Stand Up for Democracy

Start by saying what it truly is, who is attacking it, and why they are doing so.

Democracy is the evidently-still-radical-after-2500-years idea that the people that make up a society should decide what that society does. It shouldn’t be one guy who makes all the decisions, just because his dad was the one guy before him. It shouldn’t be whoever has the most guns or money. It shouldn’t be whoever yells that God talks to him the loudest.

A Democracy should do its best to communicate facts to the population, offer clear options, hear feedback from as many citizens as it can, and then follow the course chosen by the majority. It may be a radical idea, but it isn’t a complicated one. And yes, I know there are many other factors to consider, from a free press to the rights of the minority, but we need to revisit the basic principle of democratic rule before we worry about the exceptions and conditions.

Because no one comes out and says, “I want to do away with democracy and free elections!” while twirling their black mustache. In America, tyrants always come dressed as patriotic defenders. They take their rotten, evil ideas and pretend they are in the service of American ideals. The super wealthy need to have unlimited means to buy influence because money = speech, and we stand for Free Speech™ right? We need to pass voter suppression laws that target minorities because of all this nonexistent fraud! *Only* the state legislatures can draw legislative districts; the governors, courts, and citizens should have no say. The fact the GOP controls most state legislatures is purely coincidental.

Republicans now have supermajorities in *twenty* states. What are they doing with all this power? In Tennessee, they expelled two Democratic lawmakers for shaming the majority’s inaction on guns. In Idaho, they considered expelling a trans lawmaker for trying to, legally, delay a spiteful, pointless, anti-trans bill. In North Carolina, the Republican legislature, backed by an illegitimate state supreme court that just did a hyper-partisan 180 on everything, wants to gerrymander *half* of the state’s population into irrelevance, and overturn the will of the people by further disenfranchising poor people, urban voters, and ex-felons. In Ohio, where an abortion rights referendum…