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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 31, 2004
Latest Update: October 31, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

As I read Todd Purdum's account of the passions of this electoral process, visions of Kurt Lewin's life space kept dancing in my head. We have generated an awareness that our country is acting in our name and making decisions, some of which we can be proud of, and some of which shame us. We have become aware of the difficulty of verifying information, both because that information is often withheld from us, and because so much interpretation is involved in any real life situation that we can't always agree on what the information means even when we do have it.

We are no longer sure of who or what to believe unless we accept that someone, a religion, a parent, an academic, an ideology, can tell us what to believe. We keep running into the existential dilemma that in the end we, each and every one of us, is responsible for the interpretation we give to life and life's events. Even if we accept the interpretation of another, it is our decision and responsibility for accepting that interpretation. Sartre saw this as the "angoisse" of freedom. There is nothing as terrifying as the knowledge that in the end we must choose.

Purdum stresses, as we have done in our classes and discussions for the last nine weeks, that now that we have become aware of all this, of answerability, of accountability, of responsibility for one another, what happens after the election? Has all this passionate discussion been good for us?

"The answer is maybe," said Harry C. Boyte, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. "If you think of democracy as elections and voting, then this is a great moment. If you think of democracy as more a way of life, it's very uncertain what the result is going to be, and the polarization is very troubling."

Polarization is nothing new in American life. Today's red and blue are pale shadows of the Civil War's blue and gray. In 1828, an editorial cartoonist recalling Andrew Jackson's execution of Seminole Indian sympathizers in his militia days, showed Old Hickory hoisting a man in a noose and declared: "Jackson is to be President and you will be HANGED."

"But the breakdown of party organizations, the decline of labor unions, the atomizing intensity of television and the lack of near-universal military service for draft-age men have combined to make democracy seem more like "a kind of consumer good and spectator sport," as Mr. Boyte put it, than a workaday commitment in which victors join with vanquished to get things done. "So the real question is whether this highly charged electoral season can help revive a larger civic culture, and a productive citizenship," he said. "Whether people can learn to deal with people they disagree with, or may even hate, for the sake of fixing their neighborhood park or school."

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