For the next Little Richard, Missy Elliott, and Taylor Swift…

Get out and vote

The election is nearly upon us… I’m sharing these words that I wrote for Dave Eggers and co.’s 270 Reasons project, a collection of essays by authors and musicians and other Americans about why they’re voting for Kamala Harris.

If you haven’t already, please get out there and vote.

Carry on—OxO

Spooky… um, stuff. Seen in Jackson, Wyoming.

I always vote for the candidates and initiatives that get us closer to the idea of an America that I can believe in—one that’s radically wild, diverse, and free, much like the music Americans have made. It’s a young democracy, and only a true democracy in the modern sense for a couple of years longer than I’ve been alive.¹ I was born in 1967, hot on the heels of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

There are many issues that are important to me, and progress can be heartbreakingly slow for even the most committed to democratic governance. Still, that’s the world as it is, not the world as I wish it to be. What’s most important in this election is to defend our belief in democracy itself. There are obvious signs that a great many of our fellow citizens are giving up on the principles I’ve taken for granted most of my life—chief among them the idea that, so far, democracy is the best form of governance we humans have devised. I see the erosion of this belief most obviously in the authoritarian tendencies of our political right. But I also see it in far too many of the people I’m most politically aligned with on the left, who seem to have lost their tolerance of discourse and compromise. In other words, a lot of people are being seduced by the notion that the world would be perfect if everyone would just agree to agree—as long as it’s “you” agreeing with “ME!” And anything short of complete uniformity of thought is intolerable.

It’s exhausting and counterproductive to say the least. Democracy doesn’t work like that. It’s grinding and slow and messy. But it works. Progress does get made. We can find common ground. We can change, and allow others to change at their own speed. We can delight in our differences. We can be inspired by new ideas. We can choose to be thrilled by the tension of not knowing what the future will bring and still embrace our ability to dream of its beauty.

These are all qualities I associate with the miraculous music Americans have invented and spread to the rest of the world. Much of it born before a true democracy existed. Born of fear, yet fearless. Willed into being to spit joy in the face of tyrants too dumb to know they’re being mocked. Born of the ideals America represents before America had a heart big enough to fully embrace them. Imagine what our country would look like if all of our citizens had been able to vote from its inception? If the voices of women, Black, and other disenfranchised voters had been able to play a part in shaping our republic?

So I’m voting to give this colossal experiment another day. I’m voting for democracy. I’m voting for the next Louis Armstrong and Hank Williams—the next Little Richard and Sister Rosetta Tharpe … Mingus, Missy Elliott, Taylor Swift… I’m voting for the magic that keeps holding the world together long enough for the light to shine again. I’m voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

This Week in Wilco, Etc.

1996 / October 29: Wilco’s second album, Being There, is released on Reprise Records.

2021 / October 30: On Starship Casual, Jeff shares the track “Greg’s Basement (Lost Track).” It will later appear on the 2023 CD Starship Casual: Orbit One and again on cassette at the Wil-Co-Mat vending machine at the 2024 Solid Sound.

2004 / October 31: Wilco plays a 25-song set at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. They cover “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult.

1. Or something resembling a true democracy. Let’s not talk about the arcane and patently undemocratic absurdity of the electoral college for the moment. We’ve got bigger fish to vote against.