Reasons to Be Cheerful

Reasons not to be fearful.

I’ve been reading articles from David Byrne’s website called Reasons To Be Cheerful this morning. There is an entire section titled We Are Not Divided and a bunch of articles covering stories intersecting with that thought.

A story about a Masai teenager who led the charge to change the minds of her elders in regards to female genitalia mutilation and early marriage and, after more than a decade, not only convinced many Masai villages to reimagine the tradition and rite of passage but also got the laws in Kenya changed as well.

Another story about Taiwan using something called Polis, which is an open source program developed in Seattle, so that the citizens of Taiwan can hash out their differences civilly online while connecting to their government representatives. Apparently, Polis crowd sources constructive comments and steers conversations toward resolution rather than enmity.

David Byrne writes about Staten Island - one place in New York where the president is beloved - and, after venturing into the territory on bike, discovering that, even though they speak a different political language, that many aspects of what they believed overlapped with his.

But there was one article that particularly piqued my interest.

It was an interview with a woman of color, Samy Sekar, with Stanford University’s Polarization and Social Change Lab who was studying why the views of the electorate sometimes diverged so starkly from those they elected. The article noted that nearly three-fourths of the American population believed climate change was real and the same number of Americans believed human endeavors were exacerbating the problem. A Stanford study showed 78 per cent of the population thinks the government should act.

Yet, the platform of the Republican Party does not even mention climate change.

The fact that a huge number of members of Congress and our president don’t believe in climate change, or claim that climate change isn’t happening or that it’s a hoax, is not representative of the American public’s views.

Ms Sekar also noted this is called a “democratic deficit” - which is what I have been shouting into the whirlwind for quite some time - but I did not have a name for it.

There’s a name for this mismatch that occurs when an issue is polarizing within institutions, but is broadly agreed upon by the public: “democratic deficit.” Can you talk about this?

A paper by David Brockman and Chris Gavron found that both Republicans and Democrats at a state legislator level were actually less progressive in their policy views than their constituents. And there was a study in 2019 that showed something similar at a federal level when it came to congressional staffers predicting their constituents’ views. They were asked, “What percent of your constituents do you believe want the government to reduce CO2 emissions?” and similar questions about health care and other policies. That paper by Fernandez, Stokes and Miltenberger found congressional staffers were underestimating how progressive their constituents were. 

There are a few different reasons why this democratic deficit could exist. One reason could be that people have policy preferences, but those policy preferences don’t necessarily map on to how people vote for their representatives. 

Alternatively, you could vote for a politician that theoretically supports [your policy preference], but then you and all of your fellow constituents don’t voice your opinion loud enough for them to hear what you want. 

What causes this disconnect?

What you find is that the congressional staffers who most poorly predicted what their constituents wanted were the ones who are getting the most visits from lobbyists. That means they’re getting signals about what companies in their districts want that may be louder than the signals they’re getting from their constituents.

We live in an era when it is easier than ever before to voice your opinion. We lament that we don’t just hold a ‘popular vote’ to decide who becomes president or what politicians spend our tax dollars on.

We already have the means to affect change. And it is something that cannot be disenfranchised or suppressed like our vote.

With the world wide web we can contact all of our representatives whenever we want to. And if we do it consistently enough, and if enough of us do it consistently enough, like water on stone we can make our opinions count.

It should be the lesson we take from the past four years no matter the outcome. We need to elect people who are interested in serving the public. And then, no matter how well they align with our values, we need to be good citizens and take the time to remind them what we sent them to do, whether its the statehouse, the governor, Congress or the White House.

You can text them, email them, call them, write them, comment on their social media, show up at the town halls you insist they conduct - any or all of these things.

It doesn’t take that much time and, as I’ve said in the past, it doesn’t have to be wordy or erudite. If you see a bill being voted on, just send a text that says, “Vote Yes on blah-blah-blah. Thank you!” Because, as you read above, if they don’t hear from you, they are definitely going to be listening to industry lobbyists without any pressure coming from their actual constituents.

Our neglect as citizens is how we arrived at this place - the tyranny of the minority.

---

That’s it for me today. I’m going to do some yoga while listening to a steady, much-deserved rain, then binge-watch Amy Adams movies while taking shots of tequila until I black out. By doing so, I will be one hundred per cent sure not to get updates via my numerous black screens for the rest of the evening.

Cheers!

###

Speaking of Amy Adams, this is a MUST-SEE. Amy Adams AND the fantastic Frances McDormand in a movie called Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day. I watched it last night and loved every minute. It’s a feel-good romantic comedy.

Also, THIS is what I watched for Halloween. I’m a huge Werewolf movie fan (thus my attendance at the showing of Underworld at the Crest) but this one is a combo coming-of-age and not-so-oblique feminist statement. Too graphic for most of you, I suspect.

It was listed as a Top 25 Scary Movie to Watch for Halloween, so I gave it a try. I’d give it a single thumb’s up.

Thanks for reading, sharing and responding. Fingers crossed and shots are lined up! - JLM