The Sky Is Falling
Democracy, Dishes, and the Modern Chicken Little 🧭
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
Poor Chicken Little.
Or maybe it was:
“Awhoo! Wolf! Wolf! There’s a Wolf!”
At this point I can’t remember which childhood panic attack belongs to which fable.
One bird thought the sky was falling because an acorn hit him on the head.
One shepherd boy kept inventing wolves until nobody believed him anymore.
Either way, the lesson seems relevant.
Those old stories have been rattling around in my head lately.
Every few days I hear another announcement:
“We’re close to a deal.”
“We’re very close to a deal.”
“A deal is coming soon.”
“We’re almost there.”
Then, without warning, we're told that immigrants are eating the dogs, eating the cats, raping, murdering, pillaging, poisoning the nation with fentanyl, destroying civilization, and somehow causing the Knicks to lose the playoffs.
The volume changes.
The cast changes.
The crisis changes.
The script remains remarkably familiar.
By my count, Donald Trump has announced some version of these warnings and promises dozens of times.
After a while the words begin to lose their shape.
They become political wallpaper.
And somewhere between Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf, I find myself wondering:
Is the sky falling?
Is there really a wolf?
Or are we all just running around the barnyard repeating things we haven’t bothered to check for ourselves?
Maybe that is why I spend so much time listening to the news while washing dishes.
PBS NewsHour.
Democracy Now!
CNN.
Fox.
One network begins with a crisis.
Another begins with outrage.
Another begins with analysis.
Somewhere someone is yelling that everything is under control.
Somewhere someone else is yelling that everything is falling apart.
Everybody is talking.
Everybody is analyzing.
Everybody is predicting.
The television hums away while I scrub a coffee cup and wonder whether any of us actually know what’s going on at all.
Reporters have a difficult job.
Their responsibility is to keep us informed.
But the modern news cycle sometimes feels like a giant traveling circus where every tent claims to contain the most important act on Earth.
After a while you find yourself changing the channel and watching an old episode of The Rifleman.
At least Lucas McCain knew who the bad guy was.
I still need to watch Schmigadoon!.
Maybe that’s the answer.
Less doom scrolling.
More musicals.
More Dorothy Parker.
More Death of a Salesman.
More literature.
More time spent with people who were trying to understand the human condition instead of merely dominating the next news cycle.
The beautiful thing about living in a democracy is that eventually you can simply turn the television off.
You do not need to join every argument.
You do not need to participate in every outrage.
You do not need to build your identity around the crisis of the day.
You can go outside.
Read a book.
Talk to your neighbors.
Plant potatoes.
Take a walk.
The sky is not always falling simply because someone says it is.
And here’s what gives me hope.
I believe Americans eventually reach a point where enough is enough.
We reached it with slavery.
We reached it with legal segregation.
We reached it with denying women the vote.
We continue reaching it whenever groups of people are excluded, persecuted, or treated as less than fully human.
Progress is rarely elegant.
It is often painfully slow.
But eventually ordinary people decide they have seen enough.
The remarkable thing is that in the United States we do not generally settle those questions by force.
We settle them with ballots.
We vote.
We organize.
We persuade.
We argue.
And then we vote again.
No president controls that.
No television network controls that.
No billionaire controls that.
No political party controls that.
The people control that.
Which is why I have a simple recommendation.
Vote for everything.
Vote for city council.
Vote for school board.
Vote for superintendent of education.
Vote for county offices nobody can name.
Vote in primaries.
Vote in local elections.
Vote in special elections.
If your high school lets students elect a class president, vote there too.
Democracy is not a once-every-four-years event.
It is a habit.
It is a culture.
It is a muscle that grows stronger when exercised.
Perhaps that is what we should teach our children from the beginning.
Not what neighborhood someone lives in.
Not what color someone is.
Not how much money their family has.
Not how wealthy they might someday become.
But that their voice matters.
That participation matters.
That citizenship matters.
Because when enough people decide enough is enough, Chicken Little eventually runs out of audience.
And the sky, more often than not, remains exactly where it is.
Keep the Lantern Lit
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