Banning Democracy…
A book, a speech, a war: What do these three things have in common?
Three months ago, the School Board in McMinn County, Tennessee, banned Maus, the Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman. It depicts the horrors of the Holocaust through the experiences of Spiegelman’s father, using the metaphor of cats to represent Hitler’s Nazis and mice to represent the six million Jews whom they systematically murdered on his orders. Maus is not only a personal memoir about the immorality of anti-Semitism, it is a warning about the rise of autocracy.
Three weeks ago, on March 1st, the President of the United States delivered his first State of the Union address. Within the first minutes of his speech he avowed America’s: “…unwavering resolve that freedom will always triumph over tyranny.” President Biden was referencing Ukraine’s heroic efforts to defend its democracy against Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked, illegal invasion and murderous attempt to destroy Ukraine and force it back under Russia’s autocratic rule.
Will freedom triumph over tyranny? It is a chilling question, which we are watching unfold in real time. Not only in Ukraine, but here at home.
Since the January 6, 2021, insurrection, 14 states have passed laws allowing their legislatures to interfere with election administration and to void or change unwanted results. Similar bills are on the dockets in more than 25 other states. In addition, voter suppression tactics are rampant including reducing the number of voting precincts, thwarting mail-in voting, and in three states, making it a crime to distribute water to those waiting in line to vote.
Across the country, local school boards are frantically banning books. Such actions backfire because they create a stampede to buy those very books. For example, Maus jumped to number one on best-seller lists within days of the McMinn County ruling. But book banning is not the primary objective.
For those who vote to change election laws and ban books, the purpose is to control the message, to hijack the outcome, to define what is true, and to impose alternative truths on our democracy and our children. There is no such thing as alternative truth. There is only one truth. People may interpret the truth through their own perspective, but the facts are the facts for us all.
These state laws and local school board rulings do not sanction deliberately bombing maternity wards, children’s schools, bread lines, and people’s homes (all of which Putin has ordered be done in Ukraine), but they legalize the stealthy destruction of democracy all the same.
How did we come to this? The answer is fear. Fear of losing what defines us. Fear of the unknown. Fear of those we don’t know or understand. Fear of those who are different from us. Fear of starting an uncomfortable conversation we might not want to finish. Many uncomfortable conversations.
Fear is not one-sided. We are all afraid. Fear of The Other has brought us to a place of division, resentment, and a stubborn intention to stand opposed rather than side by side. This is dangerous. It does not have to be this way.
If we are afraid of each other, let’s say so and talk about why. If we resent each other, let’s say that, too, and discuss how to move forward. Let’s share a meal, a joke, argue about sports and music, share our hopes for our kids, and see each other as people. Ordinary people. It takes so much energy to hate. Why not use the force of that energy to do something worthwhile for all of us? We have to begin to trust each other. It will take all of us to do this.
What we are witnessing in Putin’s war on Ukraine is not unlike what we are experiencing here: A cruel, brutish, and deliberate attempt to take-down democracy by any means, at any cost. It starts with an insurrection, continues with banning one book here, another there; moves on to state laws endorsing voter suppression; and ends with those in power overturning honest elections and the people’s will to impose and enforce their own.
This is not what we want for our children. Yet this is the war we face: not from without, but within. If we persist in fear and hate of each other; if we refuse to listen, talk, and learn from each other; if we do not have each other’s backs, we will be complicit in banning and shredding democracy. Then, there may not be enough mouse holes in which to hide.
We stand with Ukraine…
…to defend democracy
“Divided States of America”, and other works by artist Mary N. Hurwitz, can be viewed on https://marynhurwitz.com/section/510875-Political.html