Since the days of powdered wigs and whalemen, Hawaii’s light has beguiled the wide world. With soft-spoken hardiness its people survived plagues, coups, bombings and extinctions. Far from a “rum-soaked” getaway for relatively richer malihini, its historical role has been to sometimes (unsuccessfully) challenge the status quo. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team and its contemporaries liberated fascist Europe; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wore Hawaiian lei in Selma; Daniel Inouye championed American Indians and Alaska Natives in the U.S. Senate; former President Barack Obama inspired where very many once felt he could not even be elected. Examples abound.
Those days seem sadly passed. The national Democratic Party has resoundingly failed to compensate its attrition of white and Latino working class voters with rising support among college-degree bearers. The Republican Party’s new swath of governors, Congressmen and election-stewards threaten to put a thumb to the election scales in 2024. For we Independents, it is more difficult than in living memory, because we don’t feel proffered a fair choice.
Long and often, I warned of our current juncture. The working plurality of Republicans chose of their own volition to minimize the attempted U.S. coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and the recent attempted kidnapping and torture of the speaker of the House. Until our freedom of speech evaporates we must at times offensively speak our consciences. I have roundly criticized former President Donald Trump and the gripping darkness in my country. Many hold misgivings, even anger, about President Joe Biden, as their freedom of thought allows. But hating a politician’s millions of supporters is an easy extension which only proves to be a folly.
Once a registered Democrat, I watched ambitious Republicans steadily join the Democratic Party of Hawaii. Some I welcomed. Some looked like a looming train wreck of naked ambition, like formless, people-pleasing Jell-O, nailed to the cross of taxes and responsibility. Margaret Thatcher said that “the lady is not for turning”; this one-party state — with its Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, ex-Mitt Romney Republican factions — will not likely change foreseeably soon. But where is the vision?
Hawaii has always faced a bigger dilemma than which racehorse to patronize in a strained nation. It chooses whether to pluck low fruit or to push against resistance. Federal appropriations make for easy money. A tourism-and-real estate system keeps unemployment low, but over-prunes my generation’s future. Politicians expect to be served rather than to serve.
In the past the islands rose and again in our future can rise like David to challenge Goliath’s laughing hubris and myopia. Those who would dismiss little Hawaii forget that the islands have led on civil rights and the environment, showing the world that people can live and accomplish great things together. Small places often change the world. We must try to reclaim our champion role, and search for the light in our estranged neighbors.
Dylan Armstrong is an emergency manager and urban planner who helped coordinate emergency response on COVID-19 here from 2020 to 2021.
