Late in life (mid-60s) I started to get hands on involved and putting in the hours to work for political campaigns. Not full time — I have been full time corporate executive and now rancher this whole time. It was actually issues that motivated me as well as a candidate who seemed (to me) reasonably rational, authentic and tolerant.
The first campaign (2017–2018) was a US Senate race. Knocked doors, phone bank, hosted town halls, opened and coordinated campaign office. I’ll give an example of an issue important to me because I believe it is illustrative. The view I tend toward is that immigration is a complex and multifaceted challenge that perhaps requires discussion, compromise, nuance and inclusion of a lot of different pros and cons and that most sincere people have some merit to their view, some valid points of perspective, though one perspective may be very different than another. I am still working to not have cynicism and despondency at how often a person had a view and didn’t want to consider there even could be broader additional aspects. Even when a person was espousing a bias I tended to see in myself — I’d attempt to raise some merit to other views. It seemed that a simplistic and emotional/psychological attachment was far more important than reason or merit. I’m not saying there was not friendly discussion, there was. And, intractability seems to some extent built into us.
This year it has been closer to home and even more grounded. State Representative (in my state a district is roughly 150,000 people). Doing campaign work is work, extended over time — grunt trudging. In my small town we have had protests with scores from both camps passionately demonstrating and counter-demonstrating. These same numbers do not show up for the candidate I am supporting or the opponent candidate. Time, involvement or effort by either side on basically the grit and grind of a low level state is really limited. When I hit the street and talk about local issues — Internet access, school funding, hospital district funding — conversation is easy. Involvement — not so much.
But, Jacob, people have gotten involved before in this democracy experiment. At the turn of the 20th century farmers banded together and built country schools for the 20th century they could see coming. In the 1930s rural groups formed and built electrical co-ops to bring electrification. I saw the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I don’t have an explanation but I’m doubtful that participation (or lack of) is formulaic. It may be. It may be multifaceted and layered. At this point I’m old and tend toward calcification so I’m deliberately working to push myself toward hopefulness, openness and possibility.
