BenBraver.org
July 1st was a dark day for democracy. I think we’re all feeling some of the same things–shock, pain, despair. How is this possible? When did we lose control of our country? Has it truly come to this?
The Supreme Court handed down their decision in the case of Trump v. United States yesterday. Trump won; the United States lost. The highest court of the land, the nine greatest jurists America has to offer, has just legalized illegality. It has somehow managed to declare actions that it itself recognizes as crimes to be lawful–as long as they’re done by a powerful enough person. Justice in America has long been a two-tiered system with different results for the poor versus the rich. Now it’s a pyramid scheme with an instance of perfect injustice ruling from the very top.
Consider the irony that this country, born in blood shed to liberate itself from subjugation to kings, has now handed power over to absolute monarchy. 250 years later Mad King George has finally been avenged by a malignant narcissist bringing our freedoms to heel. George lost the colonies by imposing taxation without representation. Trump’s single legislative accomplishment as President was a tax imposed on the majority poor, written by a gerry-mandered congress and signed by a president who did not win the popular vote. Santanyan said that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it–maybe this is why so many Republican Governors are trying to keep our students ignorant of it.
As the brilliant system of checks and balances that our founders devised is getting hacked away piece by piece, most of us can only watch, horrified and helpless, as rights we thought had been permanently secured get stripped away one by one. That’s the feeling I see on the faces of the people I talk to today.
But you need to know that while you very much should be horrified, you are NOT helpless. You are intentionally being made to feel like that, but you are not helpless in feeling helpless. We may be on the path to tyranny but we’re not there yet. Many rights that we took for granted have been taken away, but that was because we took them for granted. Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” and I think we have to admit to ourselves that we shirked this responsibility. We let our guard down and people who hate democracy got put in charge of it.
But that ends now.
Trump and MAGA have woken a sleeping giant. They have alerted the vast number of decent, hard-working people who don’t want a king any more than the American colonists did 250 years ago. Outrage is building among the citizens of this nation who know in their bones that their votes should count and their votes need to be counted, who refuse to let hatred drive their politics and easy lies set their beliefs. Those who believe that anyone working a full-time job deserves to be able to live in a home, feed their family, see a doctor, and send their kids to college are coming together to restore dignity to our country and our countrymen.
We will no longer take our rights for granted. We will not turn in our vote and turn away with blithe trust in the system. We will not be comforted with reassurances that everything will work out, that it will all blow over, that we are over-reacting. We have painfully learned what we closed our eyes to before: what we want for this country, we have to work for. If you want your children to learn the truth in school, even when that makes us uncomfortable–especially when that makes us uncomfortable; if you want women to be able to make their own decisions about their own bodies; if you want a government that puts all of its vast powers towards preventing climate disasters instead of speeding them up–then you have to stand up, you have to get out and do what’s necessary to get these things.
That’s what I realized when I saw my public school students deprived of even the most basic things that could enable them to get a real education and rise above poverty. They were denied books, ordinary microscopes–heck, just enough food so they could concentrate for five minutes on anything other than their rumbling stomachs–while millionaires got more tax breaks. That’s why I am running for State Senate–because I will no longer lay down and let those with money and power take advantage of those without just to make a few dollars or ride a wave of artificially induced rage. I refuse to see politicians hold one more child in poverty while blaming them for not improving their station–not without doing something about it. I refuse to sit by and watch people’s lives and dignity taken for profit.
I am standing up. I demand to count. I will fight.
If you are feeling hopeless and helpless, I am here to tell you that there is a cure. You restore hope by hoping; you overcome the feeling of helplessness by helping people. Help your fellow Americans, help yourself, and help me get elected HERE so we can take back those things that we took for granted.
It is a dark day, I know; I hurt and mourn, but I still have hope. My family taught me that fairness and truth matter, and I still believe in them. They taught me that we have to support each other because we depend on each other, because we are a We and not just a bunch of I’s. If you believe in these things too then come, join me, and we will take America back one vote at a time. There will be more dark days ahead but believe me–we will take it back.