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America's Survival Depends on a Robust Democracy

Writer's picture: Reilly NeillReilly Neill



— January 21, 2025 —


America's survival depends on a robust democracy built by We The People.


The new president is flooding the airwaves with one outrageous executive order or appointment after another. The Senate will vet appointees. Executive orders will be tested in the U.S. courts and Congress.


We will see if the system holds.


How can anyone know if this president is even telling the truth? The small, wealthy handful of people who control and profit off nearly everything we see sat second-row at his inauguration, legitimizing his rhetoric.


After receiving less than 50% of the popular vote across the country, the new executive branch is rage farming to provoke engagement with viewers already turned off by the message. It's working.


People in America actually have it pretty good right now. People in America have been enslaved. They've lived lifetimes in Indian Boarding Schools, dying without basic rights. People lived through the permanent third-class citizenship in Jim Crow America.


We should have been talking about MLK Jr. all day yesterday.


Martin Luther King, Jr. stood up for second and third class citizens in defacto social systems embedded with ignorance.


He held a mirror up and said, "This is who we are but this is not who we should be."


We can do better. We must.


Trump likes systems of hierarchy. Democrats fundamentally reject racial or gender hierarchies in this country.


Every American, every Montanan is equal to one another with certain unalienable rights.


The oligarchs surrounding Trump celebrate caste systems built on wealth and dominance over social communications. They see themselves as superior, much like the defenders of Jim Crow once did.


In Trump’s vision and rhetoric, the echoes of past eras resurface, where unchecked power and conquest define leadership.


Over 125 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt was fulfilling Manifest Destiny by charging up San Juan Hill in Cuba. Our country has come light years since the Spanish-American War. It's 2025. We're not naked imperialists. We respect each other as we do our global neighbors.


Trump promises to be an expansionist president. 


Expansionism is taking other countries by force. This is the action of an imperialist dictator. Do we want to be like Putin? Do we want to destabilize a world filled with nuclear weapons?


What Putin did in invading Ukraine makes the world a more dangerous place.


As Americans and Montanans, we say no to empire, no to conquest, no to social hierarchy and no to institutionalized prejudice. This is not what Montana stands for.


I promise to stand up for democracy and spread the message of American strength, that strength lies in honoring the Constitution, respecting each other, and working together.


We will not be ashamed of the reflection in our mirror.

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