My Fear for Democracy Has a Name
As this chaotic year ends, friends help me stand up to "political despair" and turn my fear into hope
It has become clear to me that Republicans in Congress are not going to lift a pen to save democracy.
Here, too, in our little county we have some MAGAs in office. I wish I could ask them what they want. I think it’s something like a national religion without empathy, with a grotesquely unprincipled man in charge.
In her December 17th Letters from an American post, Heather Cox Richardson wrote,
Autocrats like Orbán and Putin—and budding autocrats like Trump—are building a global movement by fighting back against the expansion of rights to women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people.
For me, accepting this reality over the past eight years has been hard, especially during these last weeks of 2023. I remember a recent day that felt dark to me, as if the light of the future was barely a flicker.
But around that time I heard from two friends who helped me see that what I experienced was the dimming of hope. They cautioned against giving into “political despair”, a term I hadn’t heard before. I felt welcomed into their network of support.
One of these friends shared a New York Times op-ed by Jamelle Bouie that named my feelings and offered a more manageable understanding of what’s going on. Bouie wrote,
Current power grabs by Republicans are meant to gain as much unaccountable political power as possible, and to repress expression of identities and beliefs they object to.
They cultivate political despair.
He went on to say that anyone who cares about the many rights that democracy protects must fight back by working and voting “to overhaul our economic system, political institutions and public life.”
It’s healing to know I can do something about hopeless feelings.
In fact, I’m heartened that the tug-of-war for America’s soul is obvious now. It’s time for everyone to choose a side. Richardson said about her new book, Democracy Awakening,
I hear people being full of despair all the time.
[But] I am much more hopeful now than I was six or seven years ago when there was a clear trend toward authoritarianism and no one was paying attention. Now people have woken up. …
I want to remind people that when America is truly its best, ordinary people stood up, took power into their own hands, and expanded people’s right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government. … [T]hey will do so again.
The truth is our history changes when unremarkable, ordinary people stand up and say no … I’m voting for triumph.
This month many Democratic candidates in our county, and maybe in yours, have stepped up. If you believe in real democracy in America, you can support them now, and vote them into office in November, in the New Year! That’s real hope.
Well said, Deda. Thank you.
Like you, Deda, I do believe the ordinary hard working citizens will rise to the challenge. I have had that faith before, and I have a strong feeling it will happen again.