A couple years ago, I was hanging out with my dad. We were at his condo and he had an Alexa device plugged in and playing music.
Amazon devices are always listening, and that's a non-starter for some people. I unplugged mine out of privacy concerns. I tried to impart this wisdom upon my dad.
"Alexa," I said within earshot. "Delete everything I've said."
My dad had it linked to his TV and a prompt showed up on the screen of what that meant. Deleting everything has consequences and if you proceed, Alexa may not understand you as clearly, or so it goes.
"Just wanted you to know you had that option," I said. "That way, you can protect your privacy."
My dad looked over at me. "Why?" he asked. "So, you can pretend you have control?"
Today, democracy in America is similar. It's supposedly listening, it kinda understands us, we find ourselves arguing with it, and occasionally, with the right turn of phrase, it gives us what we want.
Now, it's apparently up to us to save it.
That's the line you've heard if you've been within spitting distance of anyone left-leaning in the last few years. All of us have to vote and more specifically, we have to vote one way or we're in danger of losing our democracy.
Yeah, yeah, I get it. If I don't vote, the bad man and his goons might mount another coup d'état like he tried on January 6th. There's a problem with that theory. A coup involves the military and/or government elites. The bad man didn't show up with soldiers. There wasn't an attempt to arm the rebels. The QAnon shaman in a Viking helmet wasn't a member of the government elite. When Trump marched a mob to the Capitol, he wasn't sending his best.
Was January 6th scary? Sure. Reckless? Definitely. A riot? Without a shadow of a doubt. But it was not a coup.
I say all of that as someone who voted for Biden in 2020. Democracy wasn't at stake then, and it isn't at stake now. Political activists want you to believe it is because elections are decided by whichever side is more motivated to turn up to the polls. By motivated, I mean scared shitless.
Republicans have this fear of losing democracy, too. It manifests itself in a nightmare of a creeping socialist then communist regime. But it's not like they shrink the government when they're in office.
Saving democracy isn't something that is capable of being achieved objectively. Half the country will end up disappointed by the election outcome. Shoutout to the libertarians in the back for always volunteering.
The system is functioning as intended. Why do all these defenders of democracy have such little faith in it?
America isn't a democracy, it's a republic. Same as the People's Republic of China. Okay, that's a little below the belt, but it goes to show how skewed these systems can become.
Democracy is everyone deciding everything collectively. The purest form is direct democracy. This would be a HOA meeting or a town hall meeting like what you see on Gilmore Girls. That process is tedious. No one has time for it, so we delegate that authority to representatives. Or at least that's what the white male landowners pitched us in the 1700s.
A republic doesn't answer to you, it merely consults you on occasion. We get a vote for president one day every four years, choose from two terrible choices, and whoever wins can safely mute notifications from half the electorate for the next 1,460 days. Democracy isn't a magic monolith that loves and serves everyone all the time.
Even your vote doesn't directly tally for who ends up president. Those elections aren't decided by popular vote, but the electoral college. Your vote goes toward a state's pledged representative who participates in the actual formal election. Someone can get the most votes from the American people and still lose. That's not democracy. I don't know what the fuck that is.
I've researched the electoral college a bit and the short version is the Founding Fathers, after arguing about big states and little states for a while, said "Sure, whatever. Fuck it." We shouldn't take democracy that seriously, it's not like it's doing that for us.
But fine, I'll bite. If you've been hardened by confirmation bias and have been hate-reading this along and still want to save democracy, here's how to do it. Show up to vote in November (or skip it, I don't give a shit). Sometime before or after, log off and hurl your phone into the nearest body of water. Whatever the outcome of the election is the next day, go about your life the same way you would before. If you do that, congratulations, you will have saved democracy.
And for crying out loud, have a sense of humor about this whole charade. Invite some nuance into your life. Someone's not a racist just for being a Trump supporter. And someone's not Joseph Stalin just for trying to help people. Those who toss around labels and dehumanize others for cheap political points are the evil in every system that's ever existed. On the other hand, those who hear dumb shit and feel no need to respond have transcended into the divine.
The value of the American experiment isn't in democracy or winning any election itself — it's in the day after. The letting go. Believing in the thing.
Let democracy go whichever way it wants. Put the car in neutral, take your hands off the wheel, and enjoy the ride. Be the cooler head that prevails.
If we can't laugh with each other and have a peaceful transfer of power in America anymore, it's time to give up the ghost and move onto whatever is next. Maybe soon, we can ask a robot who knows what to do.
Alexa, who should I vote for?