Stand Up for Democracy
Our nation is in serious trouble. I roll my eyes whenever I hear someone say that if such-and-such happens we’ll be in a real pickle. We are way past pickle. I don’t even know what to call this stage, but I have felt the stomach-jolt of a freefall as we plummet from the white fluffy clouds of our former Democratic Republic into the black skies of a deadly fascist storm.
What can be worse than the rights that we’ve already lost? It began several years back when the 59-year-old Voters Right Act practically died. There was a specification in the Act that was eliminated: Jurisdictions that had histories of voter suppression were required to obtain “preclearance” before they finalized any changes in voting policies. The decision to let that go really took the teeth out of the bill.
Then came the shock of Roe, overturned. At the end of their term in June 2022, the Supreme Court justices revealed that they really were reversing a decision made almost 50 years previously. We marched in disbelief. Some of us marched in our 20s, and now we have to march in our 70s. It has been a struggle.
The Red Don’t Listen
In Ohio, the red, Republican-leaning state in which I live, the average of the last several national elections (president and a senator, representative, or governor) stands at around 55 percent Republicans to 44 percent Democrats. When Ohio’s legislators seemed bent on instituting a strict anti-choice law, several groups got together and wrote an initiative to enshrine the right to choose into the Ohio State Constitution.
It wasn’t easy. We had to gather so many signatures because we knew they would eliminate each one they possibly could. They required us to change some of the language when we submitted the initiative. We had the vote scheduled for November and then the legislators announced a special election in August. The bill to be voted upon would require a successful initiative to pass by at least 59 percent of the vote, rather than the “majority” of 51 percent. We knew their bill was intended to sink our bill; our bill was unlikely to pass at that percentage. It was the Republicans’ way of stymieing any meaningful change if our initiative passed.
Ohio Democrats worked hard and shut down the referendum on the special election that required a 59 percent win. And then in November our initiative passed. The vote total proved that women of all parties favored it. It was a time of joy not only that we had protected women’s rights but that we had beat the odds against us.
And now, with the language from our initiative protecting our rights forever in the Ohio State Constitution, we have come to realize just how much the Republicans despise the Democrats. The Republicans are processing legislation that would overturn abortion!
We cannot let it matter that on July 3, Trump said he hates Democrats. The Republicans just don’t get it that their job is to vote the way that the citizens want. There are plenty of polls out there, and it’s easy to assemble a wide range of options that will meet at least a simple majority of voters’ preferences. There are qualified, certified, licensed polling organizations that provide information about where people stand on an issue. In addition, legislators track opinions expressed by citizens who write, call, or email them. So they know what the people want.
These days, Republican politicians just do not care what people want.
We cannot count on Republicans to avert any of President Trump’s less desirable actions. For example, they are not “permitted,” or so they say, to oversee how things are running at Alligator Alcatraz, which is America’s latest concentration camp. Democratic legislators who got a rushed 30-minute tour said it seemed infested with mosquitoes and reportedly there were worms in the food.
The ICE Force is now the largest police force in the country, larger than the FBI. Its enforcers, or whatever you call them, have arrested only six percent of the criminal alien murderers that Trump warned us about. Of those arrested and thrown into Alligator Auschwitz, only one-third of them have committed any crime. Some of them are Americans. Children have been shackled. The ICE cops have been videoed by people who felt threatened, and the ICE cops generally move with ominously threatening, jittery moves, as if they will suddenly reach out and snatch the person who is taping them. They wear masks and body armor and carry guns. Right now, they’re ostensibly coming for unlawful immigrants—but they’re taking many more people than that. And soon, they may start to just haul off citizens and put them in those places.
Congress has also failed to control Trump financially. Around August 1 he will start his tariffs again. Hide your money now.
Nobody bats an eye anymore with the full financial advantage that Trump takes from his presidency. He took the emoluments clause and bent it and threw it out of the window. And now the president, a former television reality game show host, and not a Constitutional scholar, wants to change how citizenship is determined.
The real kick in the butt about this loss of democracy is that we are paying for it. The government still receives our tax money. We pay for the soldiers, and the president turned them against the people of Los Angeles. If he did it there, he’ll do it elsewhere.
The Republicans have reduced the goods and services that we receive. And we received them because we pay for them. We pay through our local, county, or state taxes, but they are all less than the federal taxes we pay. We pay real estate taxes for our properties. The Republicans have no right to take away the goods and services that we pay for and use that money to give themselves larger tax refunds.
Over a trillion dollars’ worth of health insurance will go away, and millions of people will go without insurance. People will gradually become more sickly, because minor illnesses will go untreated and could contribute to more significant illnesses. Trump is setting high tariffs on pharmaceutical companies so we will pay more for drugs, not less, as Biden had initiated. Physicians will lose their client base and close offices. Hospitals will close. And then the effect will ripple out into the community, because the people who worked at those hospitals will not go out to dinner very often, or buy any of those little extras. Things will tighten up everywhere.
At first, I thought that holding recall elections of Republican legislators would solve the problem. United States Senators and Representatives cannot be recalled. In 18 states, the state officials can be recalled. If your state is among those 18 and you have a Republican legislator, it may be worth your while to get a recall petition going. They fall into three categories:
In seven states, a recall election is held simultaneously with an election for the replacement in Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota and Wisconsin.
In five states, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota and Rhode Island, the recall election is followed by the new election.
In eight states, the replacement for the recalled person is appointed. Those states are Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.
Ballotpedia.com has a trove of information. If you are wondering whether you would benefit, answer this question: Is your state gerrymandered? If so, do it. Get rid of the legislators that ignore what the people want.
Part of our pickle involves the Supreme Court judges. No court has ever so generously sided with a president who had overturned so many conventional processes in our government. Three of them were appointed by him, and two of them received lavish gifts from the wealthy old conservatives belonging to so-called think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society.
In the end, it’s up to us to make it clear to the legislators that this government is for the people. It’s in our Declaration of Independence that we can change the government if it does not suit the people’s needs: Besides the name Peter Thiel, which everyone recalls, the other names to guard against include Russell Vought who is, in fact, working in the Office of Management and Budget. Kevin Roberts is president of Heritage, which published Project 2025. There are Harlan Crowe and Leonard Leo (Federalist Society) and more. A man named Curtis Yarvin preaches a philosophy to them, including his belief that “Americans must lose their phobia of dictators.”
--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. —Declaration of Independence
Yarvin tells others that our form of government has never worked. Yet we became the strongest, richest nation in the world, so I call him out for being wrong. Now it’s up to us to free ourselves of these circumstances. We are horrified by the change that’s already taken place. People do not realize what we have lost.
So, what will it take to get their attention?
Our rallies have caught the world’s attention. People everywhere realize that there is no need to make America great again because we are already great.
We could go on strike. It would probably take 3.5 percent of our workforce striking in order to make Republicans realize that they cannot live high based on our tax contributions.
Yes, the wealthy say that they pay more in taxes and so they now deserve tax breaks. But do they pay those taxes, or do they find large loopholes to reduce the percentage that they pay? They run large corporations, but their work does not extend to the nitty-gritty elements of our nation’s infrastructure. We are the ones who built the streets and sidewalks. We are the ones who unload the trucks and stock the store shelves and bag up groceries. We are the workers who clean the floors of hospitals and office complexes. From our communities we provide police, firefighters, and paramedics. We take out the trash. And so the wealthy who live on our backs, who could not operate their businesses without our many services, rightfully should pay more taxes. The people who fully enjoy the largesse of a community should be proud to subsidize the very generosity that makes us Americans.
But they will never see us as people.