There is a spectacle playing out in the halls of power that would have once seemed beneath the dignity of a republic, yet here we are, watching it unfold.
The rock band Pearl Jam, veterans of a thousand stages and witnesses to decades of American life, has stepped into the arena not to sing, but to sound an alarm.
They are asking their fans to pick up the phone, to call their senators, to make themselves heard against something called the SAVE Act.
Now, what is this SAVE Act that has musicians trading their guitars for megaphones?
On its surface, it sounds plain enough: show a photo ID to vote in federal elections, prove you are a citizen when you register, clean the noncitizens from the rolls. Simple, they say. Common sense, they call it.
But common sense has a way of looking different depending on who is doing the looking.
The band, in its appeal, shared a graphic from an organization called Rock the Vote, and that graphic tells a different story entirely.
It speaks of millions of Americans who do not have a passport tucked away in a drawer, who do not have a birth certificate that matches their married name, who do not have the time or the money or the transportation to go chasing after papers that some bureaucrat in Washington decides they must possess.
These are the people who would be caught in the net. These are the citizens who would find themselves turned away at the door of their own democracy.
The bill passed the House last month, and now it sits in the Senate, where its fate hangs by a thread. The Republicans have the numbers, but they need sixty votes to end debate, and sixty votes are not there. So they talk of changing the rules, of forcing the issue, of doing whatever must be done.
And behind them, pushing them forward, is a president who has made this his top priority, who has threatened to sign nothing else until it is done, who told his own party in Florida just last week that if they do not get this passed, there will be big trouble.
He says it will guarantee the midterms, as if the midterms belong to him to guarantee.
The Capitol switchboard number is out there, waiting to be dialed. The question is whether enough Americans will pick up the phone before the door closes. M
As if the voice of the people is something to be managed and controlled rather than heard and honored.
Pearl Jam is asking people to call their senators, to tell them to vote no. It is a small thing, a phone call. But small things have a way of adding up.