in this column for Monday's New York Times
It is written as a response to those young people - and not so young people - who want to argue that voting does not matter, because our politics and our politicians are too corrupt.
He strongly disagrees, even as he acknowledges the lack of perfection of our politicians, because
The sameness argument is an instrument of deceit employed by the puppet masters to drive down the electoral participation of young idealists.
We don’t vote for people because they are the exact embodiment of our values, but because they are likely to be the most responsive to them.
I can agree with the first part of what I just quoted without hesitation. My fear is that too many feel too deceived by those they thought would be responsive to them, but once in office were not. Until recently, many Latinos felt that way about President Obama, until he finally took executive action on immigration. I could cite other examples far more relevant to others, including me. Still, I urge my students to be politically involved, pointing out that if they choose not to participate, not to vote, they have little right to complain at the policies that then come forth. And, like Blow does in this piece, I remind them of the price paid so that more could vote, something that was a part of my own adolescence and young adulthood.
Please keep reading.
Blow goes much further in this very strong column, yet another in the recent series which persuades me that he should be seriously considered for the Pulitzer awarded for commentary.
He ask the question Who are we? and then notes
That is a very real question. Who are we now and who do we aspire to be? Do we aspire to the ideas enshrined in our founding documents? Do we truly believe the Declaration of Independence?
He quotes Dr. King on this: “Be true to what you said on paper.”
But it is in his final three paragraphs that the power of this column comes through.
I am going to push fair use, offering each, and following each with some reaction/thoughts of my own.
America is still straining, against corporatist, elitist, exclusionary forces, to be true in practice to what is clearly written on paper. Representative democracy is not a perfect form of government. It can be fragile and subject to corruption, the only guard against which is unwavering vigilance. But it is a grand idea, exquisite because of its fragility, and deserving of every effort to make it more perfect.
to make it more perfect - remember that the first purpose of the Constitution as stated in the Preamble is to form a "more perfect union," a task those who gathered in Philadelphia recognized was not finished in their work because of the existence of Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 (the necessary and proper, or elastic, clause) and the existence of Article V, which allowed for amending the document, something that occurred almost immediately with the first Congress sending twelve amendments to the states, ten of which were ratified by 1791 and one of which finally became the 27th Amendment.
to be true in practice - which we must remain vigilant and push back against "Corporatist, elitist, exclusionary forces" be they the Koch Brothers, Christian Dominionists, or any group that seeks to pervert the clear intent of our founding documents to suppress and diminish the rights and humanity of others.
The penultimate paragraph reads
Who are we? We are America — impossibly strong, illogically optimistic, eternally hopeful. This is a laboratory in which one of the greatest experiments in human history is still underway. We can be whoever we want to be, dare to be, dream of being.
I think here of the words of Barbara Jordan at the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, or of the earlier words by Langston Hughes - two black people who were not included in the original vision of America.
I think of how long it has taken us to include gays in that vision.
I think how appropriate that those most effected by the executive order on immigration are known as Dreamers.
That we are hopeful, or that we should as Americans be hopeful, is my argument against those who seek to undermine our liberties by fear. Having just seen Citizen Four, Laura Poitras's powerful film on Edward Snowden, having responded as have many to the limited released of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report on CIA torture, I refuse to accept the notion that we as a nation must be so fear-ridden as to give up our basic liberties. And in the light of Ferguson and Staten Island and Cleveland, and as a result of reading and writing about the work of Bryan Stevenson and realizing the impact of demonization of black young men and the devastating impact it has had, I refuse to accept the notion that we are so dominated by gangs just as I refuse to accept the notion that we are under the constant threat of a terroristic cataclysm, not when since Sept 11, 2001, we have had more people shot by police than died in the terrorist attacks from abroad. Not when we tolerate what is effectively domestic terrorism from the bloodbath of our gun culture. Not when the biggest threat is to our economic security by corporatists who have ripped off our economic system with impunity.
Finally, there is this paragraph from Blow:
We are the young people in the streets, who shout out and die-in for the right to be treated equally and to live freely. We are people who must know that the voice and the vote are mutual amplifiers, not mutually exclusive.
I only disagree mildly, because there are those of us who are senior citizens who remain young at heart, because we believe in what these young people now advocate, which is why we urge them to vote, to run for office, to take over party mechanisms and campaigns from those who seem driven by fear rather than the hope for a better future.
Blow writes powerfully.
All I can do is respond, to use my lesser power of words to amplify his words, in the hope that together we can inspire hope, that we can in our remaining years, me in my sixties, him in his forties, see the young people help create a better, more inclusive America.