“We all want to change the world.”
Yes, we do. How much and into what are the questions.
But the massive undercurrents, the smoldering rage and horror and loathing do not make us act the way our traumatized guts ache for: sending a citizens’ committee to yank the awful object out of his lair, heavily taping the mouth, wrapping the thing in a straitjacket and disappearing it forever. Drowning it in the Reflection Pool, maybe. Or sticking it in a padded cell until it’s dragged out for future multiple court appearances.
That would be satisfying, for a minute or so. But then what?
I believe we’re affected by that gigantic mute button, similar to the one I often press during football games, when the broadcast booth yammering interferes with my concentration and love of the game.
How quiet it seems to be right now! So quiet that when I went to vote the other day, there was no politicking anywhere near my early-voting place, the Museum of Natural History. The only meaningful sound was from the delightful election official who, while we were waiting for my ballot to be printed out, issued her final instruction. “Doo wah diddy diddy dum diddy-do,” she chanted.
And I diddy-diddy did.
So I’ve been considering this great quiet and thinking there’s something about two-hundred and fifty years of the vote, the struggle to expand the vote to universality, that ultimately mutes the furious noise leading up to and surrounding elections.
That massive silent power, grown slowly and steadily over a quarter of a millennium, makes violent protest in this country not the choice of the majority of us, no matter how furious we are.
I suppose preconsciously it’s because we know how to make a revolution to create genuine change.
The only sound in this revolution is the purring of my pen as it makes dense circles on my ballot.