There’s a sense in which we use the biggest words to convey the importance of the littlest things. Eric Hoffer argued in the True Believer that revolutionary movements could only be sustained by perpetrating a mass swindle. Only by promising an impossibly glorious future, a worker’s paradise, a literal heaven on earth to cadres could one convince them to work for and sacrifice on behalf of their smelly neighbors. They would never do it for their neighbors themselves. That were too mean and uninspiring a task.

But what about those who didn’t want to become true believers? They had to find another faith; something that allowed them to make a complete commitment for imperfect ends. To risk everything on a well intentioned, yet still human enterprise. To stake it all on the turn of a card. And believe that somehow it is all worthwhile. Back in the underground days I had long debates with members of the Communist Party over this very subject. “Why are you organizing this strike?” they would ask. “For a higher wage,” was my answer. “Is that all?” they would ask incredulously. “That’s all.”

Here I think, is where democracies have it over totalitarianisms. There are no kings, emperors, Locomotives of History, Great Helmsmen or The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For in democratic polity. There’s only just us and there’s mostly only the present. So maybe it isn’t so surprising that the monuments to American century have been fried chicken outlets, personal computers, consumer appliances and the right to the pursuit of happiness. They are but the little things which the great have scorned.