Tip-Off #224 - Not for the First Time
“We know the worth of freedom only when we've felt its absence.” — Václav Havel, dissident-president.
Trump is not going away—yet.
Democrats stumble over themselves, while budget talks collapse into threats of shutdown. Social Security is likened to a Ponzi scheme; crime and labor statistics are fudged; deportations treat suspicion as guilt.
Meanwhile, Gaza burns and Ukraine fights for survival. Sudan’s civil war drives millions from their homes, while Phoenix broils at 118 degrees for weeks on end. The only bipartisan policy left is failure—with urgency.
Other fractures run through daily life, paralyzing change. Loneliness now affects half of U.S. adults, raising health risks on par with smoking and costing billions in lost productivity.
Facebook once boasted, “Move fast and break shit.” It was more than a motto; it became the license Silicon Valley handed to the world.
None of this is accidental. Each is a breakpoint in a system under strain, pressure built up over years finally rupturing. Catastrophe is the climax power adds when the plot grows stale. We are caught between “the end is here” and, still, “this, too, shall pass.”
Overcoming fear or inertia and motivating engagement is within reach. It calls for restoring local, personal, and public ties that make democracy resilient and life worth living.
That starts with knowing your neighbors—not just their names but enough to exchange help and keep watch; belonging to communities such as a faith congregation, veterans’ group, or LGBTQ+ network, where a core part of you is understood without explanation; and cultivating one-on-one relationships that endure through change and conflict.
It extends to public spaces—parks, cafés, libraries, and other “third places”—where strangers become acquaintances; to activities that bring joy and bridge divides, from run clubs to choir rehearsals to neighborhood clean-ups; and to serving others face-to-face, not as performance but as shared work that builds trust.
Catastrophe isn’t only ruin. From the Greek katastrophē—kata (down) and strephein (to turn)—it is the moment when what was buried breaks into view. Politics can start again, but not as self-branding, lifestyle, or moral display.
Strategies of disavowal and half-measures consign catastrophes to familiar routines. Many live as if nothing has happened. Some go to trivia nights; others thrive on the irony of having a good time. Sincerity lingers as a performance of itself. Events are divided into pre- and post-crash periods, yet the distinction changes little. Things are not as good as they used to be and never were. Perhaps catastrophes have always been thoroughly contemporary. An allergy to “just the facts” now passes for spiritual profundity.
In the novel Abel and Cain by the Austrian aristocrat Gregor von Rezzori, the narrator delights in the “ice-cold blue” sky and “Sunday glow” on the day the Nazis march into Vienna: “Hitler weather,” he calls it.
Politics is the chance to begin anew. It dies when it becomes a performance of virtue. Catastrophe forces the choice. Act before the dust settles. And quit calling pluralism relativism. Build institutions that outlast leaders. Make space where ordinary people are agents, not spectators.
The first step is to stop assuming the problem lies elsewhere. It is easy to blame “them”—the other party, the extremists, the corrupt; godless liberals, moralistic zealots—but the lines we draw around guilt often keep us from acting. No one is exempt from repair.
Democracy is conflictual by nature. It survives not through agreement but through mutual respect amid deep differences. The work is not tolerance, but turning antagonism into agonism—disagreement that accepts the legitimacy of the other side. Civility is not “nice”; it tells the truth. Honest and disagreeable, more than compromise, it is learning to live without resolution.
History bends when enough people act and something larger moves through them. Reconstruction was cut short by white supremacist violence and political retreat. The New Deal expanded opportunity for some while locking others out. The nation’s creed—all are created equal—has never enforced itself. It has been a weapon for the excluded to demand entry. It will be again if we use it.
As Václav Havel said, hope is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out. That choice is visible: states expanding early voting, cities adopting ranked-choice elections, coalitions bringing first-time voters to the polls.
Change will not come from the top down, and it will not absolve us when it does. It will be what we choose to do with the power we hold. We live east of Eden—no innocence, no return—only the freedom of responsibility, and a God who does not have to keep things safe and tidy.
The sacred and profane converge in a muddle. Adrift in freedom, deceived by the promise of security and the illusion of airtight thinking, we lose our way. Amid the turmoil we live in, may we know the urgency of those who love, but also the patience of those who are loved.
Not for the first time, catastrophe can be the crucible of hope.
Notes and reading
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire — Kyle Harper (2017). Catastrophe did not simply end Rome but transformed it, helping usher in the medieval world. Harper is Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma, former provost, and now provost emeritus.
Václav Havel, Summer Meditations (1992), 92 passim. Czech playwright, poet, dissident, and later president.
Moral Courage College — teaches skills to turn heated issues into healthy conversations and teamwork. Founded by Irshad Manji.
Abel and Cain (New York Review Books Classics, 2019) — Gregor von Rezzori, Austrian aristocrat, novelist, memoirist, screenwriter, and critic.
Shikha Dalmia, “Liberals Need Moral Clarity, Not Moral Purity, in Their Struggle Against Authoritarianism,” the UnPopulist (August 14, 2025).
Jonathan V. Last, “Was Trump the Inevitable Endpoint of Conservatism? — A reckoning for conservatives, liberals, and the nation,” The Bulwark (August 14, 2025). Cf. Karen Stenner, The Authoritarian Dynamic (2005).
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Mansfield/Winthrop, 2000), Vol. I, Part 2, Chapter 7, “Of the Omnipotence of the Majority and Its Effects.” Tocqueville warned that democracy’s greatest danger lay in the tyranny of the majority. Today’s populism often misconstrues this threat as the truest expression of the people’s will. Yet he also believed the future of democracy in America held promise, if citizens built civic associations and local institutions to steady liberty against majority power.
Tip-Off #223 - The Math of Eternity
Tip-Off #222 - Remembering to Be Normal
Two things struck me: first, the suggestion to join communities where "a core part of you is understood without explanation." That description captures for me what I'm experiencing in one such community. I would add another qualifier: the same community implicitly and sometimes explicitly challenges parts of me, so to speak, too inauthentic for me to accept as my core. Of course, that goes beyond the scope of your fine essay, but I was so taken with your description that I wanted to build with it.
The second thing: Václav Havel's quote. "Hope is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out." What a mouthful. The "doing" is the substance of hope, the evidence of the unseen.