And, to continue with the Dickensian allusion in the title, I believe that, at least when it comes to the composition of the House of Representatives, it actually is the best of times and the worst of times. Here's why I feel that way.
I have, for a long time, felt that all politics are not merely local, but generational as well. Each generation comes of age looking at the world and deciding, correctly, that there is plenty of room for improvement, and they set about doing so in whatever ways are open to them. Typically, those ways are indeed local; who doesn't know by now, after all, that Barack Obama started out as a community organizer? It is, to borrow a phrase, by thinking globally and acting locally that we start to think about what problems in the world bother us the most, and start talking to those around us about how to go about solving them. We organize. We raise money. We march. We speak out publicly, in person and in print. We network, using our contacts to reach those in both financial and political power to press our demands, and (if we're at least a little bit clever) make it clear that our demands are not necessarily inconsistent with theirs.
In short, we understand, and hope that the proverbial powers-that-be can be made to understand, that life is a kind of baton race, and the two most essential skills in that race are (a) taking the baton from the previous generation, and (b) ensuring that, when the time comes, it's handed off to the next generation, to build upon what has been given to them.
The transition from one generation to the next is not something that happens in a single moment. One can see various signs of it happening over a long period of time, and yet it is not always obvious as to what the moment of transition actually is. For a little over a decade now, pollsters and other statisticians have been telling us that millennials have begun to supplant Boomers (my cohort) in the center of American cultural life, and their entry into the political realm has reached the point of occupying political offices.
I think, however, that the past week could be said to be perhaps the moment. First, with sorrow and deep respect, an acknowledgement of the worst of times.
G-d saw fit to take John Lewis home this week. G-d knows that Congressman Lewis has earned the rest. Much has been said about his central role in the American civil rights movement, especially his participation as a speaker at the March on Washington, and a leader in the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. I will not take up space here to recount what has been more than adequately recounted elsewhere about the details of his remarkable life. I will, however, make one point about him relevant to what I've discussed so far, and that illustrates at the same time how special he was.
John Lewis was all about handing off the baton to the next generation. He understood that the cause for which he fought his entire life would not be won in a single lifetime. He understood that the lessons he learned and the example would be set must be shared and continued by those who would come after him. He grew old, but he did not age; he had much to look back on, but he continued to look forward. And those are precisely the reasons why he was willing to do something that not many senior citizens would do: namely, this. His courage, about which much has been said, walked hand-in-hand, on the mall in Washington, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and everywhere else in his life, with humility and hope.
At a time in our history when, perhaps to an unprecedented degree, we as a people are ready to confront the structural racism of our society and not merely make amends, but long-overdue changes as well, it seems almost unconscionable to lose him, on top of the earlier loss of Elijah Cummings. At a time in our history when the American people are at war (no softer term will suffice) with an Administration that wears its naked bigotry with the shamelessness of a pole dancer, we have been robbed of precisely the leadership we need to capitalize on this moment and make the most of it.
It's enough to make anyone search the heavens and scream "Why now, Lord?"
And I think the answer is as simple as this: because we're ready to move forward without them.
And that, in turn, allows me to move on to a discussion of the best of times. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, involves Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
I've followed national politics for more than 50 years, and I have never seen a first-year member of the House live rent-free in so many Republicans heads as AOC has. Some would probably ascribe that to her allegedly "radical" politics--which, in fact, as demonstrated by poll results, aren't really as "radical" as one might think, unless one only thinks about one's capital gains. Some, inclined to a more sinister (or, arguably, more realistic) perspective on what motivates people, would say that it continues the march of people of color into dominance of American life. AOC has even been told by our "President" to go back to where she came from, even though both of them come from New York. And I'll concede that both of those things are part of the perpetual hatred of her.
But, when you overtake even Nancy Pelosi as a boogeywoman for Republican fundraising purposes, I submit that there's more going on here than mere partisanship or bigotry. There's something else about AOC that drives the GOP mad. And it's this.
For a first-year member, AOC is simply extraordinarily good at doing her job. In the parlance of contemporary youth, AOC is simply boss. Take, for example, her ability to take apart witnesses in committee hearings. Don't believe me; take a look here.
Far better: take a look here. Having suffered a feeble, sophomoric, ultimately obscene attempt by a pitiful Republican representative to gain media space at the expense of her character, AOC says everything that needed to be said to send the representative in question and his comments packing. She does much more here than speak like an adult; she speaks like someone who is already a leader. She takes the juvenile attempt to intimidate her and turns it into a defense of an entire generation's right to self-respect.
I said this on Twitter this past week, and I'll say it again. You can mark my words: unless she decides to take off for a gig in another area, AOC will one day be Speaker of the House. And we'll all be the luckier for it.
Perhaps that's why I think G-d was ready to take Lewis, as well as Cummings. They've handed off the baton to the next generation. And AOC is showing that the next generation is ready to make the most of it.
I wish her well, and all of her generational colleagues. I worry about the extent to which Boomers, now the beneficiaries of the greatest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history (full disclosure: that includes me) have largely formed a generation of lotus-eaters, reaping without sowing, consuming without building, swallowing everything whole and leaving nothing for those who come after us.
I hope and pray that we can, at this late stage of the game, find our inner relay-runner as a generation, and do the best we can to pass the baton.
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