There was a great story on NPR this afternoon about the new push by Organizing for America to energize Democratic voters for this fall’s election. Good on them. They’ve got fancy iPhone apps and everything that let them know exactly which doors to knock on and who to ask for. This election, so they tell us, is as critical, if not more so, than the election of 2008. I’d probably already have known this if I had not unsubscribed to their emails.
I used to receive quite a bit of email from Democratic political candidates and office holders, probably because they thought I had money to give them. They were mistaken, but that mistake is understandable in light of certain things which will not bear close scrutiny. For a while there, it seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do to at least read the emails. Eventually, the emails just made me anxious. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is exactly what they were intended to do. Nothing like a sense of urgency to get the money flowing.
For sure there are some things we should feel anxious about, but these are things that we hear far to little about from many of our politicians. In 2001, there was a moment to call this country together which was squandered. We had another in 2008, a time to call us back from the brink of destruction by self-consumption. I fear that moment has been lost too. What bothers me is not that the change we hoped for has not yet come, it’s that we have quit talking about it. I’ve decided to stop being anxious.