From E.B. White to Colin Kaepernick: What does democracy mean today?

In the war year of 1943, with many of the world’s democracies conquered or besieged, E.B. White of The New Yorker was asked to write something on “the meaning of democracy.’’

The result was a 200-word classic. Democracy "is the line that forms on the right," White wrote. "It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat.’’

Above all: “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.’’

In a year when, if half the people are right, someone else should be our next president; when a record 77% of Americans say the nation is divided on fundamental values; when even one’s posture during the national anthem is contentious; it seems fair again to ask, What does democracy mean today?

White may not be our best guide. His ode to democracy 73 years ago made no mention of the thousands of Japanese-Americans the government had just thrown into concentration camps, or millions of African-Americans denied the right to vote.

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Better to heed Barack Obama on Election Night four years ago: “Democracy, in a nation of 300 million, can be noisy and messy and complicated.’’

He couldn’t have known just how noisy, messy or complicated; democracy at Thanksgiving 2016 requires less an ode than a prayer.

What democracy looks like

Democracy today is the cast of a hit Broadway musical confronting the vice president-elect in the audience. It is the vice president-elect turning to his daughter and saying, “That’s the sound of democracy.’’

And it is an audience member complaining to a reporter after the show that she didn’t come to Hamilton to hear about politics.

Democracy is fourth generation New Englanders gathering for the annual town meeting to vote on whether to buy a new fire engine. It is first-generation alt-righters gathered in Washington to shout “Heil!” and listen to their leader quote Nazi propaganda in the original German.

And it’s what the current German chancellor says must be a basis for her country’s working relationship with the president-elect.

Democracy is a public handshake between the president-elect, who’d called Mitt Romney a “choke artist,’’ and Romney, who once called the president-elect a “con man.’’ It is some anonymous creep on the internet calling Hillary Clinton the c-word.

Democracy is voters waiting patiently on Election Day in lines that sometimes spilled out the door, through the schoolyard, around the corner and down the block. It is also the eventual winner complaining for months beforehand than the system was rigged.

Democracy is Democrats in the street, chanting “Not my president!’’ and Democrats in church, praying together aloud for “Donald, our president-elect.’’

Democracy is the Ventura County, Calif., registrar of voters not getting a single request for police assistance on Election Day from any of his 365 precincts. And it is the sea of 20,000 pink “provisional’’ ballots, many cast by people apparently unregistered in the place where they voted.

Democracy is an “I voted’’ sticker on your chest. It is Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback famous for taking a knee during the national anthem, saying he’s never voted because "I'm not going to show support for that system. … The oppressor isn't going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression."

Democracy after Election Day is some students waving the Confederate flag at LeMoyne College in upstate New York, and the administration first lowering and then removing the U.S. flag after protests at Hampshire College in western Massachusetts.

Democracy is the mere 100,000 voters in three states who, by the reckoning of Eric Sasson in the New Republic, made the difference between a second President Clinton and a first President Trump.

Democracy is Black Lives Matter, and the blue stripe painted inside the double yellow lines down Main Street. Democracy is a magnet, witness Little Saigon in Houston, Texas, Little Odessa in Brighton Beach, New York, and Little Managua in Sweetwater, Florida.

There is democracy and there is in Russia what Vladimir Putin’s supporters call “managed democracy.’’ The distinction was explained to the Financial Times by an anonymous political consultant:  “Democracy is where the authorities arrange elections. Managed democracy is where the authorities arrange the elections and the result.”

Democracy as a condiment

E.B. White’s feelings about democracy resonate still. Some of his images and metaphors do not. Democracy, he wrote, is “the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries …’’

Yet today, in at least 20 states, it is legal to take a selfie inside the voting booth and post it online, as many voters proudly do. And it is their constitutional right, as several court just this fall have ruled.

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As for the libraries, Americans say they love them, but the percentage who visited one in previous 12 months dropped from 53% in 2014 to 44% last year, according to a Pew study.

White also called democracy “the mustard on the hot dog.’’ It's a dated metaphor that, as Seth Lerer of UCal-San Diego -- a scholar of White's children's literature (Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little) -- says would get him laughed out of his classroom if he used it with his students.

At least one of White's symbolic trappings of democracy -- “a letter to the editor’’ -- is still in ready supply. Some recent examples are on point:

• “Our democratic principles and values are at risk like never before. Canada is looking ever more appealing...’’ -- Elizabeth Wallen, Springfield, Ky.
• “Democracy is a fragile process that cannot be taken for granted.’’ -- Bill Dayton, Sevierville, Tenn.

Democracy goes back about 25 centuries, to Athenians casting colored pebbles into clay jars. Its Anglo-American variant is the word’s envy, yet still a delicate flower that, Ronald Reagan once told the British Parliament, “needs cultivating.’’

What does democracy mean today? As much or as little as we want it to mean; we get the one we deserve, Sen. John F. Kennedy wrote in Profiles in Courage. 

JFK’s predecessor in the Oval Office agreed. In 1942, the year before White took up the issue, Lt. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower wrote a letter from London to his wife Mamie. If we believe in democracy, he told her, to justify that faith “we must work like dogs.’’

And, Ike’s pious mother would have added, pray like saints.