IDAHO: Saving American democracy

Idaho, America and the world are at a crossroad between a future engendered in democracy, or regression to an anti-democratic, oppressive past. Repressive forces are growing everywhere — in the Idaho statehouse, an extremist legislative faction with the cooperation of a weak, complicit governor just criminalized reproductive care, stripped Idaho women of reproductive rights and reduced them to second class citizens.

In Idaho and across America, hard won civil rights are methodically ripped away by a totalitarian segment of the political class determined to distort and diminish democracy, expand and permanently perpetuate their own power, and control and subjugate the populace by voter suppression, disenfranchisement, legalized gerrymandering, and laws empowering politicians to overturn valid elections.

The world watches a despotic Russia invade Ukraine — a sovereign, emergent democracy — in a criminal war of aggression. Ukrainian citizens are murdered, its cities reduced to rubble by a thuggish dictator seeking to restore his mythic lost empire.

Similar despotic impulses have long festered in America’s underbelly. Given new life, weaponizing disinformation and lies, destructive elements now systematically work to dismantle democracy, eliminate our rights and privileges as a free people and establish a quasi-police state not unlike the former Soviet Union.

Too many of us wait silent and passive, while dark, oppressive forces gather. Those few guarding democracy’s front lines aren’t enough to save us. If it’s to survive, democracy’s silent supporters can’t remain disengaged on the sidelines. While we still possess democratic principles, we must gain legions of active political participants fighting as fiercely to preserve and extend democracy as do those seeking its destruction.

CAROLYN F. MATTOON

Hayden