It’s Up to Diverse Citizens to Help Stop Making It Easy for Bullies to Keep Winning

Democracy is not likely to survive in a nation where those with power continue to promote policies that disenfranchise the masses. This has less to do with partisan biases. This is about recognizing reality through patterns of thinking, behavior and actions that provide clarity about where people stand on various issues. Trump is traumatizing. Republicans are corrupt. Trying to dispute these facts is like debating whether water is wet. The evidence is clear that one can drown in too much liquid, just as a country can disintegrate under the weight of extreme chaos and disorder that becomes normalized rather than regarded as a serious problem requiring timely and effective solutions. Democrats are not perfect, but they offer some degree of decency that can be harnessed if American citizens take seriously their role to make a difference. This crucial period with the elections on Nov. 6 can serve as a building block for renewal of civility to make movement toward collective progress possible. It offers opportunity to impose consequences by limiting the power of bullies to keep inflicting harm in political office.

As a young woman in my early 20s during the 1980s, I was like a lot of people who preferred to avoid unnecessary conflict. I would strive to find relatively peaceful solutions rather than keep…