American Democracy as a Culture
Why this resistance runs deep
It's been argued by some that the U.S. (or at least its white population) has “no culture;” that our closest thing to rituals are things like football games and high school graduations, and that we envy the deep ceremony and communal ties of geographically-rooted cultures. While I can relate, I also believe we're witnessing a stirring of U.S. culture right now that's only beginning to show us what it looks and feels like, and that it is ours – all of ours.
The mythology of the United States is that of the founding of our nation. Our ancestors even defaced a sacred mountain in South Dakota with the carved faces of our own gods. We pilgrimage to Constitution Hall, the Liberty Bell, Gettysburg, and tourists gaze up in awe in the Capitol Rotunda (even some January 6th rioters paused their mayhem, spellbound,) surrounded by statues of those same gods.
I know I'm probably in a minority as one of those progressives who lean into a sort of devotional feeling toward the Founding; I came of age during the Declaration's Bicentennial, and I share a birthday with one of the Founding Fathers. As I've written about before, as a kid I stood in line to take in the sacred documents and artifacts when the American Freedom Train came to town, begged my folks for a red-white-and-blue Free Spirit bicycle, and sewed an American flag patch on the dirty Levi's jean jacket in which I lived out my childhood.
In recent protests I've dressed in American Revolutionary garb and flown a full-sized flag (rightside-up, because I believe America is alive and well in our protests, though I respect those making a statement by flying it upside-down.) I do like dress-up (I guess it’s called cosplay now.) I was the only one dressed this way for the first few protests, then at the April 5th Hands Off rally I saw that a few others had started to as well.
Heather Cox Richardson has made me sob suddenly and uncontrollably with some of her analyses of our Founding and our current place in American history. It's a truly emotional thing for me, and I wonder how many people reading this feel the same. I visited D.C. a year after the January 6th insurrection; stepping out of Union Station and seeing the Capitol still standing brought the same type of flood out of me. I could be wrong but I think these are the tears of real faith and true love.
How many other Americans, however critical of our nation's dark past and continued blindness, are feeling verklempt like me now over the fragility of our Union and the sanctity of our basic founding principles? How many are stepping outside of their comfort zones to preserve our democratic culture?
I'm reminded of Judith Butler's recent piece “Trump is unleashing sadism on the world...”. Butler is known for their sophisticated analyses and razor-sharp critique of liberal assumptions – their academic writing is famously challenging to read. In this very accessible piece, Butler talks basic humanism in a way that moves me more than any work of theirs I've ever read. I feel allies popping out of the woodwork, and many are old friends.
Mythology and its ceremonies, rituals, props, and symbols plays an important role to our psyches, as Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell have taught us in popular culture. The hero's journey is a guidebook for our own lives when we encounter the difficult questions, choices and events of a human life. The mythology that we grew up with gives us a framework and touchstones with which to navigate these challenges; the classic example that we've heard in stories and perhaps experienced ourselves is the secular person who, in a time of existential danger, prays to the saints or gods they were raised with – the “come to Jesus” moment.
We're having our democratic “come to Jesus” moment. The word “moment” implies something sudden, though, and this inflection point in American history that we're navigating is bringing up a very natural and organic patriotic instinct that feels more gradual and determined, glacial and monumental in its power. We're not being hit over the head by angels to be overnight saints. The word I got in one of my recent personal epiphanies was “activation.”
Hollywood and so many of our tropes, and perhaps the limitations of our language, show moments of activation as some sudden, dramatic change in our consciousness. But the real stories of those who step up to “do the right thing” are more like that of Rosa Parks. The Reader's Digest version of her story implies that she just one day bravely decided to sit in the front of the bus, when in reality it was one action in a whole series of natural actions she took while deepening her involvement in a movement that spoke to her soul and instincts; she had been an activist for awhile, and her bus protest was actually planned and supported by a whole community of allies. Rosa Parks was brave, but she was also not alone and she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Our revolution will have dancing.” We've been told over and over by various allies that we need to keep the joy in our movement. We've seen this in the civil rights movement, and that joy is still fueling it today. The democratic culture is one of joy. Our bold insistence on making our protests warm community gatherings with great music and humor is a democratic trait. And joy and community make possible the sacrifice, hard work, and bravery we need going forward. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. seems to have had a premonition in his final days that the movement toward justice would take his very life, but he still moved forward, full of the Spirit, with what was in front of him to do.
Even now I'm dancing around my main point, because I love the process of writing and the grasping the ideas that bubble to the surface as I write, and I want to take you along on that adventure. I hope that you enjoy the dance as well, and that maybe the freeness and livingness of the process help clarify and flesh out the ideas.
The democratic life is life, after all. It's not separate from the day to day life of feeding ourselves, loving our loved ones, doing our work, pursuing our dreams and (please) resting. Our democratic ancestors, and our ancestors before that, lived their lives and did their work so that we could enjoy more freedom than they did, and have better lives than they did. That's every parent's core hope for their child, whether they manifest it consciously, or in a healthy way, or not. Unless you feel a vocation to pure public service, for most of us the democratic life is simply a life lived as freely as possible, while also participating in, safeguarding and improving the democratic systems that make that life possible.
So let us be free. Sometimes I want to guilt-trip people into being more politically active, but that doesn't work any better than a parent trying to guilt-trip their child into behaving the way they want. Coercion of any kind has consequences – often consequences that bend in the other direction through rebellion and loss of respect. People need to come to their own moments of growth by their own free will. The best we can do is set examples, such as protesting and letting our friends know what we're up to, and letting them see that we're actually feeling alive and excited by what we’re doing.
What I see now is people coming to the movement toward justice, freedom, and progress instinctively, from their own truth, and activism rooted in authenticity is strong and resilient. People are showing up to protests for the first time in their lives because they're genuinely feeling the urgency. And the protests are genuinely fun and inspiring because of that spirit that people are bringing.
In fact, I dragged myself to one protest recently just because I felt like I had to, because it was a weekly thing we were trying to get going, and I was really tired, and had other pressing things to do that day. And believe it or not, that protest didn't have the same vibe for me as previous ones; it was kind of clumsy, and there was some tiredness and snippiness in the usual suspects I ran into there. There was already a great turnout and my presence wouldn't have been missed much, so I didn't stay long. The part of that protest that still invigorated me was the people I encountered who were rookies and excited – they sent me on my other errands feeling empowered.
We each need to use our discernment in each action we take, and there is no formula or black-and-white choice; it's a free-will situation. Dressing up is one way that I get myself psyched up to go to a protest; for some people it's coming up with a clever sign. And some protests I just don't attend, because getting groceries before I have to go to work, or staying home to write, or simply watching a movie to decompress feels like a more genuinely important task. And sometimes pushing myself outside of my comfort zone and getting out on the street is exactly the stretch my political muscle needs. It's situational, and keeping clear and present is critical to making each choice.
It's our democratic project to learn the meaning of the word “freedom,” and it's a happy duty if we let it be. If the pursuit of freedom and justice becomes nothing but a slog, then we're in danger of losing sight of the meaning of freedom and justice. Neither does freedom mean sitting around doing nothing, feeling worried and helpless; if one feels compelled to step up, then it's time to step up. The actual, in-the-moment lived experience of freedom and justice is both the goal and the process, the ways and the means, of democracy (or Strong Democracy, as it's been defined by some scholars to distinguish the spirit from the mere structures of democratic governance.)
So this is what gives me hope, right now, today: I see a genuine, organic awakening of the democratic spirit happening in the American people, and I believe we are each and collectively remembering our founding mythology and embodying our democratic culture. It was taught to us as children, with the faces of scholarly white men in white wigs, of marginalized people setting themselves free from slavery and oppression, and the words of wise people all through our story expressing the promise of what we can be in a free society. The democratic culture that we've inherited even predates European colonization, with the lesson and model of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy baked into our Constitution. It's in the soil. It's as American as it gets.
The authoritarian forces have managed to erode civics education for our younger generations, and now they're trying to erase the stories of our progress toward inclusiveness, our value of diversity, and our promise of equity. We can't let that happen, and we need to take the democratic education of our children upon ourselves however we can. Those authoritarian forces haven't yet quashed the stories of the Boston Tea Party or John Adams's legal defense of the Redcoats, or the other powdered-wig myths that keep us strong in our faith in the Rule of Law and our devotion to our Constitution. We need to prioritize the preservation of our mythology.
I know that many of us are surprised by the diversity of the coalition that's building right now – it includes a lot of Republicans and even former members of the T***p cult. The fear on Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski's face as she publicly pledges to her constituents to put their needs before the wannabe autocrat's demands, is a stomach-turning illustration of how hard it is for many folks on the right to stand strong right now. But she grew up in democratic culture too, just like you and me.
Every time I see a new TikTok reel of some brave rural American calling out their Republican school board or legislators on their racism and bigotry, or of a Democratic member of Congress exposing the cruelty and greed of the Republican agenda, it's like another seedling our democratic culture sprouting. There are 330 million of us, each hosting in our minds and souls the mythology of freedom and justice. Even if a few million are led astray, there isn't a blanket of darkness big enough or thick enough to blot us all out. I believe we're going to shine through.
The HCR talk that made me cry.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/06/trump-sadism-judith-butler Judith Butler's article.
Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age by Benjamin R. Barber, University of California Press, 1984
Lisa Murkowski shows some.