A couple years ago, in a blog post about Thanksgiving, I wrote about a weird paradox associated with being thankful. On the one hand, I noted, being thankful is an Obvious Good Thing, for Obvious Reasons. It's important to reflect on the parts of life, both little and big, for which you may not normally express gratitude: the people who worked to give you the liberties you have today, the sacrifices those people made, the better life you enjoy as a result. But on the other hand, I reasoned, taking things for granted is part of the delicious reward of the legacy of sacrifice. My ancestors toiled so that I won't have to be worried about having my suffrage rights denied. The point of struggle and sacrifice is to push future generations forward, not so that they will get to live lives free of struggle, but so that they will get to spend their lives focusing on new struggles, with the old struggles happily behind them.
In other words, I concluded, being thankful is an Obvious Good, but being unconcerned is a Non-Negligible Perk.
This paradox has been on my mind recently, as everyone on my Do-Gooder-Liberal social media feed has been in a state of near-apoplectic anxiety since Election Day. It's DEFCON-1, all the time. The good of heart cannot afford to be complacent. And truly, practically every headline I encounter reads like a dispatch from a dystopian alternate reality. The sheer volume of bad news is overwhelming. It's like getting swarmed by an entire hive of angry bees, when what you've been trained to do is focus on one bee at a time, and then take a full week to research how to most effectively deal with that bee. Or like playing Whack-a-Mole, except the mole field is the size of a city block, and all the moles have popped out at once, and 12% of the moles are wearing Klan hoods.
What I'm being told now, on my social media feed and elsewhere, is that you can never stop being vigilant about any struggle. That's what the election has taught us. Being unconcerned is a liability, not a perk. If you've ever been unconcerned, you're part of the problem. The country is regressing because you, personally, did not get involved. If the ACA gets repealed, if a Muslim registry gets created, if Planned Parenthood gets defunded, if a pointless and budget-destroying wall gets built, if Roe v. Wade gets overturned, if voting rights get restricted, if welfare and Social Security and protections for vulnerable populations are gutted, and if you and I do not actively work to prevent each and every one of these things from happening, then we must consider ourselves partially responsible. Oh God, and then there's climate change. And do we really need to be concerned about Russia? So many bees.
It's dire. Let's dial back the "everything is on fire!" feeling for a moment. What exactly do I need to be doing, personally, if I am to be a baseline-effective citizen?
My standard answer to this question, the one that I've internalized over the course of my life, is: Be informed about issues and candidates, vote in elections both big and small, and serve on jury duty when you're called, even if you're grumpy about it.
Is this sufficient?
President Obama, whom I admire and respect, suggests that the answer is no. Nooooo. In his farewell address, he asserted that democracy "depends on our participation" and that every citizen is duty-bound to "continually try to improve this great nation of ours." Specifically, he instructed us to, at the very least, talk to strangers about what we value and why. Even better: engage in community organizing. Contribute to causes that you support in a real, tangible, "lace up your shoes" kind of way. Run for office yourself.
That Obama said this is not at all surprising. His rhetoric leans Leslie Knope. It sounds right, and it's hopeful, and it's stirring. It's consistent with what my social media feed is telling me. It also sets a bar for citizenship that I am currently failing to clear. What he's describing is certainly not what the average citizen does (i.e., ignore everything). What he's describing is also not what the average politically conscious citizen does (i.e., study the issues and vote). What he's describing is Suzie, from my post-election post: the kind of person that most of us generally view as almost suspiciously politically engaged. Obama (and my social media feed) want me to understand that I'm currently dropping the ball at citizenship, and that I need to adjust my life accordingly. In this new mode of citizenship, there is no being unconcerned, and there is no feeling content. It's the only way to manage the bees.
It sounds correct, and logical, and noble, because being aggressively engaged in citizenship is an Obvious Good. It also sounds wrong, and exhausting, and unfair, because not having to constantly worry about democracy is a Non-Negligible Perk. It's a paradox of citizenship, I guess. I'm still trying to figure out what to do.
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