I’ve been looking at how ailing democracy intersects with other risks. The practice and project of democracy in our republic is essential to the function of a free people. The free and fair election is the core institution on which all others rest. Attacks on elections attack the Constitution and all the rights it upholds. Without democracy, there is no United States of America. Because the U.S. is still the world’s only superpower on whom so many rely, it is our responsibility to keep it secure and stable.
So I’m learning how democracy interacts with our rights and the institutions that advance or protect those rights. I’m trying to understand how paying down the fiscal and climate debt we owe to future generations depends on free elections. I’m discerning how lies and disinformation distort voter’s perceptions. I’m learning how Christian nationalists are working day in and day out to take the minority movement into a minority-rule government that promises to subjugate millions. I’m seeing how the assault on attacks on minorities undermine individual’s voices and votes, that disenfranchisement and discrimination stack on top of each other, disabling whole classes of people.
But it’s my responsibility to understand. In their 2024 Risk Report, the Eurasia Group calls “The United States Versus Itself” the #1 risk in the world today. They write, our “political system is more dysfunctional than that of any other advanced industrial democracy … and in 2024 faces further weakening.” The political state of our nation is part of a broader context of national and global risks, including an accelerating human-caused climate crisis, armed conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere, the seemingly sudden preeminence of artificial intelligence, and the unregulated speech market of social media. The ripple effects of how we manage, participate in, and communicate about our elections and whether and how we accept their results impacts the entire world.
I have no promises about where this will go. But I do promise to fight for democracy.
Peter Walks for Democracy 