UPROOTING DEMOCRACY

Will we allow it?

Howard Thurman [Note 1] observed that “If you love somebody, you never give that person up.”

I believe that almost all residents of the USA love this country and propose that if you love this country, you also love, at some level, its citizens.

Those 340 million citizens include those who through their actions/inaction, enabled the government takeover by fascists and self-serving oligarchs. The unleashed harm from those enablers is already being felt as attacks on our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The choices that we previously enjoyed are being dismantled by the fascists with the direct and/or tacit support of GOP public officials. If our views run contrary to the tenets of The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 they are being ignored. Censorship of the news, educational materials, the arts, religious views, as well as intolerance for minority groups is growing.

The Heritage Foundation calls itself a conservative think tank. There is nothing conservative about stripping away the rights that Americans have counted on since 1776. Project 2025 has been developed by intellectuals that spouse ideas far from American values. The mal-elected POTUS has yielded the power of his office to unelected de-facto President Elon Musk and de-facto Vice-President Russell Vought (not J. D. Vance). Those unelected officials hold immense power over our society’s future and are not accountable to the voters.

Russell Vought played a major role in the development of Project 2025 and is now Director of the Office of Management and Budget, an appointment opposed by all non-GOP Senators. Musk and Vought seek to terminate government services that that they do not like; and to summarily eliminate civil servants from federal agencies. Government services and the Earth’s environment will be adversely affected and even irreparably harmed.

Many of the misguided voters who supported the GOP regret their decision. Their actions are causing immense suffering to the vulnerable citizens that will be hurt by the elimination or curtailment of the public programs on which they depend. Also, public servants, after years of dedicated public service, are suffering as they contemplate their impending termination of employment.

Those cruel and irrational actions continue. Yet, as Howard Thurman notes, all humans are deserving of our love. And that is true, even if we detest their actions. From a pragmatic perspective, while our resolve is firm to drive fascists and oligarchs from power, that task will require the cooperation of large numbers of the unwise citizens who voted-in the current regime. We must act wisely, and with compassion in enlisting the support of all Americans to drive the regime from power through peaceful means.

Will fascists and oligarchs uproot democracy? Only if we allow them.

Be resilient as you resist. Keep the flame of liberty burning in your compassionate patriotic hearts.

20250213

[Note 1] https://email.cac.org/t/d-e-sjkdrll-tlkrjkkrtk-yd/