That’s where we come in.

Elections don’t need conventions. But they do need informed voters. Individuals who pay attention for longer than a few speeches and sound bites. Citizens who care not just about who wins, but about where we’re going  and why.

Grass needs rain. Democracy needs us.

I know, it sounds idealistic. It always has. But if enough of us dedicate ourselves to repairing what’s broken and even building something better, a difference can be made. Not easily. Not without a struggle. But not without hope, either.

The rumbles have died down. The flash has left the sky. But the real work is still ahead. Our work.

It’s time for us to take our part in the storm.

Long may we rain.

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Riding Out the Storm

The Snowpocalypse returned to Longmont on Wednesday. If you read social media at all, I’m sure you saw the shock and horror.

“A blizzard in March? Really?”

“Go home, Mother Nature, you’re drunk.”

“Happy spring, everybody!”

The thing is, if you’ve lived on the Front Range for longer than a couple of years, you know that this is what happens in a normal March. You’ve heard (probably ad nauseum) that “this is the snowiest month of the year.” We know what to expect, and when.

And yet, when the storm hits, it still fascinates us. Like an old sweater or Christmas decoration, we drag the jokes out of storage to be displayed for another year. Heck, I’ve told them myself. When you go from a 70-degree day to 15 inches of beautiful springlike weather literally overnight – well, as Willy Loman once said, attention must be paid.

So we let ourselves be amazed. We cast aside the other fears and demands of the world to focus on digging in and then digging out, sprinkling appropriate touches of profanity as we struggle to remove the concrete-heavy snow from our driveways and sidewalks or navigate the slushy, soon-to-be icebound roads.

Once again, we’ve survived the end of the world as we know it.

And in an election year, that should feel mighty familiar.

Granted, most of us, if given the choice between surviving a presidential campaign season and a blizzard, would probably pick the blizzard. Especially this campaign season.  There seems to be a feeling, on left and right, that this is the year the Great Democratic Experiment meets its greatest test. Elect the wrong man/woman/alien from Planet Mongo, we’re told, and it’s time to flee to Australia – Canada may just not be far enough.

I’ll be honest. I share in some of that feeling myself. I’d have to be Superman not to be touched by all the fear and worry in the air—and not only did I live my cape in the dry-cleaners, I genuinely feel that some of the candidates for office are worthy of our fear and worry.

But you know something? We’ve been here before. For any given value of “here.” Maybe not with these people, maybe not with this exact set of fears, but we have survived an awful lot, in terms of potential leaders and actual ones.

We’ve seen populist leaders lead movements with the fervor of a revivalist preacher, bringing anxiety to those already in power. (Hello, William Jennings Bryan. Or, from a more authoritarian side of the spectrum, Huey Long.)

We’ve seen political parties fracture and break under the stress of the day’s issues, opening the door to a “plurality president” who might have otherwise never set foot in the White House. (Check out when a Democratic split gave us Abraham Lincoln, or a Republican one Woodrow Wilson.)

We’ve had presidents who were drunks. Presidents who were conspirators. Even presidents who took action to silence enemies, or permitted the deportation or imprisonment of entire populations. (Look up John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts, Andrew Jackson and the “Trail of Tears,” or FDR and the Japanese internment.)

I’m not saying we should yawn or say “oh, well,” at any of this. Some of the things that have happened are truly horrifying. Some of it has even led us to swear at different times “Never again” and justified our vigilance as voters and citizens.

But my point is that we have survived all of it. Admittedly, sometimes by the skin of our teeth. But we have carried through. And we have continued to try to create something better.

We can do it again.

Yes, be aware. Yes, fight like crazy for  the vision of this country you want to see. No, don’t be blasé about what could happen if the person you’re most worried about seizes the controls.

But remember also – we can still survive. And we probably will. Especially if we look past the elections and continue our energy, awareness, and determination to build this country long after the final ballot has been counted.

We can be ready. We can be prepared.

And with enough of both, we can weather the storm.

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Primary Importance

Not long ago, an offbeat-science webcomic called “What If?” dealt with the question “What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw?”

The answer, naturally, was nothing good. Even if such were physically possible, the author noted – which, naturally, it isn’t – the resulting high-pressure stream would have the power of a small star. “(I)ts heat and light would quickly raise the temperature of the planet, boil away the oceans, and render the whole place uninhabitable,” author Randall Munroe wrote.

In other words, too big a flow plus too small a container equals a big mess. Which is something that any Colorado county clerk’s office should be able to attest to after Super Tuesday.

You’ve seen the news stories. If you went to the caucuses – particularly, in this state, the Democratic ones – you may have experienced it yourself. A voting system built for small, orderly numbers of people was pushed way past its carrying capacity. Some voters got to stand in long lines. Some wound up meeting outdoors due to fire codes. Some waited more than an hour to begin the two-hour long sessions and still wound up turning people away.

The participation, admittedly, was exciting. But for many, it was also infuriating. More than one voter told local media that they couldn’t even find a place to get out of their car and vote – and even on the Democratic side, the eye of the hurricane here, the number of actual participants still added up to about 14 percent of active voters, according to one report.

Is it just me, or is something off about that?

Yes, caucuses have a quaint, traditional feeling to them. Yes, among those who participate, they do allow for a very personal sense of community engagement and discussion. Yes, they’re typically less expensive than a primary election.

But if what you want is for people to be heard – a lot of people, as many people as possible – then caucuses just flat out don’t work.

They don’t work for the chronically ill or disabled who might be able to spend a few minutes at a voting booth or on a mail-in ballot, but not two hours at an evening meeting. (Count my wife Heather among those, by the way.)

They don’t work for late-shift workers who can’t take two hours or more away from their job to caucus and debate.

They don’t work for single parents who can’t find a babysitter. For families without a car who don’t have evening bus service. For a number of people in a number of situations, particularly in groups that could be called “the least of these.”

And when the numbers get too high, they simply don’t work, period.

Simply put, as a means of encouraging democracy, a caucus system is better at leaving people out than inviting them in.

Colorado used to have a primary election. Isn’t it time to revive it?

Sure, it costs more. Sure, you maybe lose that sense of neighborhood debate. But gaining increased access to the ballot box is worth it all. Lines may still be long, but they’re no longer insurmountable. No one has to be left out because of limited circumstances, either their own or the polling place’s.

A caucus may have sounded like a good idea to some in 2003. But I don’t think there can be any doubt about its fitness now. It’s like running a Stanley Steamer in the Indy 500 – simply the wrong vehicle for the job.

Just as at Niagra Falls, we’ve simply come to the last straw.

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Nation in Progress

For a moment, the show seems to be over. Then the fresh explosion comes. BOOM! Sound and fury light up the landscape until it feels like a battle in full swing, with moments of fiery brilliance giving way to a continuous background chatter, holding the floor until the next burst.

Watching Facebook is really something, isn’t it?

OK, maybe the comparison’s a little inaccurate. After all, even the longest Fourth of July fireworks show is eventually over. But our national fulmination never seems to end, always finding a new source of fuel. A Supreme Court ruling. An inept political remark. A decision to pull “The Dukes of Hazzard” reruns from the airwaves.

Squeeeeeeeeeeee-BOOM!

Between an unsettled nation and unsettled times, it can feel a little exhausting. It’s easy to wish for quiet, for stability, for a little time to make everything make sense before we have to go on to the next crisis.

It’s also about as foreign to this country as Justin Bieber in a Beatles movie.

Sorry for that image. But on this, I think even George Washington might agree. Once he got the tune to “Baby, Baby, Baby” out of his head, anyway.

I think it comes down to something simple: America should never be a comfortable place to live.

I don’t mean the landscape should look like something out of a Mad Max movie. And I’m certainly not suggesting a “Love it or Leave It” attitude that urges all dissenters to make a run for the border of their choice.

But America has always been a little more than a country. It’s a concept. A conversation. Even a dream.

And as such, it’s never really finished.

Once in a while, some pundit will appeal to the Founding Fathers and what they did or didn’t intend. My reaction is always the same: “Which Fathers?” To look at the American Revolution and the years that followed it is to see chaos in a bottle, a group of people that sometimes seemed unable to agree on the lunch bill.

Some wanted to save slavery, or to kill it. Some wanted 13 loosely tied sovereignties with little national leadership, while at least one wanted to do away with state governments all together. We were a year into our war against Britain before we could even agree on why we were fighting. Even our Constitution, venerated by many, is deliberately vague on several points – and had to be, so that everyone could think their side had won.

We are a wrangling people, in the middle of a country that’s always under construction. And that’s not going to change. We’re always working out what America means and we always should be. If we ever stop challenging each other, or being challenged, worry.

A free land should never be a quiet one.

Mind you, I’m not saying we have to be a bunch of rude, bumptious yahoos, either. Part of the constant struggle is that it’s a struggle to find a way forward, not just to make noise. There can be respect. There can be compromise. There can be intelligent consideration of the facts (I swear, even as the network news tries to say otherwise every night).

But what there can’t be is apathy. Or complacency. Even the loudest boor adds more (if maybe not much more) than the individual who steps out of the fight entirely.

The conversation has to go on. Even if it sometimes wakes the neighbors. Or, if we’re lucky, the nation.

Enjoy the fireworks. And don’t forget to light a few of your own.

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Fighting Free

OK, last soccer story for a while, I promise.

When our good-but-not-yet-great U.S. soccer team got knocked out of the World Cup, coach Jurgen Klinsmann wasn’t surprised. He’d been expecting it. Even predicting it. And not because his team lacked ability or talent.

What they lacked, he said, were consequences.

“If you have a bad performance, then people should approach you and tell you that,” Klinsmann told the Associated Press. Get criticized, scolded, told off – and get stronger rather than go through it all again.

We’re familiar with that in Bronco country. When the orange and blue falter in the national spotlight, the phones light up at every talk radio station in the area. People write to the paper, post online, erupt across every social media outlet around and a few that haven’t been invented yet. If Joe Biden were found to have sold military secrets to the Purple People-Eaters of Mars, it would get bumped to page 3 to make room for Denver football outrage.

Get outshot four-to-one at the World Cup? Meh. Most folks shrug, walk away and go back to not caring about the “other football.”

So why bother improving?

It’s why I’ve got only lukewarm optimism for our future soccer prospects. But a lot of hope for this country.

Because if there’s one thing we do really, really, really well, it’s argue about freedom.

It only takes 10 minutes with the news, or five minutes with Facebook, to find a constitutional crisis. The Colorado attorney general facing off with the county clerk over gay marriage. Outrage and excitement over the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, and what it means for the religious rights of employer and employed. Quips, wisecracks and sometimes knock-down drag-out arguments over guns, wiretaps, property rights and a dozen other issues.

Some of the results frighten me. Some make me proud. All of them prove to me we still have people who care. Sometimes without a lot of information, true. But it’s a lot easier to educate the ignorant than ignite the apathetic.

So long as we care, we’re still in the game.

More than that. So long as we care, we can decide what the game will be.

We’ve been an argumentative people for a long time. One historian pointed out that if you go through colonial records, one thing you will quickly find is a lot of petty lawsuits. A lot of times, all that energy goes in no particular direction, sparks and cinders, quickly lit, quickly out.

But when it’s focused – then you get a bonfire.

We forget, you see. We forget that while government can lead, while government can set the boundary lines, we can change the entire conversation. That the decision about what freedom means doesn’t sit with a court or a Congress or a president – it rests with us.

The rules said blacks and whites weren’t equal. People fought that and people won.

The rules said women had no voice in the nation’s business. People fought that and people won.

The rules once said our future wasn’t up to us at all, that the most important decisions would be made over an ocean, on an island, by people who had mostly never seen our shores. We told them that if we didn’t like our government, we had the right – indeed, the obligation – to change it.

We hold the power. But only so long as we refuse to be satisfied until we get things right.

“(A)ll experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed,” a certain red-haired Virginian wrote in 1776. But test that point too far, he warned, and people will demand change.

True of a soccer team. True of a nation.

I’m not saying complaining is all we need to do – absent any drive or action, it can get a bit tiresome, I agree. But it’s the vital first step. To everyone who says “Oh, it’s easy to complain,” stop and consider those words. There’s plenty of places where it’s not easy at all. There’s quite a few where it’s outright deadly.

Long may we brawl in the best of causes.

Maybe we’ll even get a decent World Cup out of it.

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Putting the Pieces Together

Missy has a unique way of playing Concentration.

To start with, her cards always stay face up. That in itself might not be unusual, given her disability. Simply locating and matching a pair of cards counts as a triumph, even without the added challenge of remembering where a certain pair is hiding.

But it’s what happens next that gets my attention.

Because Missy’s matching doesn’t stop with pairs.

Cards showing markers are stacked with cards showing crayons. Cards showing airplanes get sorted with cards showing rockets. Any card that has a picture of food on it finds its way into a common pile.

In short, she’s finding patterns.

More, she’s finding patterns that everyone would recognize.

In this day and age, that’s not just a triumph. That’s darned near a miracle.

***

“Still a man hears what he wants to hear/And disregards the rest.”

— Simon and Garfunkel, “The Boxer”

 

There’s a lot of anger in the country these days.

Anger over gun laws and gay rights. Anger over drones and bugs, over hours-long filibusters and mile-long health care plans. Anger over what exactly happened on a rainy Florida night between two strangers that left one dead and the other notorious.

I’m not discounting that anger or proclaiming myself immune. I’ve felt it. You probably have, too. And frankly, it’s good for citizens of a democracy to be uncomfortable at times, to not be complacent, to look at the world and say “This is not how it should be.”

But going there isn’t enough.

You have to decide what the next step is going to be.

For some, the urge to anger becomes the urge to destroy. Hit back. Tear down. It’s the most primal urge of all, the most tempting. The blow thrown in rage. The bomb set in Boston. The war that consumes all of Europe, then all the world.

To let the heat become fire, all-consuming.

For others, anger is a chance to build and transform, the righteous anger that cleans moneychangers from the temple or slavery from a nation. To say “This is not right” and replace it with something better.

To let the fire light the way to a different path.

For most of us? It becomes hot air. Something to vent on Facebook and Twitter, to rant about in the halls of power, to air the dissatisfaction without necessarily seeing it become action.

Now, that talk has its place. It’s better to shout than to shoot, after all.  Sometimes that debate can even lay the groundwork for those who do act, if only by helping one more neighbor to see and appreciate a view that’s not their own.

That way can lie understanding. Compromise. Even cooperation.

But … and this is a big “but” … there has to be a place where minds can meet.

And that can’t happen if everyone has their own personal reality.

The Zimmerman trial was only the most recent example. We’ve seen others. Cases where so many already know what happened, know what the truth is. And will pull out everything they can, be it fact or rumor, to support that pre-determined conclusion.

Doesn’t fit the picture? Shuffle it back into the deck.

Need that matchup to work? Go ahead. Stack the pizza cards with the crayons. Who’s to say you’re wrong?

I mean, besides any kind of objective reality.

Facts are uncomfortable things. They’re not always going to be on the side we want. It is, indeed, useful to recognize patterns and draw inferences from them – but only if we’re ready to follow where they take us.

If it mars our pretty picture, so be it. Better an honest uncertainty than a conviction built on air.

And if we can’t do that … well, then we get today’s Congress. And much of today’s social media. A lot of echo chambers, each sure of their righteousness and the other guy’s error, none ready to acknowledge the horrible possibility that they might be mistaken.

It doesn’t take much to change it. Just open eyes. An honest mind. And a willingness to put sense before pride.

Missy will be glad to demonstrate.

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Exhaustive Democracy

I don’t usually write about my reporting side here. I’m going to make a small exception today.

If I can stay awake, that is.

As many of you know, I cover city politics. And this last Tuesday, city politics covered me like a semi covers a skunk. It was almost 1 in the morning before the final gavel came down, closing a night of often impassioned and sometimes angry debate.

The subject was fracking, of course. It so often seems to be these days. And I won’t be weighing in directly on the issue, just like I haven’t weighed in on airport runways, backyard chickens, or marijuana dispensaries. My job is still to cover the story, not to be the story.

But I do have something to say to the five dozen speakers who pummeled the air with their opinions and concerns. To all involved in extending the debate until deadlines were only a fond memory. To everyone who helped me wake up the next morning feeling like I’d gone 30 rounds with Joe Louis in his prime.

Thank you.

Seriously.

Memorial Day is almost upon us. Every year, we talk about honoring the soldiers who fought for the nation we live in and the rights we hold. The men and women who help keep this a free country.

But the finest military in the world can’t keep a nation free if it loses the habit.

I know. This is the sort of thing newspapers usually get excited about just after Election Day, either praising the public for a higher-than-expected turnout or excoriating it for a low attendance rate. But voting’s only one step in the democratic process. The easiest one, at that.

The hard part is to enter the brawl. To shape the issues that get voted on. To push the officials who cast the votes, maybe even to become them.

To be a voice instead of just a hole-puncher.

I didn’t agree with every speaker Tuesday night. To be honest, there were a few on all sides that had me biting my tongue hard enough to leave marks. Some went so far out on a limb that they were tap dancing with woodpeckers.

But I give them this, good and bad and ugly. None of them stayed home and stewed. None of them decided it was somebody else’s problem. All of them came and made their feelings known.

Sure, we can talk about civility or checking the facts or finding ways to come together. Those things are important, too, even crucial. But the first step, the vital step, is to break through apathy and get everyone in the same room and talking. You can’t have a good public debate if you have no public debaters.

And whatever the other faults of Tuesday may have been, that was not one of them.

So thank you, one more time. Thank you for insisting on being heard. Thank you for being a people, a public, a participant.

See you all next time.

Right after I get myself a nap.