From the Editor: It's Time to Serve
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The past week has been extraordinary—both in the results of the 2024 presidential election and in the reaction to the same.
Since Tuesday, I have personally fielded numerous calls from people deeply shaken by the results, and I’ve spent time talking with those who genuinely fear for the future of the Republic.
I’ve also spent time with those who feel that the democratic process has served the Republic well, and this has restored their faith in elections.
And then, there has been the vitriol.
From the winning side we have seen the vilest forms of misogyny, from “your body, my choice,” to “repeal the 19th” and “get back to the kitchen.”
And from the losing side, we have seen an ongoing insistence that Trump supporters are “racist, sexist, transphobic, or just stupid.” A reflection of the arrogance and disdain of extremists that some charge cost Kamala Harris the election.
As a journalist, I know what it is to be the object of the vilest insults and threats. From death threats to “enemy of the American people,” to being called “deluded” and a “lib-tard,” there’s not much I have haven’t had hurled at me in my career from conservative extremists.
My founding partner in the Advance has long absorbed just as vile insults from the left.
For seasoned journalists and politicos, this is nothing new, and we take it in stride. The extremes always seem intent on dehumanizing those they disagree with.
What one never really gets used to, however, is when the attacks come from those within their cultural tribes. For the simple act of entering into conversation with myself, my founding partner got an earful from some elements on the right whom I can only guess felt betrayed. And I have similarly been chastised, both from the beginning of this publication, and in the days following the election. The reasons for such rebukes still confuse me.
Like the criticism we’ve absorbed from opposing sides, we take criticism from our tribes in stride, too.
However, the extent of this criticism says something profound about our body politic. It speaks to our level of political dysfunction, and it demands reflection and solutions.
Who Is Speaking Through You?
This past week, The New Yorker published a piece by George Saunders that brings into focus the depth of the problem. I beg forgiveness from The New Yorker for copying this, but it captures perfectly the issue before us.
He frames the story through five thought experiments. The third is particularly helpful.
Thought Experiment No. 3
Imagine you are about to have a political argument with a close friend or family member. You are on opposing sides of the left-right rift. You have had this discussion many times before.
Many times.
Questions for Discussion:
Doesn’t it sometimes feel that it would be simpler if you each just brought over a small TV and left it running in the kitchen, tuned to your respective network, while the two of you went into the yard and talked about something about which you possess some original knowledge? Once you’re out there, talking like that, won’t it be nice to feel your pre-formed “political” carapaces drop away? And won’t it be discouraging and alarming when … one of you slips up and utters a triggering word or phrase … you veer back into your canned “political” jargon…?
In that moment, as the two of you stand there like Rock ’Em Sock ’Em robots, beating up on each other with someone else’s phrases, looking, often, a little sad, even ashamed, who is speaking through you? [emphases added]
Over the past week and years, what I’ve come to ponder is how utterly unoriginal most of the arguments that we level at one another over political issues truly are. We scream “facts” at one another — facts too often drawn from memes and social media, usually devoid of context — with no real appreciation for where those facts come from or how they fit into a larger narrative.
The unoriginality of our discourse has, in my experience, worsened significantly this century. The explosion of the internet and social media means the same tired memes and arguments move around our tribes at breakneck pace, arming the political armies with what they believe to be impenetrable armor and deadly weapons.
In fact, these memes and arguments are little more than porous, nerf-like armor, and weapons made of Styrofoam.
We aren’t talking with one another in original terms. We’re babbling at one another like so many children mimicking what their parents tell them.
There is a solution, and it’s as simple as tuning out the noise and talking with one another. Unfortunately, it’s also that difficult.
In the days since the election, there is some evidence that a few people are finally beginning to turn on social media. That’s a start. But will we engage with one another?
There are people who simply refuse to engage. Both because they fear being pummeled with the unoriginal arguments just referenced, and because they hear from those within their own tribes how evil the opposing side is.
As a reporter, I’ve watched as Republicans have increasingly retreated into their caves rather than talk with a journalist who they’re convinced is going to skewer them.
And I’ve heard more Democrats than I care to admit to saying something like the following — “I’ve never met them, but I hate them.”
And through it all, neither side ever stops to really think about “who is speaking through” them.
To do so is to admit that our own arguments are utterly unoriginal. And that we must run the risk of facing people and information and facts that force us to soften, and sometimes even change, our outlooks on the world.
Service Is the Key
How to move forward?
David Kerr’s article today, Saying Farewell to the Greatest Generation, offers a path.
Tom Brokaw named his book about this generation of Americans, hardened by the depression and then by the war, “the Greatest Generation.” It was an apt description. Franklin Roosevelt said of this group of young Americans, in a speech before the war, “…to other generations much is given, from other generations much is expected – this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” And that they did.
The truth is, far too few of us have had “much expected” of us. In other words, for 50 years now, we are a nation that has not been asked to sacrifice much of anything. Instead, we have become obsessed with our comfort.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, we have not engaged in a conflict that involved more than 1% of the U.S. population. And the gulf between those who have ever served in the military, or know people who have served in the military, and those who have not has widened significantly.
The pervasive use of the expression “thank you for your service” is no doubt appreciated by some in the military. But I’ve encountered just as many veterans who are made uncomfortable by that expression.
For many, their “service” is not extraordinary, but something they are moved to do out of a sense of respect for everything this nation has given them.
This is not to suggest that reinstating the draft and forcing everyone to serve a turn of military service will fix our broken political discourse. It is to suggest that committing ourselves to public service, whatever form that may take, is the most promising path forward.
Fixating on that which we have very little control over — whatever Trump may do over the next two years (yes, I mean both Dems [who will challenge] and Republicans [who will defend])— without a comparable or greater level of fixation on serving those in our communities means we will go further down the path that has brought us to this point.
A dysfunctional, untrusting society that reinforces our worst impulses.
Today, as we celebrate those who have worn the uniform and served our country, let’s says thanks, and then go a step further.
Let’s learn from our veterans. The meaning of their commitment to something beyond themselves. And the joy in committing ourselves to serving a greater good, regardless of the price to ourselves.
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My compliments Marty! You actually referred to "the Republic" instead of the usual misnomer of "our Democracy".
Virginia’s Edmund Randolph participated in the 1787 convention. Demonstrating a clear grasp of democracy’s inherent dangers, he reminded his colleagues during the early weeks of the Constitutional Convention that the purpose for which they had gathered was "to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy…"