The Waiting Room of Democracy

Max Asher Miller
2 min readNov 3, 2020

America waits tonight, after four years of crippling disease, metaphorical, and one year, literal, for a diagnosis. Even with the knowledge that by the time we climb into bed with a blood-alcohol level sufficient to overcome the anxiety of the moment, we may know little more about the fate of our republic than we do now, we search the exit polls for a sign that the disease is being beaten back.

Democracy lays in intensive care, but there are no doctors in sight. Its heartbeat is diminished and arrhythmic, but no equipment can revive it. We have but one tool: the ballot box, and we cling to it because all other tools have failed, from Congressional oversight to the aggressive treatment of impeachment proceedings. Each of us who care to see its recovery have voted, hoping that our collective engagement with the democratic franchise will act as a defibrillator.

We are in the waiting room of democracy now. (I can’t take credit for the phrase, a clever Twitter user beat me to it, though I cannot recall who.) We comfort our friends and relatives, and we await the results. In this liminal stretch, time is expanded. The seconds crawl, the clock above the reception desk ticking with the weight of all possible futures.

It is a strange feeling, this waiting, this silent prayer that great numbers of our countryfolk will at last return to reason, that enough of them will put country above party, democracy above racism, and stability over fear. It is strange that we must even ask it of them, that they were not already inclined to it.

Some of us are glued to our televisions, others cannot bear to watch. The watchers wish they could look away while those who avert their gaze face the terror of an informational void. The not-knowing pervades both groups alike.

Some of us busy ourselves, hoping that productivity will distract us from our surroundings, from the need to know. (Why else would I write this, if not to focus my anxiety?) Others cannot focus on a task, cannot think inside of this event horizon. The waiting room of democracy is terribly dull, given its importance, and the available magazines are disheartening.

If our prognosis is grim, if our greatest fears are to be realized, then perhaps this is a time for meditation, for mental steel and preparation. And if not, let this be a lesson in democratic health and the terror that comes when we ignore its care.

And so, we wait.

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Max Asher Miller

Former Managing Editor at Columbia Journal; news/features at CBR, Looper. Columbia University MFA. (Contact via Twitter for inquiries.)