America has fallen victim to “authoritarian tendencies,” the Institute stated in its Global State of Democracy 2021 report.  We have been “knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale,” a direct result of former President Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 elections and his efforts to pressure state election officials into changing vote totals and, lest we forget, the January 6th insurrection that evidence clearly shows, Donald Trump provoked and inflamed.

The report added there were “spillover effects” around the world, an “anti-democratic model followed by political actors in Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar and Peru,” to name a few.  It should come as no surprise that the destruction of our democracy will have a deleterious domino effect throughout the free world.  Talk about giving “aid and comfort to the enemy,” we’ve done this to ourselves, no help needed from foreign adversarial powers, the leaders of which are dancing in the streets while we suffer, struggle and bleed democracy with every passing day.

It is imperative, absolutely essential, that our leaders immediately acknowledge and respond to the most direct and dangerous threat to our republic since WWII.  If they don’t, the loss of our independence, our sovereignty and our democracy, beyond a shadow of a doubt, will trigger worldwide repercussions and consequences.

Make no mistake, Americans can no longer trust or take anything for granted.  Donald Trump (endorsed and aided by the Republican leadership and Party majority) has rendered a previously functional democratic government - impotent.  Approximately two and a half centuries after declaring our independence we have finally witnessed an American citizen proving himself (thus far at least) immune to and above the law.  Law and order (as we conceived it) is essentially an illusion; “checks and balances,” a figment of our collective imaginations; “representative government;” a pipe dream; and our Constitution, simply meaningless dialogue from a bygone era.

If we, the American people, cannot convince our leaders to honor and respect their oath, to put our nation’s well-being and prosperity above party politics and their own self-interest and do the jobs they were elected to do, right now this very day, then we aren’t going to have much of a country left worth defending and the American experiment, that countless numbers of men and women have sacrificed so much blood and treasure for, will be lost forever.

David L. Snell 

Franklin