Great men? Great women?

Whitman Notebook, mid 1850s

Democracy is not the right word for it, nor is Republicanism. Conservative. Liberal. Reactionary. Progressive. Left. Right. All terminology, somehow: wrong.

This is nothing new, after all, over 6o years ago it was written: "The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another" (Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" 1946).


And here we are now, 2010, nearing a mid-term election that has all the markings of a "sea-change," "referendum on...," "mandate," "blood-bath," "wave election," "sweeping change," "critical barometer," "another 1994/1982/1946," and I could go on.


What all this, and the punditry, polling, & pandering in the media, has me thinking about is a need for a positive political movement. As we continually relearn: it may be possible to win a campaign on "Hope & Change," but those concepts are exceedingly hard to live with or live up to. Political campaigns, after all, have by definition a remarkably short shelf-life and are peppered with the wrong kind of rhetoric. But a political movement, even a movement of one or two or three thoughtful people can last and have small but important effects, especially when positive.


Perhaps this is what Walt Whitman was thinking about in, say, 1856 when he was scribbling in one of his pocket-sized leather notebooks about a city and a house being "great" because of "great men" and "great women." As meaningless as the word "great" has become (and most likely was already in the 1850s), the sentiment of those scribblings still suggests that it is the people that create, maintain, and evolve the system: government, civil society, cityscape, and home. A little bit of greatness of confidence, consensus, and candidness just might scratch up something positive.


The trouble is not finding the willing followers. The trouble is linguistics. It is so much easier to define a political movement in the negative, as protest, using fear, and threat, and anger. These are not qualities that we lack or that we need, but what we need cannot be found any longer through words. 


At this point there is only one word that comes to mind. Happiness. Not "the pursuit of" because that is too reducible to property. Not "a return to" because that too is a defining by negation. Not "don't worry" because there is indeed much to be worried for. But just the simple slogan: Happiness. To cut some of the fear, anger, hypocrisy, bribery, and gridlock. 


I am not sure how far we can get with this one word. We could hope for something "trans-formative"... but there I go again with that problematic diction.


Wish us luck.