If there is one lesson that American entertainment media has broadcast for generations to the world, it is to be yourself. For me, in coming-of-age times, this came through figures such as Zack Morris in “Saved by the Bell,” Will Smith in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” But pick your poison, the message is there: In defying society’s rules and honoring your unique truth, you fulfill society’s expectations in the end.
Cultural historian Fred Turner’s book The Democratic Surround identifies this pattern as a systematic phenomenon. In attempting to inoculate people against the temptations of both fascism and communism, mid-20th century American cultural institutions developed a certain theory of the democratic subject—one whose fulfillment was not in collectivity but individuality. Our purpose was not to serve a community so much as to express ourselves through our distinctive choice, identities and (of course) purchases. In 1954, a film about solidarity in a Mexican-American labor union called “Salt of the Earth” was barely available in the United States due to anti-communist pressure; that year’s Best Picture award went to “On the Waterfront,” in which scrappy dockworkers find themselves by escaping their corrupt union for more individualized labor relations.
If you have attended a meeting of a city council or grocery cooperative or the like, you have probably seen the fruits of this ethic: an assumption among loudmouth speakers that, despite being an infinitesimally small subset of the community, it should be their way or the highway.
The pursuit of unbridled selfhood is a shifty foundation for democracy. Lose your union power, and the boss wins. Holding up your personal truth above all else means failing to listen to the views of others. Democracy cannot accomplish anything under a regime of self-expression at all costs. Democracy also involves a dirty word in the American idiom: obedience.
As we enter a second Trump administration, many people will face a test of what democracy asks of us. Last time around, there was the “resistance,” signified by Rebel Alliance emblems as bumper stickers. There were the one-off marches in the early days, up through the Black Lives Matter uprising of 2020. Democratic lawmakers played by the rules in a performance of law and order, but they also mounted two unsuccessful impeachment attempts.
Nothing I see portends that we are in for a repeat performance. By definition, if we are back here again, what happened last time didn’t work. And yet progressives probably are not going to be satisfied by a call for patriotic obedience to the new-and-old, duly elected administration as a manifestation of the collective will.
Obedience is an ambivalent thing to value, to be sure. It can and often is a vector of abuse. Obedience to the wrong things or people, I don’t have to remind you, has been a necessary ingredient for the worst nightmares of human history. And yet, even if we don’t like to talk about it, there is no democracy without it. Sigmund Freud was right about at least one thing: Without some constraint of the individual will, there can be no civilization at all, democratic or otherwise. Any significant relationship with other people—from friendship to marriage to parenting and being parented—involves a sort of obedience to forces other than oneself.
A tradition that elevates obedience to a fine art is Christian monasticism. In the Rule of St. Benedict, monks and nuns may be able to elect their abbot or mother superior, and there are prescribed meetings when they can voice their ideas and concerns. But the rest of the time, their job is obedience. As the Rule explains, “They no longer live by their own judgment, giving in to their whims and appetites; rather they walk according to another’s decisions and directions, choosing to live in monasteries and to have an abbot over them.” Through the mortification of one’s own will in obedience, the idea is, a person becomes more ready to love God and others.
This is an extreme form of the obedience that democracy involves, but it is not altogether distinct.
Out of basic respect for the common community and our neighbors in it, the democratic subject obeys even laws or leaders they do not personally like. This is a duty, or even a kind of solidarity. Sure, we can be imprisoned or fined for disobeying. But is that the only cause of our obedience?
There are also moments, at times of gross injustice, when democracy requires well-aimed disobedience. But they are the exceptions that prove the rule. After all, civil disobedience has often been most effective among those who act in evident obedience to a higher law.
What I mean to offer is an invitation to enter this new moment by asking not merely how to rebel or dissent, or when to burst out in protest. All those things will surely come. But first, we might ask: To what and whom do we offer our obedience?
In trying times, it is easy to forget who we are. When chaos agents are in charge, wielding division and dismay, obedience can ground us. It is a source of clarity and discipline. Is your obedience to your family or your faith, to your neighborhood or your city, to your vocation or your networks? The president need not be your highest power, even if he is in power over you. With the people you trust, discern together: How will you be accountable?
If outbursts of self-expression are the sole strategy, I fear we will wear ourselves out quickly in what is to come. Obedience, I know, is a scary notion for those of us raised with individualism. But in moments like these, it can be an essential guide. If democracy is under threat from authoritarian urges, it is time to rediscover and reorganize our mutual obedience.
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