Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Cave dwelling

Yesterday gave me occasion to reflect a little more on what I had experienced on Sunday out near Burlington. I kept running up on houses that had been canvassed the day before where the canvasser had made notes indicating that they had contacted the person, or something like that.

Basically what it's reflective of is a great surfeit of energy from blue centers like Chapel Hill, people being willing to canvass, phone bank, text bank, etc, to engage in a great range and large volume of relatively brainless and rote activities to do what it takes to win and to push Democrats through as election day draws close.

But the energy is pent up because it has not been spent during the years between the elections figuring out how to substantively address the imbalances and problems that give rise to the need in the first place. We stay in our homes, our cars, our silos, amongst our own, not out listening and engaging, then want to frenetically get out and push our team over the end line so we can hunker back down into our cozy little caves. We are trying to preserve our ease rather than doing the hard and messy work of thinking through the real problems.

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