‘Your vote is your voice, and your voice can change the world’
So says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University and author of the New York Times best-seller “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”
Hungary’s election on Sunday, in which strongman Viktor Orban conceded defeat, “is is no small thing, given that losing an election and then refusing to leave office, declaring that the election results were marred by fraud, has been a favorite autocrat trick,” Ben-Ghiat says on Substack.
“Hungary is the latest country to vote out an individual who showed with his thieving and lying that he did not respect the people,” she says.
“This is why we never give up on elections. This is why we must always have confidence that things can change — because we bring about that change with our votes.”
Ben-Ghiat’s entire post is worth reading, but let’s turn here to Heather Cox Richardson.
In her post this morning, Richardson draws a through line in the United States from the 1850s, 1890s, 1920s, and 2000s, when “wealthy people had come around to the idea that society worked best if a few wealthy men ran everything.”
”When Trump was elected, the U.S. was at the place where wealth had concentrated among the top 1 percent, Republican politicians denigrated their opponents as un-American ‘takers’ and celebrated economic leaders as ‘makers,’ and the process of skewing the vote through gerrymandering and voter suppression was well underway,” she says.
She quotes Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who had said, “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”
But, Richardson says, “Just as there is a blueprint for destroying democracy, there is also one for rebuilding it.”
She quotes New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who told the delegates to the Democratic National Convention in 1932: “Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose. Today we shall have come through a period of loose thinking, descending morals, an era of selfishness, among individual men and women and among Nations … “
In his own post this morning, Robert Reich tells us Americans, “I believe in you. I believe in your values. In your thoughtfulness. In your determination to leave this nation and this world a better place than it was before Trump.”
”Your active role can be phoning your senators and representatives and giving them more backbone in fighting Trump” he says. “Protecting vulnerable members of our communities from him and his agents. Marching, demonstrating. Getting out the vote.”
You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer
Senate Majority Leader John Thune
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