My Public Opinion Baths



Every day I spend roughly an hour riding the D.C. metrobus to and from work.  My commute is sobering, to say the least.  As I look into the eyes of my fellow passengers, I realize this country is full of listless people.  Assuming there was a fire, it was extinguished long ago.  These people now "exist" in the "gray twilight" that Theodore Roosevelt reserved for those who know neither victory nor defeat.

My rides on the city bus are checkered with the usual suspects: young mothers, homeless men and women, day laborers, construction workers, and various working professionals, like myself. Two of these populations routinely catch my eye.  The young mothers, many of them still girls, not yet women, are often times lugging around two or three children under the age of five.  All are eating candy and drinking soda for breakfast.  Some of the older ones are already showing signs of Type-II Diabetes.  This breaks my heart, because these children stand virtually no chance of success.  Maybe a few will rise like phoenixes from the ashes, but the vast majority will not, and these are the ones who will continue to perpetuate the downward spiral.

The other population that draws my attention are the "blue collar" workers, the construction guys, the day laborers, etc.  These men and women inspire me day in and day out.  Though low on energy, many are justifiably exhausted from working two, or even three jobs, all while struggling to raise a family in one of the country's most expensive cities.  Who am I to complain about lifting some weights, or working a 10-plus hour day?

Even as I write this post, a pungent "aroma" of ammonia, a smell derived from human urine, and cigarette smoke is wafting through the bus, courtesy of the homeless woman sitting in front of me.

President Abraham Lincoln used to call receptions with "average" members "of our whole people" his "public opinion baths."  And although Lincoln supposedly heard a number complaints from citizens on "utterly frivolous" matters, he nonetheless concluded these receptions were critically important because, in his own words, " . . . I have but little time to read the papers, and gather public opinion that way; and though [these receptions] may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty."  With the utmost humility, I share President Lincoln's view that if one only interacts with a small handful of people their views will, as he said, become "arbitrary."  Against this backdrop, my public opinion baths give me great cause for concern, but rather than leave me depressed, they serve to reinvigorate me and challenge me to exemplify the changes I want to see in the world.

It was Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19^th century French political thinker, who wrote, “ . . . a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.”