I feel like we’re in a moment in history that is similar to Gandalf’s “So do all who live in such times” speech.
It isn’t that everything you have written isn’t completely correct, but that the context of our time make these values surplus to the needs and exigencies of the political situation we find ourselves in today. People who don’t perceive Trump’s behavior and policies and the GOP’s enabling / encouraging that behavior don’t perceive Trump and the GOP to be an existential threat to Democracy, so they feel free to do whatever they want, as if everything is still just fine.
That’s the hardest thing we’re fighting against today - inertia. The belief - the faith - that everything is, really, deep down, just a-ok, that sure, maybe Trump has said some off-color things, but still, you know, AOC has also said some off-color things as well! Business as usual guys! Nothing to see here.
And not, you know, the Executive branch and the GOP publicly declaring their political opposition to be illegitimate, publicly denying the helpful rigging of elections by foreign powers on their behalf and doing everything they can to prevent shoring up our election system tp prevent it, publicly ignoring all kinds of policy disasters the President has made and blaming the opposition for the very things they are doing, publicly supporting a President whose entire foreign policy platform seems to be making strategic deals that help his companies regardless of the cost to our standing and the ideals we supposedly believe in, with a party that literally has documents and meetings about rigging elections through the grossest gerrymandering they can get away with, and quite probably is also rigging elections directly, though to what extent and how widespread is impossible to say.
If everything is just a-ok, and there’s not really a crisis, and it’s just politics as usual, and what’s the difference between one party and another party anyway? Maybe voting your flavor makes sense. Effectively doing this today means, imo, that such voters don’t understand the situation, or don’t really care, or have such an overlapping personal alignment with what Trump is actually doing they’d prefer to tacitly agree with it and turn their heads away from clear understanding. That’s after all literally what the GOP politicians are doing today, refusing to read or even hear evidence contrary to their political priors. And that’s probably rooted in a very inertial belief in the day-to-day mundanity and regularity of the world in their immediate vicinity. The sun rises, the sun sets, politicians gunna politician, and somehow it all works out in the end.
But that’s not how it works out in the end. That’s how without anyone noticing the lamps go out across America and how they won’t be lit again in your time. Democracy isn’t just about getting what you want but about being the lamplighters your country needs.