for the best of America • gary e. davis • berkeley


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	for the best of America: being a Democrat 2024 gary e. davis	September 11, 2024

Valid politics serves sociey, not the converse. (Autocracy isn’t valid.)

More indirectly, political life serves Our culture, maybe Our conception of being American.

For one’s life, cultural value (ethnicity, high literacy, art and science, etc.) is usually more important than political value (except for policy specialists, activists, etc.).

Anyway, political ideas of flourishing society (the “good” society) can only be modeled on what actually flourishes: person-al (person-centered) lives.
A society is an abstraction about aggregate presence of person-al lives.

So, a flourishing society can be no better than the aggregate flourishing of
its members’ lives, relative to which a demophilic politics (upcoming) may orient itself.

Inasmuch as good government is democratic, that’s relative to the engagement of the lives of its citizens.

Appealing to and for better character, family, neighborhood, and community serves to cultivate democratic promise. It serves to secure the primacy of real flourishing for the promise of good government.

As an image is no better than its pixels, a community is no better than the aggregate presence of its neighborhoods (businesses, organizations, etc.); neighborhoods, no better than the aggregate of its residents (agents, agencies, etc.); and lives are no better than their character through time, which grows up through valuing.

So, the demos of a demophilic government (meritocratic, in my view), which is aspiring to be validly demophilic, is no better than the emergent telos of effect-
ive values circulating validly through modes and levels of society.

The “good” society emerges by analogy, being like the literal character of lives, the character of families, neighborhoods, organizations, etc., like values belong to a person-al life: Values of character, grown from the character of valuing through individuated life.

So, a rhetoric of value avoids reception as mere rhetoric inasmuch as one understands the continuum of relevance that direct appeal presumes that an audience can appreciate. The rhetoric appeals to those who can most appreci-
atvely “hear”: leading influencers, leading lives. A rhetoric of value works because it credibly believes in there being presence of good leadership and good promise of future leadership.

Values of character resulting from a time-tested character of valuing have potential for cohering a continuum of humanity which constitutes political calling relative to continua of cultural sociality, interpersoal (“humanist”) culture, genuine interpersonal life, and authentic genuineness.

The modes of the continuum—from authentic life to political sociality—are kindred by way of specific values possibly belonging to all modes; and many values belonging with each other through possibly each mode.

Values can bind modes of belonging in the person-al continuum of being. Values can be generatively isomorphic for actualizing potentials for being well.

At the DNC, Michelle Obama was especially attuned to values of character: humility, decency, kindness, and “hard work.” Kamala Harris highlighted kindness, compassion, respect, and fairness.

And there was the value of intergenerational legacy: paying forward in thankfulness for opportunity created for us: “the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for….it will [all] pay off. If not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren.”

If you’re highly successful, you know that collaborative life calls for humility.
If you have admirable power, you know the virtue of decency and kindness.
Such values aren’t merely desireable. They are powerful.

So, how can you become admirably powerful? How can we make politics admirably powerful?

Through Our lives of valuing, the character of valuing.

Kamala, in her DNC address, isn’t merely honoring her parents when she cites “values they personified.” She is signaling how parenting is good enough (never perfect!—yet devoted): by personifying “community, faith and the importance of treating others as you would want to be treated; with kindness, respect, and compassion.”

That’s implicitly a message to executives, as well as teachers, community leaders, and citizens. It’s about our shared humanity. To the aggressor we appeal,“Where is your humanity?”

“We’re all created equal,” Barack reminds folks.

So, we’re all individuals whose lives have individualized themselves (or been individualized by circumstance), more or less: according to born talent, educational opportunity, and so on.

We each are entitled to fair opportunity to be appreciated as the persons we are; more abstractly: appreciated with respect for the “creation” of individual differences through everyone’s singular experience of being. “There but for the grace of” happenstance…

“After all, “ says Barack (as if addressing young minds), “if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize the world is moving fast, and that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up.

Simply, he says, “we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices”; and, as if we’re beloved children: “Democracy…[is]… the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do.”

The challenge shows at that simple level. One should think that even a child sees that “all people have value” (Michelle).

So, what’s with hawking alienation? “Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us” (Barack).

Tim Walz: “I learned how to compromise without compromising my values.”

Our fellow citizens deserve what even children can understand.

Alright, kids, listen up…

“We are all in this together” (Kamala, Tim), gamers, teens, families who want their neighborhoods to prosper, and so on.

Are “we” about solidarity more than (also) civility? friendship? extended family?

Are “we” culturally belonging beyond socially? interpersonally? self-identically?

In any case, “recognize that we have so much more in common than what separates us” (Kamala), such that politically speaking “in unity, there is strength.”

Barack notes that minimally, folks (kids), “even when we don’t agree with each other, we can find a way to live with each other.” More than that, though “the ties that bind us together,” says Barack, are what Lincoln called “...’our bonds
of affection’,” which show as shared values. (I would argue that feeling is basically affected valuing.)

“Everybody belongs,” Tim avows, “and everybody has a responsibility to contribute.” Conversely, “all of our contributions deserve to be accepted and valued.”

Mutuality and reciprocity are the byways to feeling bound to care—and for trusting that others are there to call.

Know what is worthwhile and valid, what matters (purposive cohering of one’s singular life) and what is “true” (genuine, valuable, real).

Michelle: “This is our time to stand up for what we know in our hearts is right”: “Honesty…integrity” (Barack). Trustworthiness (Harris, CNN): “I kept my word, and I will keep my word.”

Kamala: “Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are.” In “the power of my own voice” (Michelle), “be a trailblazer” (Kamala). “Never complain about injustice, but do something about it.”

Michelle: “This is up to us, all of us, to be the solution that we seek.”

Yet, “the better angels” (Barack) must be “courageous” (Kamala), even “tough”—and (Kamala) “never do anything half-assed.”

Barack notes that the mothers of Michelle and Kamala shared “a basic outlook on life – strong, smart, resourceful women, full of common sense, who, regard-
less of the barriers they encountered, went about their business without fuss or complaint and provided an unshakable foundation of love for their children and grandchildren.”

Be “glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations has strengthened the fabric of this nation” (Michelle).

Let it be. “Endless possibilities” (Kamala), “that here, in this country, anything is possible, that nothing is out of reach” is to be made the prevailing conception of person-al being. “That anyone can succeed if given the opportunity” expres-
ses “the contagious power of hope" (Michelle).

Pete Buttigieg’s “kind of life went from impossible to possible. From possible
to real. From real to almost ordinary in less than half a lifetime. But that didn’t just happen, it was brought about through idealism and courage.”

Michelle: “The anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being
on the cusp of a brighter day” gives us reason to commit to making that real, because you can avoid falling down, “guided by optimism and faith” (Kamala), “the ideas we cherish.” You can (Michelle) “set [your] moral compass high,” which, by the way, would be Valued (highly valued) by any good advisor: exemplary parent, master teacher, therapist, leading mind, etc. “We have
the power to marry our hope with our action” (Michelle).

“Democracy…[is] the values we live by” (Barack). “We have the power to pay forward the love, sweat and sacrifice of our mothers and fathers and all those who came before us” (Michelle), “to leave this country a little better than they found it” (Barack), “not to squander the sacrifices our elders made to give us
a better future.”

Kamala: “And on behalf of our children and our grandchildren and all those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty, we must be worthy of this moment.”

“The life of our nation” (Kamala) is made of “the ties that bind us together…
all across America” (Barack).”

Kamala: “America, let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for: Freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness and endless possibilities.”

There’s no nationalism about avowing “the greatest privilege on Earth: the privilege and pride of being an American” (Kamala).

A great intergenerational truth which is seldom highlighted is that the legacy relay, the making of history, calls for binding privilege to “the awesome res-
ponsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth.” Again, it “is up to us, all of us, to be the solution that we seek” (Michelle), “to stand up…for the values at the very foundation of this democracy.”

However, instead of being “a trailblazer” (Kamala), one should prefer to avoid burning open the high way. Better it is to be a pioneer, leading by appealing values.

“Let us work like our lives depend on it,” Michelle exclaims, “and let us keep moving our country forward and go higher, yes, always higher than we’ve ever gone before.”

Yes, yet the air is thinner there. The spirit gets conceptual.

next—> avoiding autocracy through demophilic meritocracy