“There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Adams
When asked what kind of government the founders had created, Benjamin Franklin’s response was “a Republic, if you can keep it.”
We’re a nation divided. It seems never in our lifetime has it been this bad. We can’t even agree on a common set of facts and truths.
Everything we trust has been thrown open for debate. The integrity of institutions, the press, the judiciary, Congress as a co-equal branch, the presidency, security and intelligence services, the electoral process – all the political touchstones of our lives – are being questioned. For some Americans, not only are institutions untrustworthy, they are malevolent, purposely seeking to destroy America from within.
We’ve become less trusting, not just of institutions but of each other. Even events like football games now have to meet a political standard. But this isn’t a game. Or the next episode of a reality TV show. This is real. We are us and we don’t like us very much. We’ve lost our common sense of what it means to be American.
We have choices; we can curl up in a corner and ignore political events around us, we can fuel the flames by allowing others to make our minds up for us, or we can acknowledge the danger and join others in working to fight it. If we seek to identify one common truth, one common problem that everyone, regardless of party or ideology can acknowledge, maybe we can choose to work together to resolve it.
Russian interference in the last election should be that common problem; it’s a huge threat to our democracy. This we know: the essence of democracy is the vote. And while every election is determined by the people who show up, it never occurred to most of us that a foreign country could actively affect information voters use to make decisions. We now understand that you don’t have to physically change votes in order to potentially change outcomes; just change the information provided and let ‘share’ and ‘retweet’ take it from there. And we can agree this interference is destructive to the democratic process. We can also agree that Russia and other foreign entities will, unless stopped, continue their attacks.
Imagine this. Imagine Russia managed to get hundreds of thousands of Americans to innocently collaborate with them against one of our most trusted institutions. How could it be that patriotic Americans would choose to further Russian aims in opposition to our own? According to sources as diverse as Newsweek, Business Insider, ABC News, Rolling Stone, Politifact and Snopes – among many others – “#release the memo” originated as a Russian bot. Within days of posting, the tweet went viral. Americans colluded with Russians, albeit unintentionally, by retweeting the hashtag, thus ignoring warnings by the FBI.
What’s being done to prevent attacks on our democracy in the future? Attorney General Sessions, when asked that question before a Congressional Committee in November, said he was unsure what his own justice department was doing and agreed that was not an acceptable response. Congress passed bipartisan legislation (with only 5 nays out of 535) requiring the implementation of Russian sanctions; the president has yet to sign, saying the threat of sanctions is enough. It’s not. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee authored a 200 page report containing 10 broad recommendations broken down into 41 discrete acts the government could take to push back against Russian interference. It calls for the creation of a ‘high-level interagency fusion cell’ bringing together the CIA, FBI and Pentagon to monitor and thwart future attacks but it takes the president to make this a priority. If Russia can hack elections to the benefit of one party, the next time the other party could be the target. And if Russia can successfully penetrate the electoral system in several states, as just confirmed by Homeland Security, they are also capable of attacking infrastructure, power grids, air traffic control, etc.
Social media must also be held accountable. Bots then and now are responsible for some of the most egregious posts. Facebook and Twitter have all the technology needed to identify fake news and bot posts. They can do this now. So far, they have not.
Contact the White House and demand sanctions be implemented and that they respond to the attack a national priority. Contact your senators, congressmen and social media platforms urging them to respond to these attacks. And vow not to share unverified posts – no matter how fervently you hope the content is true.
Democracy is not a spectator sport; it requires more than voting every two years. And even here, we are grossly deficient. If “did not vote” had been a candidate in 2016, it would have won in a landslide! Benjamin Franklin must still be turning over in his grave.
No democracy in history has lasted longer than 250 years. We are 241 years old. America is in peril and we have an obligation to future generations to fight to assure this great nation, as we have known it, is here for them. For this generation, it’s our turn.
Villager Marsha Shearer is a frequent contributor to Villages-News.com.
