Two Hopeful Snippets January 14, 2025 #1 This Pearl Harbor story by Heather Cox Richardson (6 minutes, if you listen at 1.25X). It concludes: Now, once again, democracy is under attack . . . Donald Trump and his cronies have vowed to replace the nonpartisan civil service with loyalists and to weaponize the Department of Justice and the military against those they perceive as enemies. They have promised to incarcerate and deport millions of immigrants, send federal troops into democratic cities, silence LGBTQ plus Americans, prosecute journalists and their political opponents, and end abortion across the country. They want to put in place an autocracy in which a powerful leader and his chosen loyalists make the rules under which the rest of us must live. Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch? When America came under attack before, people like Doris Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of human equality, and he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the USS Liscombe, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943. It sank within minutes, taking two-thirds of the crew, including Miller, with it. I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the reactionaries will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller. Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller. #2 Republicans won big in the 2024 election, but the streak might not last long: . . . [A] deep dive inside the numbers suggests that while the election results were bad for Democrats, they aren’t quite as awful as they seem. For starters, it’s important to remember that Democrats were fighting an uphill battle this year. Around the globe, in 2024, every single incumbent party in a developed democracy lost vote share. You know the last time that happened? Never. Moreover, while President-elect Donald Trump emerged victorious, his margin of victory, 1.6 points, was the fifth-smallest in the last 100 years. As much as the MAGA world wants to portray his victory as a landslide, it wasn’t. . . . . . . [I]f the last few election cycles tell us anything, political power in America is fleeting. After all, in 2008, Democrats won a governing trifecta … and by 2016, the GOP controlled Congress and the White House. Four years later, the tables were completely turned, and Democrats won back a trifecta … only to lose it to Republicans four years later. Quite simply, it might not be long before the election postmortems are being written about the GOP. BONUS A government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires — 2 minutes. BONUS QUOTE “When Jesus talks about poverty and lifting up the poor, we call it Christianity. When a politician does it, we call it socialism.” — Rev. William Barber