Virginia Heffernan on American Democracy

Heffernan, an English major (back when she was in college at Harvard) who pens a monthly column for Wired magazine, Los Angeles Times and Slate etc. captures something Silicon Valley was grapping with just three years ago. We -- not me, but one peer and a few public figures -- truly thought democracy was an antiquated concept and not up to the challenge of modern technological times. Noting how wide this sentiment had spread led me to blog full time for most of 2018 and part time in 2019. By 2020 that belief was steering us toward disaster and many many people out of the spotlight worked to pivot our path back toward democracy.

Here is Heffernan's speech for Alexander Vindman's "Renew Democracy" thread on twitter:

I don't know if the arc of history bends towards justice, American Democracy, or maybe a pot glittering bitcoin.

But I know the arc of history bends toward survival, and it favors those who adapt to circumstances like disease, war and coup attempts.

What's most important to me about American Democracy right now is that it's adaptive.

---[takes her glasses off, looks to the camera] ---

Look I wasn't always sure, ... Uh I mean for years we've been watching Donald Trump beat his chest and you could almost think "No way, if the 'survival of the fittest' is the competition, it's not going to be professionals with their lapel pins and their white papers who survive. It's going to be that four-ton land sloth who barged his way into American public life. Like one of those megafauna that almost defeated our ancestors on this continent."

When THAT monster is charging right at you, you gotta be a chump to think your American ideals or Logan act or Hatch act is going to save you.

But the giant land sloth was only terrifying before we could put aside our short-term greed and terror and work together. Once humans could organize with language, laws, kindness and principles, we could do anything.

War woops and locker room talk only *look* adaptive. And where are those land sloths now? (You know they talked in locker room talk.)

"When in the course of human events" is my favorite phrase in the founding documents because it aims to make the radical act of the nation's founding look like a natural process like birth. Or an adolescent leaving home. And American Democracy does synch with our human natures, our individual desires to pursue happiness and our collective need to repel enemies. Including four-ton land sloths.

American Democracy takes work, but not the work of fighting our nature. The work of identifying that nature, respecting it and working with it.

I don't believe American Democracy will survive because I'm an idealist, or because I'm so scared of that 'Q' shaman that I'm whistling in the dark. (OK, I'm terrified of the Q-shaman.)

I believe American Democracy will survive because it's built for the long haul. It's built to govern, even a race of devils.

What's most important to me about democracy is how adaptable it is, and how it survives.

Thanks to @MollyMcKew for tapping me to discuss what’s important about democracy for this @Renew_Democracy initiative by @AVindman.

Passing the torch to @kathygriffin @ekownyankah and @abdutoit. pic.twitter.com/FlqlIeQwUo

— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) January 20, 2021

It's important to note the other meaning of "respect" in her passage "American Democracy takes work, but not the work of fighting our nature. The work of identifying that nature, respecting it and working with it."

This notion of respect is the same form of respect we give to scientific facts. We are not better than nature. Nature "is". We have to respect that. We respect it by acknowledging it. We don't respect it by assuming doormat position, letting fires overrun the homes we've built. We respect it by preparing for it and responding to it and adapting how we manage it.


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Further Viewing:

"For me what's important for democracy and certainly what's important in American Democracy, is that it's aspirational."   twitter.com/MollyMcKew  🐤

Texan Election Commissioner Dana DeBouvoir "sensed that her predicament was unconscionable: Google was busy building self-driving cars. How was it that our voting technology was routinely hacked by grad students?"   wired.com  📰




This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.