Three Reasons We Will Be Okay After the Midterms

This is my last post before the US midterm elections.

Behind the football games, Halloween parties, and profusion of yellow, orange, and purple mums, there is a low-level thrum of anxiety.

What’s going to happen, and how are we going to make sense of it?

Are we going to be okay?

I think we will be, for three reasons:

• Democracy is a relay race none of us runs alone.
• We’re in the process of re-sorting ourselves in light of the things we love, rather than who we see as our enemies.
• We’re better at embracing uncertainty than we think.

That’s nice, but are we really going to be okay?

Yes, we are polarized. We easily reduce the complex personalities and diverse histories of our neighbors down to a single litmus test: whose side are you on? Trust in our institutions is waning — but that is no reason to think we have no power.

As voters, we can influence the direction of our democracy. Despite disinformation campaigns, we can vote for national, statewide, and local candidates and referenda with confidence that our votes will be counted. Our neighbors who volunteer to man our polling places — those same neighbors whose motives we so often doubt — are probably the most ardent defenders of democracy in our community! I’d say the same about election officials who have refused to bow to strong-arm tactics. These volunteers and officials know that certifying and counting votes is the absolute ground zero of nonpartisanship. With them standing guard on election day, I believe we can trust the integrity of the process.

Of course, the anxiety we feel is also about what happens after the counting is done. Will the results be accepted? Will we have a peaceful transition of power if the majority in Congress shifts to the Democrats?

I’m not going to make a prediction about. But I will say that, no matter what happens, we do well to remind ourselves that safeguarding democracy is not a sprint. It’s not even a marathon, because both of those are individual races! No, safeguarding democracy is more like a relay race, with a team numbering in the millions with a very long time span! It’s a race that’s generations long. We experience (and will experience) alternating periods of calm and unrest, success and failure, hope and despair. No matter which part of the cycle we are in, we do well to remember that we are in a cycle, preparing for difficult times so we are ready when the baton passes to us, to our community, to our generation — or, to pass the baton to those who come after.

Join or Die

We face many threats to our democracy this election season, but perhaps the greatest threat is the temptation to see our fellow citizens as “the enemy.” Whatever other threats we face, this is one we are all complicit in.

Election campaigns thrive on extreme rhetoric of “us and them.” Please don’t fall for it. The goal of such campaigns is to drive us into silos, where ideology and policy become absolute judgments on our fellow human beings. If you visit one of these silos, whether online or in person, you’ll notice that they are angry, sad, depressing social spaces. If this is how we are all experiencing life, corrupt politicians can easily convince us we need saving and that they are the savior we’ve been waiting for.

To defend against this sort of manipulation, we can re-sort ourselves by our interests and by the things that bring us joy. The documentary Join or Die is a film about why you should join a club that’s centered on something you love, and why the fate of America depends on it. It makes a compelling case that connecting with people who enjoy the same things you do — and who you didn’t screen for ideology or party affiliation — protects our democracy against division and enemy narratives.

When we plug into such networks, we shift from thinking people are the problem, to focusing on actual problems and how we can solve them. A PTA group might open the gym on the weekends because kids need a place to hang out; a knitting club learns that the maternity ward needs blankets for unhoused moms; someone new to a community who loves biking starts a riding club that draws people of all ages together offering organic mentorship to young people.

Paralyzed as our government seems sometimes, actual problems are being solved all the time! Whether you’re liberal, conservative or progressive, it’s good to remember that people who stay focused on real problems are the most powerful change agents around, and the best way to find them is to pursue your real, deepest desires.

So listen to a podcast about chess, take classes in yoga or martial arts, join a bird-watching club – do anything that feels like fun and brings you together with others! You might just meet someone who helps you believe things can change for the better.

Embracing Uncertainty

Learning to live with uncertainty is so important to a healthy democracy that we chose it as the theme for the second season of our podcast, Third Things First.

It matters to democracy because our ability to live with uncertainty determines whether we can solve problems peaceably, without violence. Being comfortable with uncertainty increases what some psychologists call our “creative agility” — our ability to see a problem from a new angle and generate new meanings or solutions from what, at first, seems intractable. And, it turns out, humans like being creative and solving problems! While living with uncertainty might be uncomfortable, the practice ultimately leads us to new ways of seeing that give us great pleasure once we discover them. I’m confident that the human pursuit of pleasure will ultimately lead us to an ever greater tolerance of uncertainty in our lives. (But don’t take my word for it! Gena St. David has done wonderful, original research on exactly this topic.)

This also means that uncertainty is an essential ingredient to disrupting us vs. them narratives, which are always precursors to violence. When someone tells you, with great certainty, that the problem is “them” and the solution is to get rid of “them,” that is a scapegoating accusation, and the possibility of violence is not far behind.

The only thing we can be certain of is that our potential scapegoats are no more good or bad than we are. They are just different — perhaps without power, and already relegated to the social margins. They may even be part of a constituency that politicians allow to be scapegoated, which lets those same politicians paint themselves as the solution to a “new” and frightening problem!

Rather than succumb to hatred and violence, it’s better to live with some doubt and anxiety. The more we learn to be at peace with uncertainty, the harder we are to manipulate through our fear.

Now What?

Whatever the outcome of the elections, there are things to do that will prepare us to run the leg of the democracy relay that has fallen to our time and generation.

Don’t let politicians with hidden agendas choose your friends for you. Don’t let them tell you who the problem is – find out for yourself what the problem is, and who wants to solve it with you! Don’t fall for scapegoating accusations; ask questions, and don’t accept solutions that justify hatred, exclusion, and violence against anyone, especially the most vulnerable among us.

I hope you’ll stay engaged with the Wicked Truth community by reading our newsletter, listening to the podcast, and diving into the new edition of The Wicked Truth: When Good People Do Bad Things. Each of these resources is designed to help communities support each other in uncertain times, resist scapegoating narratives, and form friendships as we work together to find solutions to the problems we face.

Till next time, remember to always mourn the wicked. It’s what good people do.