Category: Audio

And the next election? Dave Winer says, “It must be about everything.”

Imagine the 2026 election being defined narrowly. Imagine that center-left politicians retake control of Congress. Maybe they pass laws that require serious screening and training for ICE officers. Maybe they limit the operations of ICE. Maybe they abolish it and replace border — actual border — security with a new agency.

Narrowly defined like that, the problems of 2026 leave open all the back doors that made the present catastrophe possible. How long have corporate lobbyists seen no need to wait in the lobby because they were welcome in offices upstairs that we citizens never see. Putting a muzzle on ICE doesn’t touch that part of the problem.

On various levels, Congress hasn’t really worked properly for years and years. The Supreme Court has been an inside job for some time now too. Putting a muzzle on ICE, say, won’t touch that. The wealthy and their corporations will still feel free to walk without embarrassment into the room where things happen, and close the door behind them until their business is attended to.

Government is always being hollowed out, in every generation, and every generation must defend and rebuild its deepest functions. Voting is essential for fighting back, but this is a much bigger matter than any typical election. That’s probably why Dave Winer wrote about the 2026 election, “It must be about everything.”

Many fellow citizens don’t vote, don’t engage in group activism. The powerful love that. Voting is absolutely essential, but it is not enough. We face problems that voting alone won’t address.We face problems that voting alone won’t address. We face problems that voting alone won’t address. 

Voting is an absolutely essential act of citizenship but a vague one. A vote says, I want something from over there, not the something we see over here. If we can speak with great force, many votes and boycotts and phone calls and more, we can start to get much more particular about what the country needs, and build a more detailed discourse and vision and set of demands. Then we can vote in force to support the things the more explicit discussion would now support. But because all the back doors to the districts of power stand open most of the time, we need the discussion to be far-ranging.

After Apartheid, South Africa said to itself, we’re going to need a lot of discussion to have a hope of understanding, acknowledging, and moving out of the profound wounds and systemic flaws of our nation. In a situation like that, a country should say to itself, as Dave Winer suggests, the discussion should be about everything.

A crisis of this magnitude might make this possible. Enough people might see the need, might build the skills for it. But five years from now the moment will probably have passed. The election of 2026 needs to be about everything. The Republican party doesn’t believe in it, and the Democratic party probably doesn’t have the vision or the guts for it. So that leaves the citizens to put everything on the agenda, or to fail to.

In a brief post about Ukraine, Marius Didziokas offers a widely applicable, relevant, reusable sentence — just fill in the blank with an important topic:

“It’s crucial to remember that the lack of discussion about __________ only benefits dictators.”

That’s the thing about the powerful. They like our silence, when they can get it.

They really, really like our silence.

I lived in Manhattan for a couple of months this spring, walking up and down Broadway and Riverside quite a bit, seeing what there was to see. This is my new regional public radio piece — read below or listen here.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s best. I was visiting a big city for a few weeks, lending a hand to family members expecting a second child. I walked ten or twelve thousand steps most days on busy streets, usually enjoying but sometimes burdened by what I saw. Occasionally there would be someone begging on every block, each in a different way. How to respond?

Some city residents said, Don’t give money to someone on the street. Instead, make a contribution to a social agency with expertise in working with unhoused, unemployed, unprotected people, people with substance abuse problems, people with mental illness. These agencies can always use more resources, and they know what needs to be done. That sounds right. But it means day by day, moment by moment, walking past a fellow human being in trouble. That feels cold and hollow. I wasn’t in the city long enough to find a better answer.

The neighborhood grocery store displayed boxes and boxes of colorful fresh fruit on the sidewalk at each side of the doorway. Most evenings one fellow sat on a plastic milk crate facing the door, and he asked anyone who walked out for something to eat, reminding dozens of people, each flanked by bounty, of their prosperity and of the harshness of giving no reply.

One day, I saw that a tall slender fellow up ahead was going to ask for food. I had in my bag something he might enjoy, and I decided to offer it to him. As I came near, he made the ask, and I held up a small green bag. Would you like this unopened package of cookies, I asked. I have no teeth, he replied. I could see that this was almost completely true. I nodded, and put the cookies away, and walked on.

Another man with a trim salt-and-pepper beard sat outside a church most days in a humble array of personal possessions. He slept out in all kinds of weather, and a couple of times someone, perhaps from the church, seemed to check up on him. Nothing changed, though. I noticed that people left pairs of shoes in plastic bags around the neighborhood. I assume these were gifts to whoever could use them. That was a bit better than just walking by.

As a temporary resident, I didn’t know what work was being done on behalf of those neighbors living on the edge. The problems were too large for an individual to solve by placing a few dollars in a beggar’s paper cup. A better life in a better neighborhood and a better country, I concluded, is a group project.

Some people say that America is a Christian country, and it probably feels pretty good to say that. In the Book of Matthew, near the end of Chapter 25, though, a group of people is addressed on the day of judgment. When I was needy, you did not lift a finger to feed me, or cloth me, or give me shelter. In that story, excuses are given, but the excuses are promptly rejected. Service to others is demanded. For whenever you do these things for the least of my brethren, you do them for me. It’s a command that likely applies as much when meeting a man with one tooth standing on a corner in Manhattan as when hearing of people fleeing brutal conditions in their homelands and seeking something better here in North America. It’s not a comfortable commandment to live up to.