Guest post by Kaaryn McCall
Make no mistake, the upcoming presidential election is consequential. Americans on both sides see this race as being about the future of democracy. By all accounts, the race will be close. No matter what happens, a good portion of the electorate will feel a certain kinda way…
But we’ll be all right BECAUSE this is about the future of democracy.
And the future of democracy is US. It is as much about what we do on November 6, and every day thereafter, as what we do on Election Day. It is about how we carry on. It is about the peaceful transfer of power. It is about checks and balances so no one person or branch wields too much of that power. It is about what we want our communities to be like, and the legacy we want to leave the next generation.
In the heightened media fervor that surrounds elections, it may be hard to see, but people across the country are hard at work building bridges. While polarization is real, the majority (silent as it may be) still resides closer to the middle.
Groups like Braver Angels, One America Movement, and others, are working to turn down the temperature. Democracy and peacebuilding groups like the Carter Center and Search for Common Ground are bringing decades of experience working overseas to address risk factors that they’ve seen arise domestically.
PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement) has been focusing on civic language and perceptions for a few years now. Their most recent research finds people are more positive about a host of civic terms than they were just a couple of years prior. This is not a fluke, but the result of people getting to work, as is the hallmark of democracy and our self-governing society.
As we look ahead to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, let us remember that the next 250 years are not promised to us. No one is going to do the hard work of democracy for us. What the nation will be is always ours to determine.* Our vote is just the start…
* As President Barak Obama noted in his farewell address, the inalienable rights noted in the Declaration of Independence, “while self-evident, have never been self-executing.”
Kaaryn McCall is a communications consultant who, in addition to supporting Dr. Dungy, works with nonprofit organizations to most effectively leverage strategic communications to support their missions.
Gwen Dungy 
Thank you, Kaaryn, for writing what so many of us are feeling. Thank you for sharing resources that people can use to connect with people who have similar ideas and ideals about our nation.
As a sensible centrist and lifelong optimist, I applaud this post and join other Americans in hoping that our Democracy will be alive and well after the results of the Nov. 5 election are announced. I would be remiss, however, if I did not point out that this post, while very much needed and welcomed in my home, may be a bit optimistic. Let me explain.
I immediately forwarded the post to family and friends across the country—momentarily forgetting that several of them had lost their entire families in the Holocaust — and was quickly reminded that the Jews who remained in Germany also believed that local, national, and international organizations would join them in limiting the damage Hitler could do. We all know how that worked out.
I then thought about my husband’s experiences in Germany as a teenager when he lived with his father who was stationed in Augsburg from 1945-1948 as part of the US Occupation Forces. Living in Germany provided Bill with the opportunity to learn another language and experience first- hand the challenges of resurrecting a democracy that had been systematically dismembered from within.
When I met him decades later, Bill still struggled to describe the horrors he saw and explain how stunned he was to discover just how ordinary the people who supported Hitler seemed to be when he talked with them. Most insisted that they voted for Hitler because he promised to end the Depression, restore German pride, and save Germany from Communism. They believed whatever Hitler said or did because they wanted to believe in something, thought they could control him, or feared for their lives. When Hitler claimed they had to invade other countries, slaughter innocent people, and eliminate the Jews, they never questioned a man who seemed to understand their pain and promised to restore their jobs, pride, and financial health. By the time the majority of the voters realized what was happening, it was too late.
Am I saying that America is poised to become the Germany of the 21st century? Nope. We are geographically too large, our population is too diverse, and too many people have been working on—and befitting from—this democratic experiment for over 200 years to let it be easily hijacked. (I do, however, think that what we are living through is eerily similar to what Americans experienced from 1857-1860; but that may be because I am currently reading The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson.)
What I am saying is that we need to recognize that something is fundamentally wrong with this country when the 2024 election is too close to call. No matter who wins, we have years of hard work ahead of us. And that work, as Kaaryn McCall astutely noted, starts with creating shared definitions, building communities wherever we are, and/ or joining existing communities that share our vision and values.
So buckle up, and good luck to us all!
Thank you, Maggie, for commenting on this post. We need skepticism as well as optimism.
So much appreciation for Maggie Culp’s incredibly helpful contextualization. Now that the election has passed, our jobs as citizens are not done. That hard work of democracy that is each of our responsibilities carries on. Ours cannot be a blind or passive optimism, but a hope for the future we want to see that demands of us vigilance and action to make that hope a reality.
(And to Dr. Culp’s point about building communities, a related post, drawing on Dr. King’s famed question, “Where Do We Go From Here?”: https://gwendungy.com/2024/01/11/where-do-we-go-from-here-2/ )
Yes, Kaaryn, the hard work must continue.