What am I doing to support democracy?

 

Terre Haute Tribune Star, March 7, 2026

Black History Month ends tomorrow, February 28. Thanks to all in the Wabash Valley who participated in the excellent programs and actions put forward this year.

But African American history is EVERY month. This is because African American history is, like so many seemingly discrete elements from the American story of the past, important in weight and significance.

Trump and Republicans attempt to locate African Americans on plantations, in colonized ghettos, as part of cherry-picked and doctored statistics on crime. These slurs will only work politically on voters deeply mired in the ignorance of racist thought.

Demonizing your political opponents, African Americans, immigrants, "libs" is an old strategy. It was once used on German, Irish and Italian Americans. It was used on women for over a century. Jews have faced it in varied forms for centuries. It was (and is) used against left-leaning progressives.

Trump and his lackeys, local, state and national, have only the lies of prejudice, the fears aroused by the illegal violence of ICE, and restrictive voting legislation to bolster their policies of greed and control.

We may as a nation be slipping into an era of authoritarianism similar to that of Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, and yes, even Hitler's Germany. These dictators had the support of a portion of their nation's population. The majority failed to step up.

Today, far too many of us ignore the writing on prison walls. We find tax codes too difficult to sort out as billionaires reap massive benefits from Trump and Republican self-serving legislative fixes. Money from the top of the income pyramid pours into right-wing Political Action Committees and the coffers of robot-like Trump candidates.

Americans pay their taxes once a year. A significant number bother to vote even less often. Attention spans shrink. Democracy, however, is an every day job deserving, requiring, commitment.

It is a truism that, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men [and women] do nothing." Shouldn't we all be asking ourselves, "What am I doing to support democracy?"