It’s not easy being just a bit left of center. It’s harder knowing that we could be better, but the powers that be are trying to take us back to when we weren’t.
We were a small agrarian nation when a few bright men attempted to form a government free from despotic rule. You know, no taxation without representation, give me liberty or give me death, voting limited to landowner men who counted some people more important than others, and segregation in a wide swath of the lower states. We’ve seen those days, lived those days, when life was great for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) but not so much for others. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t understand those who do.
Our current dear leader is good at his play-acting. He knows how to create a cult of followers.
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He values
toddies over competence.
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He values
fear over progress.
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He dislikes
science and learning.
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He dislikes
the institutions that hold our democracy together.
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He convinces
people that he is their savior, all the while passing laws that claw back
greatness.
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He ignores
the Constitution and insists that his followers ignore the founding documents.
Our current administration shouts about their support of the working class in one breath and takes away people’s basic needs:
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food from
families who need it.
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medical care
for tens of millions who can’t afford health insurance, and elders in nursing
homes who would be on the street without the government's help.
The administration has a great advantage over those who don’t support it. There is no foil to its outrageous behavior. The Democratic Party has no leadership that can relate to the average citizen.
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It is led by
old fogies who won’t let younger people have a say in policy or message.
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If a citizen
says they are hungry, the party cites chapter and verse of some wonky policy
designed to not offend the smallest cohort of supporters.
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Sometimes
I’m more upset with Democratic leadership than I am with the President. He
couldn’t get away with what he does if they had the _ _ _ __ to stand up to him.
o They are the ones who let Republicans take
over state houses decades ago.
o They are the ones who campaigned on culture
issues that breezed over their constituents, who wanted to know how to reduce
the cost of gas and groceries.
o They are the ones who created so many
regulations that middle-class families can’t afford to buy a house.
o They lack a coherent message for regular folks.
Activist pro-democracy groups would have us all go into the streets regularly to protest the dismantling of our democracy. In June, they convinced five million people in eighteen hundred cities to join a No King uprising. Nothing changed. Last month, they called for another protest that drew far fewer opponents of the autocracy.
Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, posits that it is small steps unnoticed that lead to a tipping point. I’m convinced that we didn’t notice when the nation hit the tipping point. It happened while we were thinking about something else.
When did we hit bottom?
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Was it when
we decided to let the administration export immigrants to foreign jails?
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Was it when
we said that due process didn’t apply to non-citizens?
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Was it when
we thought it was ok for an administration to tell a university which
professors to hire and which to not hire?
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Was it when
we decided that we shouldn’t instruct students about anything in our history that might make
them uncomfortable?
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Was it when
we accepted the idea that the Department of Justice and the FBI should no longer be nonpartisan institutions?
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Was it when
we didn’t protest masked goon squads snatching citizens off the streets because
they didn’t look like WASPs?
When did we reach the tipping point? How long ago?
If we are still a democracy, it's hanging by a
thread. We are certainly not the most democratic country in the world by a long shot. Some international surveys list us as the fifteenth most democratic
country. The well-respected Economist Democracy Index doesn’t list the U.S. in
its list of the top ten democratic countries. It ranks us as a flawed democracy,
but not yet as an autocracy.
Some pundits tell us to forget all this talk about our Constitution and preserving our institutions and talk about kitchen-table issues. It will help win elections. I agree, but I wonder if lower food prices and lower gas prices will make up for the loss of our democracy. Surely not.
What then are we to do?
Only concerted action will bring a stop to the un-American activities of this administration. We need to encourage more people to take to the streets to demand restoration of healthcare for everyone, elimination of the tariff taxes that will increase prices on nearly everything at the store. We need to demand that the administration follow the Constitution – obey the courts, use due process before incarcerating immigrants and citizens, campaign for and elect young candidates for positions at the local level, the state and national levels, use the courts to end illegal censorship, to stop the government from telling the universities who to hire, what to teach, and how to teach it. Insist that we reinstate the government workers illegally fired by the DOGE movement. Repeal most of the Big Beautifuls Bill – it is not beautiful, it's ugly, and it is anti-American in its purpose and its effects.
It is time to restore our democracy before it is irretrievable.
