Pogo's Reminder

Cute as a button, teller of ugly truth. Pogo the comic strip possum, born way back in 1948, dispenser of wit and wisdom from the Okefenokee Swamp over a lifespan of nearly 27 years.

After working as a Disney animator, Walt Kelly struck out on his own, creating his trademark character who channeled Kelly’s seemingly simplistic but slyly perceptive comments about the state of the world and politics. Pogo is best remembered for uttering a phrase that echoed through the ages and still reverberates today.

The quip first appeared in a poster Kelly designed to help promote environmental awareness and publicize the first annual observance of Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970. Kelly used the line again in the Pogo strip published on the second Earth Day in 1971.

Back then, it was perfectly legal to dump untreated sewage and industrial waste into local waterways and turn natural areas like Okefenokee Swamp into toxic waste dumps. Earth Day helped raise awareness and inspire a grassroots environmental movement that won crucial battles to raise air and water quality standards and restrict deadly pollutants. The impact of these victories was immense.

Then complacency set in, creating an opening for a fierce backlash that’s prompted numerous rollbacks of natural resource protections and conservation measures. Now, against a backdrop of spiraling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that are altering the Earth’s climate, there is binge construction of AI data centers that will devour only slightly less energy than Egypt and more than Malaysia while generating more carbon emissions than major cities. They’ll consume more water than all the bottled water sold globally, six times more than the entire nation of Denmark consumes. This at a time when a quarter of humanity already lacks access to clean water and sanitation. On top of that, data centers produce copious amounts of electronic waste containing hazardous substances like mercury and lead. We have met the enemy.

Pogo must be playing dead, every possom’s instinct when sensing grave danger. But the little fellow’s timeless message still resounds. Not easy to hear with all the noise pollution, what with America well on its way to becoming a police state domestically and a might-makes-right bully globally to ethnically cleanse our nation, distract from unnerving economic uncertainty and stifle social unrest.

Pogo’s famous warning surely rang out on November 5, 2024. That’s when Google searches for “Did Joe Biden drop out” started, beginning around 6 a.m. on election day, continuing to rise over the course of the day, reaching a peak near midnight. Spiked again around 8 a.m. the day after. Prior to election day, there were virtually no such searches even though President Biden dropped his re-election bid in July and endorsed Kamala Harris. We have met the enemy.

Pogo comes to mind whenever willful ignorance rears its head. To be clear, I’m not chalking this up to any mental deficit, I speak of a deliberate choice to remain oblivious. It’s not a matter of being smart or dumb, it’s a matter of paying attention or not paying attention.

I once journeyed the length and breadth of the state of Wisconsin as if Pogo was on my tail prodding me. It was 2018, and I was a candidate for governor. Our campaign traveled over 100,000 miles in 11 months, visited every county, held dozens of town halls and meet-and-greets, took part in more than 50 candidate forums, did hundreds of media interviews.

Since then, I’ve lost count of the number of times I found myself conversing with highly intelligent, well-educated people who talk a good game about how they are alert, informed and engaged citizens who always vote. Who, when my candidacy was brought up, had no idea. Couldn’t believe I’d ever done such a thing.

Running for office is an exhausting ordeal that puts enormous strain on family life. No two ways about it, coming up short after putting in all that time and effort is painful. When a mere 11.8% of Wisconsin’s eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot in the party primary election that I was a part of, it felt like salt rubbed in the wound.

Not long after the election was over, I went with my family and a neighbor of ours to a screening of the documentary Knock Down the House about four women who ran for Congress against all odds that same year. I felt a kinship with the three who lost their races. I marveled at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking upset win.

The last poll in her race showed her trailing her primary opponent, one of the top-ranking Democrats in the House, by a staggering 35 percentage points. An especially poignant moment in the film shows an anguished Ocasio-Cortez coming to terms with her likely fate on the eve of the election, wondering aloud if she had let down all the people who had done so much on her behalf. I tried my best to fight back tears, but they streamed down my cheeks.

As I watched AOC sort through her emotions, I thought about the more than 3,000 volunteers who worked so incredibly hard in hopes of getting me elected governor. They were my voice, my surrogates in neighborhoods up and down the state. They were my TV ads, for we couldn’t afford the real kind. I thought about one in particular from the La Crosse area who volunteered his evenings and weekends even as he was working more than 40 hours a week at his paying job to make ends meet. As the election approached, he donated his two weeks of paid vacation for the year to work full-time on the campaign.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, the feeling that I had let him and so many others down tormented me. I thought I had worked through those emotions, but watching the film made me realize I had just stuffed them in some psychological sock drawer. The movie forced that drawer open.

The drawer reopens every time I encounter willful ignorance. It reopens each time I see earnest, honest women and men tarred with a broad brush, belittled as just another power-hungry crook for treating public service as a duty and putting their name on a ballot. The depleted souls doing the tarring have always shirked that duty themselves, have no clue how much of an emotional toll has to be paid when answering democracy’s call. They also have no idea what cost there is to society if good people grow unwilling to tempt the bitter fate of a very public humiliation when the votes are all counted, some cast by peers frighteningly unaware enough to have googled “Did Joe Biden drop out” on the day of the last presidential election.

I took Pogo’s message to heart, ran with purposeful abandon, paid the hefty toll, was tarred with the broad brush, suffered the sting of defeat, was left with that nagging feeling I had let thousands of people down. But I can still say without hesitation that it’s all worth it. Worth it even should you become the target of cynical condemnation. Worth it because civilized society and the planet that sustains us are worth protecting. Worth it to avoid becoming the enemy.