The Politics of Depression

Since I was 15, I’ve been running away from the deeper, darker pits of my own mind. I’ve found coping mechanisms, I have stretched myself in distraction, I’ve buried myself in music, food, movies, you name it. What I haven’t done is found a cure. I can’t shake this bottomless feeling that life is hopeless, this mind-numbing silence from the depths of my own soul.

It’s easy to not feel alone in that on the internet. There are many people who feel depressed, who feel hurt or sorrowful. There are many who feel that the world is one of those deep, dark pits void of hope and joy. So many people who log on in an attempt at some sort of strange solidarity with each other in that miasma of misery. It never airs out, it never vents, it simply gets so noxious that one can only disconnect for fresh air. It permeates every part of our lives online, from how we view pictures of ourselves to how we discuss issues in that very public forum with others.

For some, it appears it influences even their beliefs in politics and how they’ll treat others online. For some, that deep-seated pain is an excuse to lash out and attack those around them and those who use larger following for influence. In a Democratic primary where anger and hostility have been seen at the top of most campaigns, like Joe Biden’s unrequited rage toward even the slightest questioning of him or his record, or Bernie Sanders’ inability to speak reasonably about any issue without going into a tone that sounds like his blood vessels are going to explode, this miasma of misery seems to have permeated even the depths of our conversations at high levels of government. When discussing impeachment, everything must be couched with the cynicism that Republicans will never vote for removal. When discussing the election, there is no room for anything other than the despair of climate change and healthcare. When discussing those policy issues, there’s no room for happiness, only the anger and disillusionment of how these issues can be solved and solved quickly. When discussing the reality that they may not be solved quickly, realists are met with wave after wave of hateful and angry responses from all sides, though some are more hateful than others.

This is what depression does to politics. It turns hopeful conversations about the future into hateful, despair-ridden mud fights driven by the hopelessness and the unrealistic grasping at straws that those who want to feel hope know that they can’t because their problems aren’t enough to drive societal change quickly.

That’s the unfortunate reality of society and government. On it’s deepest and realest level, it’s your most personal issues writ large, to the point where they’re impersonal because everyone else has problems too. What’s worse is half the country can’t agree on how to fix them. That’s just the reality of government, the depressing reality of a society that moves as slowly as a battleship turns. A painful, creaky process, Max Weber called it the “slow boring of hard boards.” It’s a fundamentally unfair, long-form process that takes constant effort to achieve goals, and those goals will likely not be achieved in our lifetimes. If they are quickly achievable, it has likely taken a miraculous or disastrous happenstance that has horrible enough effects on enough people to justify swift change. The Great Depression driving the New Deal, World War II driving the economic explosion in America, the Civil War bringing about the end of slavery in the United States, quick change is almost always measured in the quantity of blood spilled.

To be fair, blood is always spilled over change. The Civil Rights Act came after a century of fighting and bloodshed at the hands of white supremacists and the state. Kitty Marion fought violently for women’s reproductive rights, paving the way for a peaceful movement from women like Margaret Sanger, for women’s suffrage and reproductive rights but even this came after decades of work. The New Deal took huge economic collapse, and still took a full term of Presidential focus to achieve with a friendly Congress driven by thousands of starving constituents.

But each of these movements required foundational change. The Civil Rights Act needed the Civil War to lay its ground work. Women’s suffrage was a fight that had been as old as the country itself, and still took work for non-white women to achieve the equal right to vote, which is a fight that continues today. The New Deal built on successes of the Wilson administration, and took ideas from other parts of the country that had begun to work. Think of these as the gestation period for reforms, and the sudden burst of changes driven by bloody catalyst as the final birth of the reform. They take years of activist fighting followed by the right actors being in place to implement them into law. Too soon, and the program could die as many of the New Deal programs died. Too late, and the movement will have largely died out.

The point, as Weber pointed out, is that change is a long fight and not a short burst. It is the calculated pulling of political levers driven by the hope that one day, our children and grandchildren will reap the rewards of the work we have done. Medicare-for-all is a new issue that will take years to convince and pass. It’s not ridiculous to be realistic, but it’s not dumb to be hopeful. If we work hard, our children and their children could have medicare-for-all.

Ultimately, is this not the driving force behind our fight against climate change? Many of us know that even in taking swift action, we’re not saving the planet for ourselves, we’re saving it for our kids. If we look realistically at science, we know that it’s going to take a generation and maybe two to get to a place where we need to be in order to reap the rewards of hard work. We know that trying to cure cancer has been in the works for 50 years, but we don’t stop trying because it’s not happening tomorrow.

This is the ultimate price of our politics of depression: we’re searching for immediate relief wherever we go. We demand politicians fix problems in four or six years, some only get two. We demand perfection in our programs, and in our candidates. In a world where everything must be joyful, pristine, and immediate, where is the incentive for politicians to tell the truth? We all lead imperfect lives, we acknowledge that we are not perfect people, but we demand perfection from those who ask us to trust them with leadership. If we want honesty, we need to be the ones to lower our standards to simple humanity. We need to learn that our leaders are going to do their best, and then trust the leader with both the best and the most realistic vision.

It’s time to recognize that politicians who, in every election, promise you the world are probably lying for your vote. My wife has a phrase that she got from her mother: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Is medicare-for-all in two years realistic? Probably not. That’s probably too good to be true. But if we really work for it? If we work to give as much immediate relief as is possible, followed by years of activism and laying the groundwork like we know the formula of success tell us, then it will work and we will have what we want. We’ll have finally achieved that goal. But in politics, like in life, sometimes we need to recognize that it’s probably going to be a more difficult task than we thought. It’s probably going to be a longer, harder road than first anticipated. We might not see the end of it. There’s at least a chance that those of us in the fight will pass this fight on to a new generation of activists, leaders, and fighters.

But that’s the beauty of hope over despair in politics. If we work hard, if we convince people, there will always be someone to carry on the fight. My father once told me that history is what we pass on, it’s our legacy and our story. So let this be our story, let it be said today that we took on a fight worth a generation. Let our legacy be that we chose the hard road toward lasting change, instead of the easy road toward immediacy. Let our legacy be that we chose courage over cynicism, to fight the fights in front of us and not to run away because it might scare some people away.

We’re not going to win all of these fights. We’re going to lose, and take bumps and bruises. Our leaders aren’t going to be perfect. Our leaders will have problems, because they’re human. But we’re going to know their problems because they’re honest, too. Imagine how that can change the conversation surrounding our politics. Truly, not about what we can do for ourselves, but what we can do for our children. A politics of selflessness, not of what can get done quickly or for us, but what can we do so that our kids can fight for more? Let that be our legacy, a selfless legacy, a hopeful legacy.

Let’s build a new American legacy on hope. Let’s build it on a path, not a policy. Let’s keep our goals in sight while we toil hard to lay the foundations for lasting change to exist long after we’re gone. Let’s fight for something worth passing the torch over. We need a future that chooses hope over despair, faith over doubt, courage over cynicism, and joy despite depression.

We can build this legacy together, if you’re tired of feeling hopeless. We can look our children in the eye and tell them that the future is what they make it, they just have to fight with hope and courage. Imagine the kind of country we can be if we just hoped together. Imagine the kind of country we could build if we chose leaders filled with hope, not worried about whether or not everyone else feels that hope too. Sometimes you’ve just got to jump and trust that everyone else is jumping too.

Only one candidate on the ticket has advocated for hope, for the long fight, for the next generation. Only one candidate refuses to talk negatively about other candidates, and works to find the joy in rebuilding a fairer America. Only one candidate is telling you we win with hope, and asking you to take that little leap of faith.

Will you jump with me and vote for Elizabeth Warren?