Okay, I’ll admit it, I feel better this week than I did on the eve of the mid-term election. Not great, but better. Better because the message for me is that just enough of my fellow Americans stared into the abyss of emerging extremism and said, “no thanks.” There are as many messages in this election as there are observers of the outcomes. In the decidedly mixed, very narrow, and somewhat contradictory results, I see a collective confrontation of the prospect of loss of democratic norms as we have come to know them. The result was that just enough voters turned away from the extremism driving the movement. It goes without saying that I think this is a good thing locally, nationally, and for the environment.
This is not to say that the deep divides defining society and politics have been resolved and that some new consensus has emerged. What has happened, in my view anyway, is that enough voters felt that threats to core small d democratic norms were real and that realization forced enough voters to protect them. It’s often true that not until something you inherently value is threatened will action be taken to protect it. We have seen that dynamic in place locally as a public consensus has emerged about the imperative to protect and restore our waters. We are inching our way toward that consensus nationally as the impacts of climate change become harder to ignore.
What we gave ourselves last week was a bit of a reprieve. What we do with it is up to us. While not exactly ready just yet jump into the election of 2024, I know that what happens next will be the collective expression of our individual voting decisions at the local, state, and federal levels. I hope you will be more motivated to participate politically in the next round of elections, having seen how important each vote is in maintaining the order and structure that is core to the America we think we are.
