In Defense of Democracy

I recently ran across something I wrote back in 1996. It was right around the time of the election and my roommates were all getting ready to vote. I’d made it clear to them that I would not be voting in the election. They tried to stress the importance of casting your vote in a democracy, but I brushed them aside. Instead, I wrote an essay laying out my rationalizations for not voting. I’ve always believed that writing is an important way to focus your thoughts and cement your views in a way that transcends a fleeting thought, but WOW is it embarrassing to go back and read those things years later! Especially given how wrong I was in my convictions.

As I sit here writing this in 2024, the night before another presidential election, it’s clear to me that democracy needs to be defended. It doesn’t need a defense from my naive childhood apathy, but it does need a defense from disinformation. It needs a clarification of exactly what democracy means and what we gain from it. Democracy isn’t simply a vote for a representative in government, although that’s certainly part of it. Democracy is an ideal that we can accomplish more working together than we can individually.

There’s a moment in the movie Oppenheimer that comes across like an afterthought, but it’s actually quite profound. Oppenheimer is trying to assess the state of Nazi Germany in building an atomic bomb. He mentions that many of the jewish physicists who would be able to help unlock the mysteries of nuclear fission were exiled, which gave the Americans an upper hand. This is the promise of democracy in the simplest terms. Setting aside the horrific nature of what was being created, the scientific and engineering challenges that had to be overcome could only be accomplished by everyone contributing their skills and expertise. The promise of a democracy is that we can do more together than we can do apart, and the challenges of the 21st century will undoubtedly require all hands on deck.

The digital revolution changed the world in profound and extraordinary ways. Just look at how people live their day-to-day lives today compared to 50 years ago. These changes are widely viewed as progress, but there’s another side to the coin. Technology is a near-daily source of frustration and aggravation. It’s a constant reminder that we aren’t in control of our lives the way that previous generations were. My dad could fully take apart the engine of a VW bug and then put it back together again. I’ve worked on Bluetooth semiconductor chips for over 20 years and if the Bluetooth on my phone isn’t working then I do exactly what everybody else does - I turn it off and on again! It’s comically absurd when you think about it, but the countless hours that I spend investigating and fixing bugs is not an individual effort. It takes field engineers reproducing defects and taking detailed logs. It takes specialized equipment, access to source code, and testers who know how to verify that a fix is working. To accept technology into our lives is to accept the unfortunate reality that we can’t fix everything ourselves. We have to rely on others, even if it’s not easy to do. The world is simply too big and too complicated to know everything about it.

Rugged individualism has been a part of America’s DNA since its founding. It was a view of the world that came about through necessity, and whether intentionally or not it became inextricably linked with the vision for individual rights that are laid out in the declaration of independence. I think of that as the place where a lot of the anti-government feelings arise from today. People want to view themselves as self-reliant and independent. They have the mentality that they could live off the land if everything goes to shit, but I think this belief misses the bigger picture, which is that we come into this world knowing absolutely nothing. Almost everything we learn about the world comes to us from the hard work of the people who came before us. If you want to live off the land then you better know which mushrooms will kill you, and it’s a damn good thing that generations of botanists kept such detailed records! Even ideas that are completely original require building blocks that were established over countless lifetimes.

The modern conservative movement has lost faith in what I view as the underlying foundation of democracy. Not just the mechanics of running elections, which they’ve also lost faith in, but the premise of democracy itself, that we can work together to solve big problems. They’ve lost faith in experts, academics, journalists, scientists, politicians, judges, and pretty much anyone else who disagrees with them. They’ve lost faith in the open exchange of information that takes place in a democracy. They’ve lost faith in their family members and their fellow Americans. They’ve lost faith in self-determination through majority rule.

The anger emanating from conservatives is palpable. I think a lot of that anger stems from the frustration that accompanies life in the 21st century. I often find myself longing for simpler times, particularly when my Wi-Fi suddenly stops working for no apparent reason! I understand how complicated the world is and how difficult it is to get a handle on just the tiniest slice that we have control over. The thing about anger is that it comes from a region of the brain that overrides logical thought. It’s a basic emotion that comes from the “caveman” part of the brain. It’s also the easiest emotion to exploit. An angry mob can act in completely irrational ways. When anger bubbles over in the form of vitriol the target is often completely detached from the source of frustration, as anyone who has snapped at a spouse can attest.

The first step towards healing is acceptance, and in this case conservatives need to admit to themselves that they are angry an unhealthy amount of time. After the 2016 election I listened to the Sean Hannity radio show every day for a year. I was shocked at how angry he was, day in and day out. At the time he was yelling about Hillary Clinton’s emails, which struck me as such an inappropriate reaction, especially given that it was after the election and Donald Trump was president! I had to wonder what it’s like for conservatives to listen to that every day. They must carry so much tension in their bodies after having their fight or flight responses constantly triggered by conservative news.

Conservative news is the source of a lot of the division in this country, because it’s not designed to lead to an open exchange of ideas. It’s designed to trigger an emotional response. It’s not even designed to inform because the facts that are presented are either so badly skewed or just straight up misinformation. Just look at the verbal gymnastics JD Vance had to perform when he was asked who won the 2020 election. Of course, conservative news grew out of a distrust for “fake news” sources like CNN. Therein lies the rub. How do we get conservatives to accept facts that they don’t agree with?

Next: The Culture War