Did we forget our democracy is still under threat?

We are, yet again, at a moment of democratic peril. Just because the siege of the Capitol on January 6 ultimately failed in its goal of overturning a free and fair election doesn’t mean the danger has passed. Our freedom and self-government are under threat from domestic authoritarian cults in tacit—if not enthusiastic—alliance with foreign despots who desire that the world’s oldest democracy succumb to corrupt populist autocracy. Not quite four months ago, more than 170 members of Congress objected to counting the Electoral Votes of a free and fair election. Perhaps some of them are dim enough or deluded enough to believe that the votes were illegitimate. But if anything, that’s the best-case scenario. It’s even scarier that some members of this group knew that there was no legitimate reason to object to counting the votes, but voted to overturn the election anyway. And yet, 12 weeks later, we’re debating corporate tax rates, Dr. Seuss, and trans bathroom access, like nothing ever happened. American democracy is under attack. And not in a metaphorical, or a philosophical, or a spiritual sense. Our democracy is under attack, for real, by a large portion of a major political party which seeks to utterly transform the relationship between the government and the governed.