Indoctrination Complete

Last week a picture of my son, Clyde, appeared in our local paper: he was marching beside his fellow students in our town’s version of the international March For Our Lives rally. Under the online version of that picture, in the comments section (which yes, I read, because I am apparently a glutton for punishment) there was a sneering two word dismissal of all that my son and his friends were trying to accomplish: “Indoctrination complete.”

At first this comment enraged me (as it was no doubt intended to), instantly setting spark to all my Mama Bear instincts to protectdefenddestroy. By the time the next March came around (this time to demand better pay for our teachers), and Clyde was once again “manning the barricades,” I had calmed down enough to be able to realize that the commenter (Alexei or Vladislav—I can’t quite remember his name) was actually right: Clyde’s indoctrination was (almost) complete. He now understood what exactly was required of him as a citizen in a democracy. (I say “almost” because at sixteen he still can’t complete the final and most important step—voting.)

The word “democracy” literally means “rule of the people.” That means us. That means him. That means all of you. That means that the people who are out marching in the streets are not disrupting the status quo—they are the status quo. Something our elected representatives occasionally need to have pointed out to them.

This is not a new thing. This is not something that the Millennials, or Gen Z, or even those old hippies came up with—this is how it was always meant to work. After all, one of our first national protests happened in Boston in 1773. And they have been happening ever since.

In the history of this country, and this world, and this existence, we have only ever gotten what we wanted by demanding it. From women’s suffrage in 1920, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the Supreme Court declaring that states must allow same sex marriage in 2015, all of these victories came after years of “the people” reminding the government what the status quo currently is.

Looking back in review, history always seems inevitable, as if there was never any doubt as to how things would turn out. But to the women attending the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 woman’s suffrage was far from inevitable, as was universal suffrage to the Freedom Riders of the early 1960s. And surely the men and women at Stonewall in 1969—who were really only protesting for the right to be left alone—could never have foreseen a time when they would be allowed to legally marry.

Some people look at the time lines listed above and only see the years, the decades between the start of a movement and its victories and give up before they even try. Others look at those timelines the same way a farmer looks at the saplings they have just planted and sees their grandchildren happily feasting on the fruits of their labors. It’s all a matter of perspective—and it makes me indescribably happy that Clyde has chosen to adopt the perspective of the latter.

Because even though the “arc of the moral universe” may “bend toward justice,” it oftentimes doesn’t just bend on its own. And like that same farmer shaping their trees into better producers, sometimes we have to help things along by making it clear, through patience, persistence, and judicious applications of force, which direction that bend should take.

Patience. Persistence. Moral resolve. Co-operation. What better “indoctrination” could a mother ask for?