Written by Dylan Doyle, Contributing writer
I will be frank: in recent months, the ruling party in our nation has poisoned our body politic.
You are tired of hearing about it. You are burnt out on the 24-hour news cycle which is always covering a new or evolving scandal. You want to retreat into your own little social bubble of puppy pictures and inspirational memes and ignore the happenings of the world.
I get it. I do, too. But this is an urge we must all resist. What we allow will continue, and what continues will escalate.
Apolitical acquiescence to the status quo has never changed anything, and it never will. After an eternity of an election cycle, and what seemed to be the longest year in history, our nation’s true challenges are only just beginning.
Senior White House aides cannot pass an FBI background check because of their histories of domestic abuse. Our president is obstructing justice in real time, coordinating with his cronies in the legislature to smear our law enforcement institutions. Republicans in Congress ignored public opinion and basic decency and rammed through a tax bill amounting to the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich this country has ever seen.
What we allow will continue, and what continues will escalate.
But there is hope because we are now well into 2018, a midterm election year.
It has become obvious that the GOP-controlled Congress will do nothing to defend our constitutional rights or democratic norms from the likes of President Donald Trump. In fact, they seem to have consumed the Kool-Aid and are on board with selling our future for tax cuts.
Trump’s messy foreign policy puts innocent people at risk every day. His efforts to defang the special counsel investigation into his campaign already show his unfitness for office. And thanks to leaks from inside his administration, we now know our president doesn’t even bother to read his daily briefing, preferring to get his news from “Fox and Friends.”
What we allow will continue, and what continues will escalate. We cannot count on our leaders to protect us from these threats. They, too, have proven their unfitness for office.
It’s high time they leave.
So, what can you do? Start by registering to vote. There are house of representatives elections happening in Kentucky and across the country this year, as well as numerous local, state and federal level elections.
Our democratic republic only works because we have the right to vote and, by extension, the ability to hold our leaders accountable for their actions when they go against the will and wellbeing of the people.
Because we can vote, we do not have to allow this kleptocracy to continue. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, evil wins when good people do nothing – it only wins when we allow it to win.
