Critical thinking and action

Critical thinking is a learned skill. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff, truth from propaganda, the vitally important from the compelling but trivial? How do you know what voices are reliable? How do you embrace complexity without losing the essence? Our discussions must respect both nuance and each other as we engage. Critical thinking is thinking about our thinking. Right now, as the nation lapses into authoritarianism before our eyes, we must think about our thinking more. And this may help how we approach the actions we take to protect everyone’s rights under democracy. Not just our own rights, as white people in Poulsbo with plenty to eat, but everyone’s, Muslims, foreigners, journalists, people suffering homelessness, African Americans, scientists, disabled people, those who disagree.

Braver Angels is a group currently being represented at local Kitsap community events. Braver Angels has ties to the religious right, has tons of corporate money, and supports local candidates. One colleague has called it “a Trojan horse that is preying on the politically naïve.” Its purpose, according to its website, is to bring people together, human to human, despite differing political positions. But is that where our energy needs to go as the king and his courtiers are personally making billions from our money and a housing bill is considered too unimportant to sign, and medical care is denied to millions?

The national organization began under the name Better Angels (an oft-cited phrase from Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address[1]). But the group changed its name to Braver Angels –under duress, because the great documentarist Ken Burns already has a foundation named Better Angels, and sued the conservative group until they did indeed change their name to avoid confusion. But that confusion persists, since the conservative group’s older posts are still around.

Again, Braver Angels describes itself as a cross-party group or movement that aims to lessen political polarization. It is a “volunteer-led alliance dedicated to bridging the political divide through respectful cross-partisan dialogue.” The Kitsap chapter’s Elizabeth Doll describes herself as a Red (as opposed to Blue) co- leader of the group. An article on her says that in her real job as a political consultant for people running for office, “she is able to remind candidates that they must attend to the issues that matter to their voters – traffic congestion, economic revitalization, or whatever – rather than being pulled into reactions to the national headline issues of the day, no matter how inflammatory” (emphasis ours).

So: Braver Angels says we can all get along, if only we don’t bring up the big stuff about the fall of democracy, if only we act and think on the local level, our comfortable mostly-white community. Which sounds like a very dangerous cop-out. Of course, we talk to all our neighbors when we walk our dogs: we talk weather, we talk dogs, it’s pleasant chitchat. We do not, however, understand what this has to do with the crisis of democracy, with the current Administration bringing down the American century and the world economic and diplomatic order, and raising loud whispers throughout Europe that the United States is finished as the world’s bulwark of freedom and decency.

The Wikipedia article about the national organization of Braver Angels informs us that David Blankenhorn, the president, “formerly worked to uphold same-sex marriage bans.” And “John Wood Jr. produces the Braver Angels podcast and YouTube channel. He is a Republican politician in LA county…” “Braver Angels participants are mostly white, college-educated, and older. While conventions and many workshops are designed for balanced representation, the organization reported that across its events of 2021, self-identified Democrats significantly outnumbered Republicans” (emphasis ours); How is this possible? Who is drinking the Kool-aid?

Thinking critically about Braver Angels leads us to a much bigger issue: America’s passivity in the face of the nation’s precipitous downfall, the population’s political inertia on every day except for No Kings marches. “Why can’t we all get along?” is such an easy position to hold, making it seem troublesome and paranoid and “militant” to speak out and advocate for democracy and sanity in government.  “I have a job and family”; “Let those activists take care of the protests, the thirty who show up at Waterfront Park on Sundays… so glad they’re doing that.” Having why-can’t-we-all-get-along conversations ignores that real people are suffering, real people are losing their jobs, their homes, their freedom every day through the cruelty and corruption of the Administration, its private army of thugs, and the MAGA Supreme Court.

The general population’s passivity extends to a will not to know. We can’t tell you how many people we talk to in public places every week who don’t even know that ICE has been arresting people in Kitsap, and that many of those snatched off the street are legal residents, hardworking people with families and dreams. Living in a democracy requires us to be informed. Not just about the blue-then-green reflecting pool or the arch or the 47 trees, not even that there’s a war with Iran that’s making gas expensive, but that Trump refuses to sign a housing bill that Congress has passed, that the Supreme Court has decided that Trump can fire independent commissions at will, and that the House has approved the SAVE Act. The Court is poised to add to the vast effort to suppress the vote and ultimately cancel elections. (Not to mention the Court’s blessing of the carcinogenic weed-and-people-killer Roundup, its undoing of immigration status for Haitians and Syrians, its permission to turn away asylum seekers at the Mexican border, and its sanctioning of gun rights on private property.)

To sum up, we despair at America’s strange passivity as the nation goes to hell. Second, we despair the “why can’t we all get along” mentality, a position that millions of vulnerable people can’t afford to have, that makes no sense for them – and perhaps ultimately, will make no sense for us when we’re thrown into the gulag. A member calls this mentality a Trojan horse, diverting us from what we have to do as participants fighting for democracy on the precipice, focusing more on trying to converse with conservatives and less on urgent threats such as the postal service not sending our ballots to us.

We see in Kitsap a reduced capacity to act collectively, and the tabling of important issues to the next month and the next month. But we’re heartened by Poulsbo for All, Indivisible, Kingston Alliance for Democracy, and a host of popup alliances and action groups, all which have accomplished so much—education above all, election work, monitoring and advocating in local politics, food collection and distribution, speakers, rallies, providing security, communication, immigrant support and deportation defense. 

Critical thinking means WORK. In these terrible and fearsome times, we must do the work, we must summon and maintain the courage and commitment to do it.  

[1] "The mystic chords of memory... will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."