Initially many of us spent a bit of time wondering what a ‘meme’ was, but after a while it was too late in smart company to actually ask: ‘what the heck is a meme?’ without appearing a little dull. We should have and must now. Merriam Webster defines a meme as: an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media. The term was introduced into the culture by a man named Richard Dawkins in the 1970s. He was trying to describe cultural transmission which is appropriate to this post. 

The new minority party misread the memes of the time thinking their memes actually connected more broadly and deeply with the current US culture and their full constituency. The people who tipped the balance of victory were an unwelcome surprise. The critical misreads were some women, some people of color, some youth, and even some immigrants. How could this happen? What so many people still can’t understand is that many of those misunderstood voters switched traditional allegiances, voted their conscience and actually voted for a candidate already convicted of a felony crime. There is an elephant in the room that was apparently overlooked. 

In the past 20 years the national sense of good seems to have subtly moved. Since the Supreme Court ruling on abortion people have been forced to take a more informed look at the importance of women’s rights to decide for their bodies and the actual reality of the tragic consequences of the decision for women’s and children’s health care. As the tragic health care realizations emerged, the language of advocacy needed to change with the experiences, but the established memes to address these issues didn’t evolve fast enough to fit in the new century’s lens for both health care and gender. This was a very nuanced election revealing new groups of value, morality and interest. Be it abortion or gender, the 20th century memes and slogans didn’t address the 21st century needs of the newly minted and nuanced constituencies. 

By the end of the campaigns the issues were simply too hot to talk about rationally. To call this defeat the fault of Catholics, or Christians in general, or Jews, or Islam, or simply stone cold ignorance, misses the point completely. A new dialogue has to occur that is morally nuanced for the time we are in and must be committed to negotiate to a common good for both women’s health care and gender and that probably can’t happen in the current atmosphere. The memes are more than useless distractions in the final analysis. But with real human patience, skill, and tolerance, the conversation could occur that could generate a new inclusive public authority. We call that democracy in action. The era has irreversibly shifted and so must the relational survival skills of the aspirants of a a good democratic culture. Genuine solutions aren’t comprised of memes