So much has happened since my last blog post in December!
I had been planning on doing one in January but wanted to wait until after the Inauguration and then life got busy and we had a death in the family right at the end of the month and here I am a week into February.
But I’ve always said, my goal is quality, not quantity, and there’s no blog police that are going to fine me for not having done one a month every single month.
Long term I still have, and will always have, a deep and abiding faith in the resilience and innate goodness of the American people and our collective love and appreciation for democracy, the rule of law, and the desire as a people to have a positive impact on the world around us.
In the short term however, it is apparent that we as a nation and the world at large will have to endure the worst instincts of the worst of us, if for no other reason than because elections have consequences, and a nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
The frenetic volume of consequential and concerning changes being made during the first few weeks of the second Trump administration remind me of LBJ’s conversation with Governor Wallace decades ago.
He asked Governor Wallace what he wanted to be remembered as, someone who built something, or someone who hated. The easiest thing in the world to do is to tear down the work of others, to be the critic. What’s much harder is to build something of value that endures.
Another thing I have been thinking about in recent days is the words of Mohandas Gandhi who said “whenever I despair about the state of the world I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There have always been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.”
I also think of Edward R Murrow’s statement that “we must remember that we are not descended from fearful men, that no one man can terrorize an entire nation unless we let him”.
There are many questions before all of us in this time of testing. The next 2 years will show us yet again what our fellow countrymen and women value when the midterm elections take place.
But will it?
When 89 million voters chose not to vote at all, which is more than either presidential candidate got (77 & 75 million respectively), that should be a massive wakeup call for anyone who cares about the future of our nation.
A few years ago I did an op-ed entitled “Apathy is How Democracy Dies”, and a few years before that I did an op-ed that said the 21st century will be an Independent century, and I have seen nothing since then to make me second guess my views on either of those two points.
We are 25% of the way into this new century, and as typically happens, the early years of a century are still being formed and molded by leaders shaped by the prior century.
Within the next 15 years we will start to see those who were born in or came of age in the 21st century start to take wider control of our society, and only then will the full story of this century begin to be written, just as the Greatest Generation was the determining factor in the middle of the 20th century and for decades to come after that.
For 10 years now I have been telling everyone that my mindset for getting involved with nonpartisan reform efforts was as a father, to try and do what I could to fix our system of government so my child and her generation didn’t have to.
While there have been definite bright spots nationwide from Alaska to New York City over these last 10 years, it is clear to me now that my goal, however noble, will not be achieved before my kid has to vote for the first time in 18 months.
My new mindset is that she and her generation will get to be a part of helping to change it all for the better.
I just hope it will be sooner rather than later so I too can enjoy the ability to actively vote FOR someone instead of having to continue to pick the lesser of two evils as I’ve had to do for the first 30 years of my voting life.
Speaking of my kid, she likes to tease me about how much I like trains (my family has an old Lionel train set from the 1950’s), but it got me to thinking this last month about a metaphor involving trains.
Imagine for a moment that America is like a big train station, and at the station right now are two trains, a Democratic train and a Republican train, but both look pretty gruesome for different reasons and an objective bystander would have serious questions about whether either of them could get to the final destination of that bright shining city on a hill that Reagan spoke of.
There’s a third train under construction nearby, nicer and way more advanced than either of the other two trains, but it’s obscured from view and the people in the train station can’t see it. So as a result a lot of them get onto each of the D and R trains, even though they have concerns.
That new train, as amazing as it will be, is worthless if the people don’t know about it, and a moot point if most of the people in the train station aren’t even wanting to ride a train (ie the 89 million who didn’t even vote in 2024).
For the last 10 years I’ve been a small piece of trying to help build that better train, and incentivize the D and R trains to re-tool and make better versions of themselves to compete with the new train, but it has become clear to me that not enough people are working on the apathy issue of those who don’t want to ride any train at all.
In my last blog post I shared the prayer that Eleanor Roosevelt carried with her during World War 2, of making sure one is living a life worth dying for.
In order to be able to live with myself over the next 4 years while I continue with my primary obligation of being a stay at home parent for my child as she finishes high school and goes to college, in my spare time I will be focusing on trying to do what I can to reduce the apathy in our country. I invite you to join me, because I certainly cannot do it alone.
Finally, I want to leave you with a poem called The Clattering Train that was a favorite of Winston Churchill’s, that was first published in 1890 after a deadly train accident where the engineer had fallen asleep, and that he recited in the House of Commons in 1935.
Churchill used it as a metaphor to warn of impending war. For me I use it as a warning about the continued negative effects of apathy in our voting populace.
Who is in charge of the clattering train?
The axles creak, and the couplings strain.
Ten minutes behind at the Junction. Yes!
And we’re twenty now to the bad—no less!
At every mile we a minute must gain!
Who is in charge of the clattering train?
Why, flesh and blood, as a matter of course!
You may talk of iron, and prate of force;
But, after all, and do what you can….
Man is in charge of the thundering train!
Man, in the shape of a modest chap
In fustian trousers and greasy cap;
A trifle stolid, and something gruff,
Yet, though unpolished, of sturdy stuff….
Only a Man, but away at his back,
In a dozen cars, on the steely track,
A hundred passengers place their trust
In this fellow of fustian, grease, and dust….
The hiss of steam-spurts athwart the dark.
Lull them to confident drowsiness. Hark!
What is that sound? ‘Tis the stertorous breath
Of a slumbering man—and it smacks of death!
Full sixteen hours of continuous toil
Midst the fume of sulphur, the reek of oil,
Have told their tale on the man’s tired brain,
And Death is in charge of the clattering train!
Those poppy-fingers his head incline
Lower, lower, in slumber’s trance;
The shadows fleet, and the gas-gleams dance
Faster, faster in mazy flight,
As the, with sleep-sealed eyes,
Prone and helpless a log he lies!
A hundred hearts beat placidly on,
Unwitting they that their warder’s gone;
A hundred lips are babbling blithe,
Some seconds hence they in pain may writhe.
For the pace is hot, and the points are near,
And Sleep hath deadened the driver’s ear;
And signals flash through the night in vain.
Death is in charge of the clattering train!
Perry Waag 