This is Our Crucible Moment

The last election really was about democracy – and ours is facing a crucible moment. Trump campaigned to upend it. Democrats chose to defend it. The right puts its faith in autocrats to break the status quo, while the left keeps faith with bureaucrats to sustain it. They are both wrong. The status quo is not our friend, and neither is chaos. Our democracy in theory is a marvelous invention. In practice it is not working for most of us. Our democracy has stumbled, been threatened, and reimagined itself before. Now is our time to do it again.

Back in 2007 Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic, in his book True North introduced me to the idea of crucible moments. These are moments that test to the limits our assumptions about who we are, how things work, and what things mean. Crucible moments can be professional (you get fired, passed over, harassed, or demoted), organizational (your organization breaks the law, gets taken over, or goes bankrupt), and personal (you lose, or nearly lose, a loved one, get divorced, suffer a severe medical challenge, or get doxed and cancelled). David Brooks said in a recent speech that these moments can leave us broken or broken open. In her book On Death and Dying, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross plotted out the cycle of grief that leads us from the trauma of a crucible moment, one that demolishes the path our life was on, through the process of denial – anger- bargaining - depression – and acceptance, to create a new understanding of ourselves and our way in this world. If we get stuck between anger and depression we are broken as Brooks would describe it. Only when we examine, question, learn and create are we broken open to the possibilities of the future. Crucible moments can be dangerous and defeating or they can be liberating. Crucible moments end the past – there is no going back. In a crucible moment our only choices are to live stuck and unmoored between anger and depression or to jettison those beliefs, assumptions, and practices that are no longer helpful, and maybe even harmful, and replace them by rediscovering our core values and aspirations – our True North.

Today, the United States is experiencing its own crucible moment. Many of our assumptions about our country and our government have been and are being shattered. Much of what we thought we could count on – we find that we can’t. Things we took for granted, turn out to be up for grabs. In this crucible moment we are forced to grapple with these realities:

• The “system” is rigged – both Trump and Bernie Sanders agree - the elites always win, everyone else always loses.

• We are mad at and afraid of our government. Actually, we don’t even think it is ‘ours.’

• Our education system does not educate, our health care system does not bring us health, our public safety system does not make us safe.

• We don’t trust our institutions nor increasingly one another.

• Gerrymandering and dark money have destroyed our politics – we no longer chose who will represent us, they chose who they want to represent.

• The left wants to spend, right wants to cut – neither gets anything done.

• Politicians love to talk about accountability but don’t want to be accountable.

• We can’t tell truth from lies – and increasingly we think everyone lies.

• The climate is not benign – it is a threat.

• We are lonely and afraid.

• Much of what we thought of as common sense or accepted as the common wisdom doesn’t make sense and doesn’t seem so wise.

• We are unmoored from our past and bewildered about the future.

In David Brooks’ formulation, we feel broken. We can easily choose to stay that way – mired in our anger, fear, and hopelessness. Alternatively, we can resist – hoping we can go back to a better past. But there is no going back. That past is ended – its assumptions shattered.

Donald Trump did NOT cause the conditions that led to this moment. Rather he is a product of those conditions and a catalyst of this moment. He is the disrupter in chief – tearing down structures and institutions, challenging us to take seriously what we have been taking for granted. Destruction is Trump’s superpower, not construction.

A Republic if we can keep it

What happens next, what comes out of this crucible moment is up to us. We must use this crucible moment to break open and fundamentally examine our core values, who we are, and want to be as a nation. Our Declaration of Independence tells us that in moments like this we are to are examine the core principles on which our government should operate and the form in which its powers should be organized.

“…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The government we invented in the 19^th century must now confront the challenges of the 21^st century. Here then are some of the critical questions we need to answer to rediscover our core principals and reimagine the powers and organization of our government. We cannot just go back, and we cannot go forward until we do the hard work of confronting these questions. To answer them we must take them seriously. We cannot simply say ’Of course, everyone knows that.’ Everyone does not know the answers because it has been decades, maybe even centuries, since we had to confront such questions. In this crucible moment our democratic institutions must be reimagined and renewed. Start with these questions:

Should ours be a community and a government based on trust or suspicion?

Are we a community of angels or devils? Should we create a government that assumes and encourages our best while protecting us from our worst (trust but verify) or one that only assumes and prevents our worst (distrust and terrify)?

What ‘rule’ should guide our relations with one another?

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (the Golden Rule).

Do unto others before they do unto you.

Those that have the gold, make the rules.

Why do we have a government? What do we want from our government?

The Constitution says we have government “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

In a recent focus group the New York Times asked a diverse group this exact question and got these answers:

Jason, 52, white, independent, account executive

Government has a lot of functions. It’s making sure that we have a functioning society and not chaos. It’s the military. It’s public services and programs like Social Security and Medicaid. It’s helping its citizens.

Porscha, 36, Black, Democrat, consultant

Maintaining order, security, protecting our rights, having some sort of rules and structure around everything — that’s my immediate thought when I think about what the government is supposed to do.

Mark, 64, white, Republican, retired

Yeah, the government is supposed to provide law and guidance to people so that we all have the same rights and responsibilities.

So, we want government:

To facilitate doing together things that we could not do individually?

To establish collective norms/ laws (e.g. we stop at stop signs) to provide certainty in our relations and interactions with one another?

To allocate scarce resources?

To foster abundance and opportunity?

To protect us from harm?

How much individual autonomy or freedom are we willing to give up in order to secure the benefits of having a government?

How much equity among us should we and our government seek to achieve, how much inequity should we and our government tolerate?

Who owns the government? Whose government is it?

The people? The powerful? The majority? Us? Them? The people we elect?

Our Constitution starts with “We the people of the of the United States…” Who are the people?

Who is included? Who is excluded? When does one become part of the ‘we’?

Our Declaration of Independence says: We hold these Truths to be self-evident,

…that all (people) are created equal,

Are they? Equal in what respects? Are some more equal than others?

…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-

What rights are so critical that they cannot be taken away?

Are there Responsibilities that we are required to fulfill in order to benefit from or secure these rights?

…that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among (people), deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,

How do we give consent? How do we withhold it? Do we vote? How many people have to vote to constitute ‘consent of the governed’? What % of those voting is required to decide an issue – the most, a majority of 50%+, a higher number?

How do we protect and/ or balance the needs and interests of the few vs. the many?

Can the majority run roughshod over the minority? What are the consequences of doing so? What are the limits?

Can the minority frustrate the will of the majority? What are the consequences of doing so? What are the limits?

Who makes the laws?

All of us – we put all laws to a vote?

An elected body that represents us? Do they need to represent all of us? Or only the majority? How do we decide who will represent us? How do we assure that they represent us? Do they come from districts, at-large or some combination?

How does whoever makes the laws make their decisions?

What limits are there on what laws they can enact?

To whom, for what, and how are they accountable? Under what circumstances should they be removed and replaced? How?

Who executes or implements the laws?

An executive? Are they elected or appointed? How? Are they separate from the law makers (e.g. a president) or one of them (e.g. a prime minister in a parliament)?

What powers do they have? What limits are there on their powers?

To whom, for what, and how are they accountable? Under what circumstances should they be removed and replaced? How?

How do we settle disputes between one another and between an individual and the community or nation?

Does the legislative or executive decide or do we have a third body (courts)

How are judges selected? Are they independent of the legislative and executive or dependent?

To whom, for what, and how are they accountable? Under what circumstances should they be removed and replaced? How?

Is one of these three functions – making the law, executing or implementing the law, interpreting the law - more important than the others?

There are many ways to answer these questions. The current answers embodied in our Constitution are only one way and are outdated in many ways. We need to take these questions seriously because our current version of democracy is not working. No matter what the next few years may bring, we WILL be rebuilding our democracy and how it works. The answers to these questions will provide the foundation. Our way out of the chaos of this crucible moment is not back, not left, not right – it is forward. So let’s get to it.