The Limits of Enthusiasm

        In the wake of Trump's presidency the Democrat's political crash in Atlanta remembers the Hindenberg; the blimp that after 60 successful Atlantic crossings crashed and burned.  Atlanta has positioned the Republicans not only to pass a regressive health care law but to break past the Mueller investigations.  Aside from likely indictments of the strange collection of Michael Flynn-Paul Manaford and a few others over their Russian connections, near universal Republican control is likely to insulate the President from either impeachment or indictment.

       The future of Democracy and any path toward overcoming the inequality gap now come to the fore with a vengeance, hanging on whether people can discover sources of political participation beyond their enthusiasm.  Both the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democracy struggle and Rev. William Barber's drive for spiritual and moral renewal draw heavily on emotional energy.  The giant Sanders rallies in New York City and around California last Summer demonstrated that mere fervor does not translate either into voters or even a political strategy. Similarly, Rev. Barber's movement rooted in minority communities--but growing strong alliances across race and class--still must deal with the task of translating a moral focus into micro-politics. 

        Both traditions have been made more passive but for different reasons.  The grim and endless string of juries who cannot convict a White policeman for killing young Black men underlines the meaning of centuries of oppression and lack of financial resources.  The White middle class workers whose world has been in crash mode for at least a generation has inherited a religious and political tradition of dependency on someone else's power, whether of God or Wall Street.

       Facing the long haul of a Republican domination that may be in place by this Fourth of July the energies of new younger generations of voters must find a way out of the traps of both political and spiritual dependency. Less inclined to hymn-singing and straightened by the new disciplines of technology; idealistic about translating a life of service to the needs of others as the power of love, their problem (our problem) is how to marry the practical and the pragmatic with the transcendent goal of universal fairness and justice. 

        Among the largest obstacles is an American culture averse for religious reasons to civic engagement and the struggles over inevitably imperfect policy solutions. The irony of ironies is how the wealth of Americans has been seen as a sign of divine blessing and the decline of wealth as a sign that it's all in divine hands even as your life and community collapses economically.  This is the savior complex that makes Trumpism so attractive.  Since the rise of an industrialized and technologically awesome world--now on a global scale--most Americans have lived within the dominion of some sort of hierarchy. While this hierarchy has been challenged and modified when workers have organized to bargain for their rights it is now infinitely more complicated in a global economy. In most workplaces it's a "stay out of trouble" passivity largely ingrained in popular practice.

      This is another reason why young generation energies must redirect their enthusiasm by giving new life to the struggle for love, power and justice.  If these three are kept together then struggles with hierarchy can become trans-class struggles that engage the whole community for the common good.  That's how to end the crash and burn era of the blimps.