Heather Cox Richardson

We give our power to our elected officers in order to enable them to make laws under which we are governed.

And if we withdraw that approval, if we say, no, no, no, you do not represent us, that delegitimizes that government.

And this is one of the reasons, as we started out saying, that Trump is turning to foreign affairs because he has been so delegitimized in the United States of America.

And keeping that pressure up and the illustration of that delegitimization pressures those elected officials to say, hey, if I want to get reelected,

I need to be able to answer to these constituents who are saying, just a freaking second here, get out of these international adventures or whatever your particular issue is.

Because at the end of the day, that's where the leverage in a democracy sits.

One of the things that really, really bothers me in where we are right now are the number of people who sort of say, oh, it's all over.

LOL, America never had a democracy.

Why are you even trying?

And then you turn around and you look at the way we react to events in, say, Iran right now or in Syria when they got rid of Assad.

And you look at the extraordinary support we give to people who are trying to reclaim their voice in their government.

Right.

And I'm like, how about cheering on those people in the United States who are trying to stop the loss of our democracy?

I think it's perfectly legitimate to be afraid.

But that's the place where people like me need to step into the breach.

The resistance to Trump has been, for a resistance movement, unusually old and white.

And that, I think, is actually a very good thing because it provides cover for especially our brown neighbors now, but certainly for Black Americans who are wisely staying out of the public eye on this because they refuse to give the president justification for cracking down on them.

But the thing I would say is that this is not going to get better unless we make it better.

And an awful lot of what the Trump administration is doing and has accomplished is solely on television.

Like they are working really hard to show that they have this extraordinary strength, that they are doing these terrible things and they're making these videos and they're marching people out in handcuffs and so on and so forth.