Liberal Americans suddenly amazed Archie Bunker is still alive and voting

As I sat through yet another funeral service for the Death of Progress, I again grew frustrated with my white liberal and progressive friends and neighbors. The majority of whom apparently live in a world of only inner-city hipster and college-campus blue bubbles surrounded by like minded people. Some of whom seem to have literally thought that Archie Bunkers only lived in reruns, museum pictures, and occasional internet posts. They suddenly found out there are many Archie Bunkers who are alive, well, and voting. You need to get out of your bubbles more!

Now certainly, some of it has to do with age. I’ll automatically forgive anyone under 30 who doesn’t know that Archie Bunkers exist (Here is link for you to explain this post. Read it before continuing.) If you are over 30, you probably met Archie, you just didn’t know that was his name. And if you are over 45 I can’t imagine that you haven’t met Archie. What blue rock are you living under?

We progressives joke about awkward Thanksgiving Dinners with family yet forget those family members vote. We try to avoid the crazy old guy who works in building maintenance and still believes Obama is “one of those Mussaleems” but forget that he votes. We rally to our social media to post memes and photos about racial injustice in the system and then forget that there are people who make up that system of racial injustice. People who vote. Speaking of social media….remember those family and high school friends you blocked or unfollowed for the “horrible uninformed things” they were posting. They vote.

Who do you think we are fighting against? Racism – in all its forms individual and institutional, intentional and unintentional, informed and uninformed – is not dead. Nor are its siblings, Homophobia, Nationalism, Sexism, and Religious Righteousness. They are all alive and well. They live just outside your blue bubble. Likely a little further out of town or further from campus. A neighborhood you would never be willing to live in. Probably a neighborhood you don’t feel all that comfortable in. The one with the beat up mobile home that has a Confederate flag on the front porch. Or the rural community with lots of tractors and John Deere hats. Or the small town of small houses and small manufacturing trying to hold on to their small piece of the American dream. These are not isolated places. They are literally just a ways away from where you live.

I continue to be amazed at how out of touch so many progressives have become given the advances of the last few years. There is still much much work to be done. There is reason to fear the coming repercussions for our social advancements. But there is as much reason now as there was in 2008 as there was in 1992 or 1976 to rally to the cause. Get off of your social media full of like-minded friends and actually go out and talk to Archie. Get to know him. If you don’t, you will never find a way to change his mind. We have been lulled into laziness by our recent progress. But America is advanced citizenship. You have to work for it.

I’ll end with two thoughts. First, a quote from one of my favorite movies The American President:

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.”

As we go out there to that fight and advocate let us not get discouraged. As Theodore Parker said and Martin Luther King reminded us, that moral arc of the universe is long and it does bend towards justice. America is not an exception. But the work of bending it is constant. Find your Archie Bunker and start applying pressure to that moral arc. We have four years to bend it.