A Liberal Dose, July 11, 2025 "You're All About to Lose a Lot of Valuable Services"

 

A Liberal Dose

“You’re All About to Lose a Lot of Valuable Services”

Troy D. Smith

 

Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” has been passed and signed into law. Surveys show it to be an extremely unpopular bill -except, I guess, among the roughly 800 billionaires in America, of whom 33 make a billion or more a year- because of the massive tax breaks in it for them. Those are the folks Donald Trump works for, and respects… not the working class and middle class in America, including his own followers. The “bottom” sixty percent of Americans will wind up paying roughly the same amount, or -the lower you get in that group -significantly more. Meanwhile, the deficit -which Republicans claim must be brought down every time a Democrat is in the White House -will go up by over three trillion dollars. (By the way, over the last half-century, the deficit has always gone UP under Republican presidents, and DOWN under Democrats. Look it up.)

However, the Trump administration has brought down some expenses. Through all the mass firings of government workers Elon’s college-aged DOGE wonder boys have made, for starters. And we’ve seen the effects. In addition to killing Meals on Wheels, Americorps, and Head Start, we have seen the gutting of PUBLIC parks (which Trump now wants to charge admission to enter), the Federal Aviation Administration, leading to skeleton crews of air traffic controllers and to a huge upsurge in delays and crashes, and medical research (by the way, Trump has ordered a halt on all research into sickle cell anemia, a disease that is closely associated with the African American community, because of “DEI”).

Oh… and the cuts have severely hamstrung  NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which oversees the National Weather Service. When they started doing that, right after the inauguration, I warned in this column that there were about to be a lot more weather-related fatalities once the government’s ability to track storms and floods has been hampered, as well as their ability to issue timely warnings and coordinate responses. Trump supporters have been crying out loudly that those cuts had nothing to do with the results of the terrible Texas flood that killed over a hundred people last week. But here are some facts about the region that flooded: the National Weather Services in San Angelo was missing a senior hydrologist, a staff forecaster, and a meteorologist. The San Antonio office was also missing a meteorologist, with a warning coordination specialty (theirs took Elon’s early retirement offer) as well as a science offer. All told, twice as many unfilled positions as they normally have. Did that cause the flood? No. But it sure as heck didn’t help in efforts to mitigate the damage and save lives.

Remember how, on the campaign trail, Trump promised up and down that he would never touch Medicaid? Well, his new Big Beautiful Bill, which I guess they’ll now rename the Large Lovely Law, cuts ONE TRILLION DOLLARS from Medicaid, which will result in eleven million people losing their health insurance (and a lot of them dying). Well, after all, as Republican  Joni Ernst said, “We are all going to die”. And as Mitch McConnell said, “They’ll get over it.” “To heck with those lazy poor people,” you might say. Except… eleven million people unable to go to the hospital will have dire consequences for hospitals, especially rural ones, who get a large percentage of their money from Medicaid. Already, the only hospitals in Sparta and Smithville are on the list of about a dozen statewide that are expected to have to close down as a result of this law. Fact is, in the past few years several rural hospitals have closed, including a couple in our region… because our state’s Republican politicians refused to accept the federal government’s offer to expand Medicaid, because they think Medicaid is “socialist”. (Side note: remember that viral clip of the elderly Republican lady in 2008 saying “That socialist Obama… better keeps his hands off my Medicaid!”)

Well, you may say, “I always go to the Cookeville hospital anyway.” Guess what -everyone in Sparta and Smithville will be going to Cookeville now, which will overwhelm them… can you imagine the wait times? Or you might say “I’m not on Medicaid, I’m on Tenncare (or my mom is, or my nana).” Guess what. TENNCARE IS MEDICAID.

But I guess it’s okay, because under this new law billionaires can count the entire cost of their private jets off on their taxes now. And Trump can hire 10,000 more ICE agents (they probably get their masks in bulk), and maybe toss in a few alligators to eat immigrants.

Remember when Project 2025 leaked and Trump claimed he had never even heard of it, and had no intention of doing the things in it? And every time I brought it up, people accused me of spreading fake news, because Trump said he wasn’t going to do it? And how I kept saying “Trump lies constantly”? Everything that has been done the last six months is from the Project 2025 playbook.

Donald Trump is not a salesman, he is a con artist, and always has been. He has no respect, compassion, or even interest in the middle and working class, whom he views only as rubes to be cheated. He led you on, he lied to you, he conned you, into voting him into office… and now he has no use for you, and he is going to fleece you like a three-legged sheep. And I haven’t even mentioned (this week!) the havoc he is wreaking on the economy.

By the way, the very WORST parts of the new law are designed not to go into effect until after the midterm elections, so voters won’t notice they’ve been conned. Look into it.

No one should be embarrassed over being conned by a master. But you should not fall for the same tricks over and over again. Get out there in the midterm elections and make your vote count.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, July 4, 2025 "A Country Founded on Resistance to Violent Oppression"

 

A Liberal Dose

A Country Founded on Resistance to Violent Oppression

Troy D. Smith

 

Four-and-a-half years ago, at their idol’s behest and encouragement, MAGA extremists stormed the U.S. Capitol and assaulted police officers, then desecrated the building, among other actions smearing the walls with feces. Scores of police were injured. People died. Vice-President Pence ran for his life, as the mob had erected a scaffold and said they were going to hang him. All while Donald Trump watched on TV and delayed action to stop them. The footage of those attacks is chilling. Hundreds of the rioters were eventually arrested, and some were convicted of conspiracy and sedition. It was one of the lowest days in our national history.

And one of the first things Trump did when he got back in office was pardon them all.

The month after that January 6, I began writing this column. From the outset, I have been warning readers about the dangers of violent rhetoric, a tactic that Trump uses constantly to motivate his followers. Such incendiary language can cause unstable people to act on it, or -as on January 6 -cause ordinarily stable people to be swept along in a violent mob.

Since then, in addition to the many violent racially-motivated hate crimes (which have skyrocketed since Trump went into politics), there has been a steady drumbeat of violence by MAGA extremists. A guy broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house and almost beat her husband to death with a hammer. A guy in Minnesota went on a fatal shooting spree targeting Democratic legislators. While there have also been violent episodes on the other side, they are dwarfed in comparison -despite the fact that conservative media always immediately tries to paint the attackers (as in both the above cases) as liberals. Heck, two people have tried to assassinate Trump, and both of them were his former supporters, not left-wingers. Meanwhile. anti-Trump protesters causing property damage is painted as the very height of violence -which shows that some people value their property over lives.

This has been Trump’s tactic from the beginning. In his first campaign, he encouraged people at his rallies to beat up protesters, for police to rough them up, and tried to get his military to shoot protesters in the legs. Those latter two examples represent something beyond incendiary rhetoric aimed at his supporters -it is the literal use of force by the government to suppress or punish dissent.

And what have we seen, six months into his term? Every time you turn on the television, you see Democrats or other anti-Trump activists being arrested, usually very roughly, for the flimsiest of reasons. Often just for asking questions or for speaking aloud. Democratic Congress members have been arrested for trespassing when they exercised their right as lawmakers to inspect ICE detention facilities. Members of Congress have been arrested at a Homeland Security press briefing for asking questions, and charged with assault. The New York City Comptroller (and mayoral candidate) was arrested while escorting a defendant out of a court hearing, for demanding to see the ID of the masked ICE agents, also accused of assault (the whole thing is on video). Around the country, ordinary citizens have been zip-tied and carried out of town hall meetings for asking questions or directing statements at Republican politicians.

This is not even accounting for ICE agents hiding their identities behind masks and bearing no identifying insignia grabbing people off the street -in several cases, U.S. citizens who committed no crime other than being Latino. Or for Trump mobilizing the National Guard and the Marines for a “riot” in a tiny section of one neighborhood of Los Angeles, or for the many cases (on video!) of local police there deliberately and with no provocation shooting rubber bullets at reporters just standing there on camera doing their job. Or for the many immigrants being grabbed off the street, thrown into jail, and deported, with no hearing or due process whatsoever.

In Cookeville this past Monday, members of the local chapter of Young Democrats attended a county commission meeting to address their concerns about the county sheriff there coordinating with ICE when he has stated publicly that he is not. After the meeting concluded, the VP of Putnam County Young Democrats approached one of the county commissioners to ask a question -and he was grabbed by deputies, wrestled into another room, and then sent to jail. His crime? According to deputies, “walking too fast” when he approached the commissioner.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL. At least not in the United States. It is very, very normal in authoritarian, fascist countries, which we are in danger of rapidly turning into.

Many of y’all are going to be grilling in the backyard this weekend, wearing Uncle Sam hats and singing along to that 1980s song that goes “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” Just two months after doing the same thing on Memorial Day, which is supposed to be a day for honoring those who have given their lives to preserve that freedom. Well, don’t forget what our county was founded on -249 years ago TODAY. Opposition to a tyrannical, despotic king, whose soldiers regularly arrested people without due process, imprisoned them in foreign countries, and shot at protesters.

I AM proud to be an American. While I openly and readily recognize all my country’s flaws and failings, in the past and today, I am proud of what it is MEANT to be, what it SHOULD be, what it COULD be.

And people, this ain’t it. Y’all need to wake up and look around. It is slipping away from us.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, June 27, 2025 "Trump Supporters -Is This What You Voted For?"

 

A Liberal Dose

“Trump Supporters -Is This What You Voted For?”

Troy D. Smith

 

I know that many of those who read this weekly column are aligned with me politically -but not everyone. Some might be more in the middle, or significantly right of center. Others, of course, are way right of center, and some of those folks read my thoughts to give themselves something to cuss about. Wherever you fit on that spectrum, I am aiming this week’s column on those who voted for Donald Trump -especially those who are conservative but not necessarily full-tilt MAGA.

Now, if you’ve ever read my column at all, you know how I feel about Donald Trump. I think he is a racist, sexist, immoral, corrupt, greedy, dishonest, not-too-bright, lazy, self-centered, elitist, criminal, serial sexual abuser who is sliding into dementia. If you voted for him, you probably either believe none of that is true, or you believe some of it is kind of true but mostly exaggerated, or you believe it is probably mostly true but you don’t care because you like other things about him. In any of those cases, it does me no good to hammer home to you why I believe those things. So instead I’m going to talk about some other things, many of them related to his “one big beautiful bill.”

This bill is going to add three trillion dollars to the national debt. Is that what you voted for?

It is going to give massive tax breaks to billionaires, who already pay far less than their share. In fact, the bill has been described as the biggest transfer of wealth upward in American history… it will result in the top 10% making (even more) of a killing, while the bottom 10% will have even less than now- while those in the middle will have only negligible gains at best, and may end up paying more.

Is that what you voted for?

It will cut a TRILLION DOLLARS from Medicaid and SNAP (what we used to call food stamps). And STILL leave us three trillion in the hole, due to the tax cuts to the wealthy. And many conservative legislators want to see cuts to Medicare and Social Security added to it. Is that what you voted for?

It will result in almost eight million Americans losing their health insurance, and almost six million losing their SNAP benefits completely. As I continue to point out, you may not be poor and therefore don’t think you have to worry about this, but your mama or your nana probably do. Is that what you voted for?

It has provisions empowering the president to lay off federal workers hired by Congress without consulting Congress, and preventing judges from interfering with any of his actions in any way -thereby crippling two of the three CO-EQUAL branches of government. Is that what you voted for?

Meanwhile, millions of people have lost their jobs, and vital services have been lost, due to chainsaw-like cuts by DOGE. Veterans are either going to lose their healthcare or find it ten times harder to access, parks are closing, airplanes are flying into each other in the sky, Meals on Wheels, Headstart, Americorps, and many other valuable programs have been killed off, military capabilities have been crippled, and as a result the markets have fluctuated wildly. Is that what you voted for?

Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs are already raising prices, and will raise them a lot more. As a result, America’s credit rating and the value of the dollar have been downgraded. Is that what you voted for?

A lot of you wanted a president who would be tougher on immigration, because of your perception of an immigrant crime wave, and you responded to Trump’s promise to deport the ones who are dangerous criminals. Now law enforcement and the military have been pulled from their regular (important) jobs to help ICE, who are running around WEARING MASKS, with no badges or insignia to indicate they even are who they say they are, grabbing people seemingly randomly off the street. Steven Miller (who has no actual elected or congressionally-appointed position) has given them a blanket order to arrest three thousand people per day. Actual criminals, it turns out, are hard to catch -but it’s easy to catch children at school, legally present immigrants who lawfully show up at their court hearings, soccer players, beloved community members, families of U.S. military personnel, or people who are actually U.S. citizens -and imprison them long enough to load them on a plane and send them, for life, to hellish prisons in countries they’ve never even been to.

Is that what you voted for?

Some of you supported Trump because he presented himself as the anti-war president, criticizing interventionist “global policing” “forever wars” in the Middle East… and he just blundered us into one, over theoretical “weapons of mass destruction” (doesn’t that sound familiar?). Oh, he immediately declared “victory” (also familiar) and a “ceasefire” that didn’t even last a full day. Your loved ones in military service may well end up being shot over it in a foreign desert. Iran is certainly going to retaliate by sponsoring more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil… which will work, because the entire FBI and Homeland Security are at Home Depot looking for Mexicans. Oh, side note: this is going to make the price of gas go through the roof this summer.

Is that what you voted for?

Now, maybe you voted for owning the libs, and provoking “liberal tears”, or because you relish the suffering of people not just like you. If that’s the case, congratulations. But most of you voted to improve the economy and bring down prices.

And all THIS is most certainly not what you voted for. Everything you were told would improve “on day one” has gotten worse, and we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. Everything you were promised has proven to be empty.

Aren’t you even just a little bit mad about that?

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, June 20, 2025 "Some of Y'all Need to Calm Down and Take a Breath"

 

A Liberal Dose

“Some of Y’all Need to Calm Down and Take a Breath”

Troy D. Smith

About ten years ago, one of the African American fraternities on the Tennessee Tech campus -if I remember correctly, in partnership with the NAACP -organized a Black Lives Matter event on Centennial Plaza. I knew the young men who organized it, several were my students, and they were all stellar community role models. However, on social media (especially Facebook), a large number of local citizens freaked out about it and many said they were going to grab their guns and show up to contain these “rioters.” The police actually had to close down Dixie Avenue and cordon the area to protect the protesters from enraged, paranoid, gun-wielding conservatives. One (white) student asked if I was going to cancel class, because they had heard the black protesters had said they were going to shoot every white male and rape every white female they saw. I let class out just a few minutes early, right before the event started (right outside our building), so that scared people could go out the back door and leave campus and anyone who wanted to could walk out the front door and attend the rally (which I did).

And the rally… was a joyous event, with a huge number of non-black allies present, and ended in a moving group hug.

Five years later almost the same thing happened on the square in Cookeville, at the rally after the murder of George Floyd. Local conservatives were painting an apocalyptic picture of insane rioters all set to burn down the city, and encouraged one another to grab their guns and go stop it, and the police had to protect the protesters (even the FBI was present for that one)… who had a peaceful protest.

Last Saturday, a rally was held on the Cookeville square as part of the national “No Kings” protest on the day of Trump’s birthday military parade. I was one of the speakers. In the days before the event, social media was on fire with paranoid people freaking out. I saw individuals I knew saying things like “The rioters are coming!” and “Please God protect us!” I saw people threatening to come shoot the “rioters.” Despite that, there was a huge turnout- the largest I have ever seen for a protest of any kind in Cookeville. They trickled in slowly at first, perhaps waiting to see if it was going to rain, but before long they were pouring in. 600 of them altogether over the course of the three-hour event, which was one of 2,200 such events across the country that day involving seven million people. That’s roughly two percent of the population of the entire United States.

Other than what was going on in Los Angeles (more on that in a minute) and one or two isolated incidents around the country, these were non-destructive and peaceful protests. Any aggression that showed up in these 2,200 events tended to be from counter-protesters. In Cookeville a truckload of boys in their late teens/early twenties drove around the square spraying protesters with an unknown liquid from an industrial paint sprayer, laughing and calling people names. Other protesters reported being cussed out (with their children present) and I’ve heard more than one describe a motorist threatening them with pepper spray.

And yet… it was an incredibly joyous event. Hundreds of people laughing and smiling together, bonding, as they shouted out their complaints about this administration. So… why were so many local conservatives reacting with paranoia and in some cases aggression?

Because the news media, as well as social media, were fanning the flames with their exaggerated reports. Even in L.A., the rallies were peaceful until Trump mobilized the National Guard and the Marines (over the objections of local government, who saw no serious threat taking place). And even with that, the news reports -especially on certain channels, but really across the board -focused on the violence taking place in one small neighborhood and made it look and sound like Los Angeles was in chaos and being burned to the ground, stoking the fears of conservative viewers -some of whom were compelled to at least threaten violence and death to people peacefully practicing their First Amendment right to assemble in protest (yes, it is a right guaranteed in the Constitution -and is in fact how our country was started). The irony is unbelievable- people up in arms (literally) over their friends and neighbors marching with signs -with their children! -as if it were some kind of enemy invasion, while a far-right lunatic was going around Minnesota shooting Democratic politicians and their families (even the dog).

I have been preaching in this column for years about how people need to tone down their aggression and look at facts they can see with their own eyes instead of being swept along by narratives of fear and hate. Here in our region, if you are conservative, at least one out of every three people you encounter every day -friends, neighbors, coworkers, family -DO NOT BELIEVE LIKE YOU DO. That does not mean they want to burn down the square or kill you in your sleep. They are STILL your friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family, not some alien other. Stop letting yourselves be manipulated into paranoia. And while you’re at it, maybe go back and re-watch the Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, June 13, 2025 "A Brief History of Democracy, Part 2"

 

A Liberal Dose

A Brief History of Democracy part 2

Troy D. Smith

 

Last week I wrote a little about how the Revolutionary generation viewed the word “democracy.” They equated it with “mob rule,” such as ran rampant in the French Revolution, and so worked to keep the common people from having too much power -primarily by having property requirements to vote. This meant that even free white men aged twenty-one or over could not vote unless they were worth a certain amount of money. That was the norm at the time, and is no doubt what the Framers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution. Of course, they also had in mind women and people of color not voting.

A handful of states removed property requirements in the 1790s and early 1800s. Vermont, at #14 the first new state, gave the vote to all adult males regardless of wealth or race. The majority, though, still had those requirements in place by 1820. But when the Panic of 1819 collapsed the economy, working class men started agitating for their voting rights. By the end of the 1820s, almost all states had removed wealth as a qualification to vote… which led to the election of Andrew Jackson, a populist who had grown up poor and presented as a man of the people. It also led to a reconfiguring of the word “democracy”, which started to carry a positive connotation, associated with social equality of the working class. In fact, by the 1820s the Federalist Party had collapsed, leaving the Democratic-Republican party of Jefferson and Madison as the only remaining political party… and during the Jackson era, they started being called simply “Democrats,” which they made official by changing their name in 1844.    

In the 1830s, a French traveler named Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a book (originally in French) called Democracy in America, which examined the character of Americans and sought to determine why their experiment with democracy had gone so much better than that of France. One thing he noted was that Americans love money, and generally hope to make more of it; that they don’t mind when an individual gets rich, but that they hate the idea of a handful of families, via generational wealth, becoming an aristocracy. He also noted that, unlike in Europe, you could not determine someone’s social status by how they dressed -in America poor people often dress well, so as not to appear poor, and rich people often dress like slobs so as not to be viewed as hoity-toity (not his exact words, of course). In other words, a social expectation of equality.

He did warn of two dangers to American democracy. First, the “tyranny of the majority” in which a majority group, having the most votes, can impinge on the rights of minorities. This danger was countermanded by things like the Bill of Rights, which protect individual liberties. Second, he warned of “soft despotism”, in which the government finagles a series of regulations to make voters FEEL LIKE they are participating, but which actually blind them to how they are being controlled and led to authoritarianism.

And that brings us to today, June 13. Tomorrow is Flag Day… and it is also Trump’s birthday, and the day of his massive military parade in his honor… and the date of over 1,800 planned “No King” demonstrations around the country. It also happens to be my wife’s and my anniversary (married on Flag Day!). There could be no better events to demonstrate the dangers facing democracy in America today from a militaristic authoritarian bully, and the American tradition -going back to the Boston Tea Party -of massive protest against tyranny. We are also seeing how, by ignoring the Constitution (and being allowed to get away with it), the current administration is imposing the tyranny of the majority -many of whom they have taken control of via soft despotism (which seems to be getting harder by the day).

The Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Those are our defense against tyranny. That is why military personnel and politicians pledge an oath to defend the Constitution, not to obey a president (or a king). The whole of U.S. history has revolved around trying “to make a more perfect union” by expanding rights, especially voting rights, to more and more people, not fewer and fewer.

This weekend, let our mantra be -not MAGA -but TAFA: Take American Forward Again.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, June 6, 2025 "A Brief History of Democracy, part 1"

 

A Liberal Dose

A Very Brief History of Democracy, Part 1

Troy D. Smith

 

I’m going to step away for a moment from my weekly monologue about how Trump is ruining the economy and address a specific question someone asked me. There is a meme going around social media saying, in effect, the U.S. has never been a democracy but is instead a constitutional republic, designed to protect common folk from being ruled by a tyrannical elite. The quote on that meme is actually pulled, out of context, from a long Facebook rant by an ultra-libertarian, anti-vax, Jews-are-secretly-running-the-world conspiracy theorist. That information provides a lot of context. However, the stark divide in the comparison reminds me of something else I’ve been hearing for about a decade now from conservative friends: “America is not a democracy, it is a republic.” While all the statements I have quoted are true on some levels, the framing of them in the context used by people citing them is “Democrats are bad.” In the latter case the contrast is offered that “Republicans are good.” The ultra-libertarian view is that both parties, and indeed the very concept of parties, or of government, is evil. Either way, I realize that most folks have never done a deep-dive into democracy (or populism), and can find these sorts of random quotes, when pulled out of context, confusing.

So I’m going to talk, in the 500 words I have remaining, about Democracy in America (a full discussion might take more like 500 pages!). This is especially appropriate as today, June 6, is the anniversary of one of the largest defenses of democracy in history.

First, let’s look at the word and the concept themselves. “Democracy” is from a Greek word meaning “rule by the common people” -demos. In ancient (and/or classical) Greece, city-states like Athens were run this way: major decisions were made by a vote of all adult male citizens (of course, slaves were left out of the decision-making process, and so were women for the most part). We still see a form of this every once in a while when there is a referendum -an issue voted on by every voter in a county, or a state. That differs from a representational democracy, in which voters elect someone to represent their town, district, state, etc. in a larger voting body that makes decisions, which is what we have in the U.S. (except for those occasional referendums).

Here's something many of you probably didn’t know, because you don’t see it in pop culture representations. The vast majority of indigenous North American tribes were democracies, probably more than 95% of them (I can name some of the exceptions). Every indigenous village or town (among that 95+%) had elected, nonhereditary, leaders who served as peace chiefs (diplomats), war chiefs (military leaders), or on the tribal council. However, very often, really big decisions were made by referendum- a vote of all adult members of the tribe (usually including women). The Iroquois actually had a representative democracy centuries before Europeans arrived on the continent. There were five Iroquois Nations -later six -the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Cayuga, and Onondaga (and later Tuscarora) nations, who all formed together into a confederacy. Each town elected representatives to speak for them at the national council (Mohawk, for example), while each nation elected people to represent their nation on the grand council of the confederacy.

Most of the “Founding Fathers” were very well-educated and were very knowledgeable about the democracies of Greece and Rome (which was a democratic republic until the Caesars turned it into an empire, a generation or two before Jesus). They knew the parts that worked, and the parts that didn’t. Some were also familiar -though no one mentioned it in their writings at the time -of the democratic nature of indigenous groups, especially the Iroquois, who were close allies of the British (and therefore of the colonists before the Revolution). They were also very aware of the thoughts of various European philosophers on the subject of government and rights, especially the Englishman John Locke, and their thoughts on government as a social contract between leaders and the governed.

Those Founders, though, were a little divided on where they thought the common people stood. Most believed that “the mob”, or the general public, were too uneducated and emotional to be trusted to make good decisions, and only people (people meaning free adult males) who owned a significant amount of property should be allowed to participate in the process. This included people like John Adams and George Washington, neither of whom trusted “mob action”. For such folks, “democracy” was almost a dirty word, because they equated it with “mob rule”. Others, like Thomas Jefferson and John’s cousin Sam Adams, were very much in favor of the common people and of group protests. When they got together for the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia, they were in agreement they wanted a representative democratic republic, but a balance had to be reached between those fearful of giving the central government too much power, and those afraid of giving the common people too much power. The balance was reached by having one part of Congress, the House of Representatives, being elected directly by the people and the other, the Senate, being appointed by state legislatures (which is how we did it for the first 130 years or so of the U.S.), as well as by the president being elected by the electoral college, not the popular vote.

So that was the situation when the Constitution went into effect in 1788. However, in the 1820s there was a sea change in how people looked at democracy. We’ll look at that next time -depending on the news cycle, who knows what might come up between now and next week.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, May 30, 2025 "Our National Tradition of Opposing Kings and Aristocracies"

 

A Liberal Dose

Our National Tradition of Opposing Kings and Aristocracies

Troy D. Smith

 

Did you know that, since he was elected six months ago, the size of Donald Trump’s fortune has doubled? DOUBLED. From 2.5 billion to 5 billion. And I hear people say “oh that wonderful man, he’s sacrificed so much to be president- he doesn’t even accept a salary!” He doesn’t NEED to accept a paltry public service salary -not when he can charge billionaires from around the world to come to his private parties to celebrate the “Trump bitcoin”, or when he can arrange for visiting dignitaries and their (large) retinues to have meetings where they have to pay HIM a fortune to stay at his ritzy hotels, or when new Trump hotels are suddenly going up in every country that wants to do backroom deals with him, or even when he can have taxpayers foot the travel bill (millions and millions of dollars so far) for him to spend every weekend golfing at his own private clubs… where he literally charges the small army of secret service agents protecting him to stay at his pricy resorts, and the taxpayer pays for it.

Did you know that there are only about 800 billionaires in America… and they have as much money as the “bottom” half of Americans put together? That’s about 170 million people (and you are probably one of them). In other words, every billionaire -on the average -has as much money as a quarter-of-a-million working class people. And yet, Trump’s “big beautiful bill” that passed the House of Representatives this week is going to -through massive tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires -add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. And that is AFTER all the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs that the bill calls for (and which will be impacting people you know, and maybe you personally). It is being called by economists the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history. To say noting of the tariffs, which some are calling the largest tax hike in American history -because tariffs are ultimately paid by YOU, the consumer, NOT foreign countries. Many economists are warning of, not just an imminent recession, but the biggest depression in history… which, they say, will ruin most Americans but will make the super-wealthy even wealthier. And in the midst of this, Trump wants to raise the debt ceiling -so as to incur even MORE national debt, and further imperil America’s economic standing in the world… all to lower taxes on billionaires like himself. To enable people who already have more money than they could ever spend in 100 lifetimes to make MORE. And all that “waste and fraud” being cut by DOGE -which are mostly vital programs for the wellbeing of the citizens of the country, things to “promote the general welfare” -well, all of it put together is only a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the debts about to be incurred by these robber baron tax cuts.

So no, Trump has not “sacrificed so much” -at least not from his own pocket. He has sacrificed, instead, the poor of this country, and then the working class of this country, and he is about to sacrifice the middle class -including many of you reading this that might have voted for him. The whole point, for the entire crowd, is to tear everything down and destroy the ability of the country to function -and then swoop in and buy everything that is left, cheap. And thereby turn YOU into a permanent serf class… barons must own their peasants, after all. And so far, many of you have just been handing it over to them… but it is about to start hurting YOU.

You’ve probably heard the word “oligarchy” thrown around lately… it means “rule by a small group of people”. Well, there’s another word for it: aristocracy. That is literally what “barons” are, titled members of an aristocracy. Our country was FOUNDED on refusing to be ruled by an aristocracy or a king; on everyone being equal and having a fair shot. Well, that fair shot is dwindling day-by-day in this still-young administration… and the elements our country’s founders expected to resist such a turn of events are floundering. The press is afraid to speak out. Education is being crippled. Republicans who hold a majority in Congress go along with everything the president tells them to, either in fear of Trump’s supporters in the primary or, literally, in fear for their own families’ safety. Lower courts have been standing up, but the Supreme Court is a very mixed bag. How thick the irony that SCOTUS is now complaining that Trump is ignoring everything they tell him to do -when they themselves, less than a year ago, ruled that as president he can literally do anything he wants to and be immune from consequences.

Know who it is all coming down to? YOU. I am talking to independents, fence-sitters, people who don’t follow the news, traditional conservatives who have not gone full-MAGA (and maybe some that have). You’ve been sold down the river along with everyone else. Something has to be done to rein this insanity in… and that means you’re going to have to hold your nose and elect some Democrats to Congress so they can check his power. And while you’re at it, to our own state’s legislature.

Sure the libs are being “owned” and a bunch of social issues that do not directly affect you are being reversed… but very soon, your wallet is going to inform you that this is not what you voted for, and you’re going to have to do something about it.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE