Hey there. Do you remember being in school and learning about the Greek concept of hubris? I do. I remember being really confused by it when it first came up.
And reading stories about hubris, classical Greek writings, and other examples, it helped clarify it. But I don't think there's a better example in modern times of hubris than what Chuck Schumer did last week. And I've been thinking about it ever since that great betrayal. And it's just really sticking in my craw that the downfall of democracy is going to be boomers and silent generation folks who are drowning in hubris, who are so convinced that they are the end-all be-all of political power and wisdom that they can't step aside or step down or let a new generation of leadership step into power.
And when you think about it, I know this isn't original to me. Other people have expressed this, and I'd like to give them credit if I can remember who they were. But the thing that really sticks with me is hubris is going to be the downfall of our democracy. Joe Biden, God bless him, he thought that he had to be president.
He thought that once he was in that office, he couldn't give it up. His hubris was such that he had to be the person who carried it forward, even though there were enormous issues with his age and his ability. It was hubris on his part to think that didn't matter and that he was so important that it had to be him. And God bless Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had an amazing career on the Supreme Court, but was so convinced that she had to be there that she didn't step down during the Obama administration when she could have been easily replaced with somebody as liberal as she was.
It was her hubris that made us lose the Supreme Court, at least initially. Dianne Feinstein, again, God bless her, an amazing career in politics. But she thought she was so important to the political process that she couldn't step down from that job, and so she died in office. Nancy Pelosi, who actually realized that she needed to step down in transition power, did the right thing, but even she won't let go of actually being in Congress.
When I look at the Democrats, I see old, enfeebled people who are so addicted to power and their own sense of pride in the current events of our nation. They can't step away, they can't step down and do the right thing and let Gen X and Millennial and Gen Z folks actually step into the positions of power that they need to be in so that they can lead us with vigor and new ideas and actual backbone to step up. Chuck Schumer's hubris at wanting to be majority leader one more time in his career is the thing that destroyed him. It destroyed us because it was more important to him than representing his constituents or Democrats at large or the entire country or saving America's democracy, standing up for the Constitution.
He betrayed his oath to the Constitution because his hubris was so great that he felt like only he could be the person to lead us out of this dark forest, except he has no idea what he's doing, and he doesn't have the pep or the verve or the spine or whatever you want to say to actually get us through this constitutional crisis that we are drowning in every single day. And so my question, is hubris going to be the thing that defeats American democracy? I don't know the answer to that, and I want to know what you think. What should we do about these politicians who may have had fine careers, but who are currently so entrenched in their own power and their own desire to remain in power and their own false belief that they are crucial to the democratic narrative of this country, that they have to stay where they are?
What do we do? How do we get those people to move on? Is it going to be by primarying them and voting them out of office? Can we write them nice letters or call them and ask them to leave?
How do we get a generation of democratic leaders to understand that we don't need them anymore? We need something better. We need something younger. We need something more articulate and forceful and ready to lead than these people who have spent their entire lives occupying seats of power that are not theirs, but that belong to the people, and it's time to give them up.