Tennessee WordSmith: 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