Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show and was promptly eviscerated by Democrats for stating that Joe Biden is old.
This just in. Joe Biden is old.
But that’s his superpower. If he’s re-elected and serves out his term, Biden will retire at 86. That’s the same age Konrad Adenauer was a half-century ago when he retired. It was Adenauer who led the rebuilding of West Germany after World War II. He made it an industrial power, the linchpin of Europe, and America’s strongest ally. He is one of the fathers of modern Europe.
What sticks in my craw is how Democrats ignored Stewart’s key message.
Democracy isn’t about Election Day. It’s about the day before, the day after, the daily grind of struggling for a better world against money and bigotry arrayed against it.
You can’t just show up on Election Day, then expect public servants to “handle it.” Being a citizen in a democratic republic requires more. It requires that you pay attention to what every level of government is doing, in relation to the things you care about, every day.
If the schools where you live are crap, it’s up to you to improve them. If the roads are crap, if the taxes are too high, you have the power to make change happen. You also have the power to keep change from happening, by sitting on your ass and expecting someone else to do the work.
Stewart learned this the hard way. His cause was the plight of our 9/11 cops and firefighters. He had to fight like hell to get support passed, and he’s had to fight every day since to make sure the support flows. Inertia is a powerful force in any system of government. A dictator can shut that shit down. In a democracy, it’s your job to make change happen. No one will do it for you.
Do The Work, Y’All
I got a tiny taste of the work in the last decade. I joined our neighborhood association and wound up running a Neighborhood Planning Unit at the edge of Atlanta. It’s not Decatur, just sort of Decaturish.
NPUs have no formal power. They act as a warning to the city council, of trouble ahead. All NPU decisions can be overridden. They often are. As NPU President, you do a lot of work and take a lot of shit for absolutely no money, and no power.
It was the biggest honor of my life.
The next time you’re called to jury duty, I want you to go with pride. Don’t shirk. Get to know what’s happening in your local government and learn how to debate those issues constructively. Don’t call your neighbors names. Then learn what your state legislator is doing, and everyone else you vote for. These are your obligations as a citizen. You should feel honored to do these things.
They’re your job.
To all those Democrats who dumped on Stewart for saying the obvious, and ignored the rest of what he was saying, all I can say is shame on you. We all have a lot of work to do if we’re to save this country from tyranny and save this world from utter destruction.
We need to shut our pie holes and get on with it.
