Troy D. Smith Election Bio

 April 30, 2026

I am still on the ballot to serve as TNDP executive committeeman in TN district 15 (White, Putnam, Cumberland, Van Buren, Jackson, and Smith counties), and if elected will return and serve. I was asked to compose a bio for a list of Democratic candidates, and below is what I came up with. If you know me and trust in me, and either live in one of those counties or have friends who do, please share this. Thanks.

Troy Smith is a native of White County and received his undergraduate degree at TTU (and graduate degrees from the University of Illinois). He has been a history professor at Tech since 2011, and teaches (among other things) indigenous studies, environmental history, minority studies, and the history of Tennessee and Appalachia. He is a multiple national award-winning novelist, and authors a political column in the Sparta Expositor -the column was suspended by the editor after Smith received numerous death threats from MAGA extremists, but has recently been reinstated. He has years of experience as a labor organizer, political activist, and civil rights advocate. At Tech he has received awards for his teaching, for service, and for being an outstanding diversity advocate. He has years of experience in leadership, and has served as: faculty senate president, state president of the American Association of University Professors, on the statewide planning and legislative action committees of the United Campus Workers union as well as the TTU rep for said union, national president of the Western Fictioneers writing organization, on the board of the North American School for Organizing, on the state board of AIM (American Indian Movement)-Indian Territory, on the national board of The Second Rainbow Coalition, adviser to the TTU College Democrats since 2011, second vice-chair of the White County Democratic Party, and while in grad school at the University of Illinois served as the history and East Asian Studies departments liaison to the Graduate Employees Organization, where he helped coordinate a successful grad student workers' strike in 2009. In 2020 he was the district caucus chair for Bernie Sanders. From 2023 to 2026 he served as District 15's TNDP committeeman and seeks re-election to that position to continue his work there. He has developed a reputation for courage, integrity, fairness, and -in the words of one state party leader -"calm and measured leadership." As someone with a rural, working class background -the first person in the history of his family to graduate high school, and 20 years as a janitorial worker (and foreman) -he has the ability to speak to the regular working people of this district as well as to academic audiences in a language that resonates with both. In his youth he served two years of full-time, fully culturally immersed socio-religious work (in French) with Haitian immigrants in South Florida and New York City, often in extremely dangerous circumstances. He has cultivated relationships with both the tribal governments and the overall community in both the OK and NC Cherokee reservations, and coordinated (and delivered) food drives for the NC Cherokee reservation after the hurricanes. He always stands up -fearlessly, strategically, and with both passion and compassion -for the oppressed, for the worker, and for what he believes is right.

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 

My Announcement on May 26, 2026, Regarding the Issues Dividing the Party

 I posted this on May 26, right after the end of the meeting when the TNDP Executive Committee, on which I served, voted to remove our former Treasurer from the EC.

This is going to be a long post, but it may be the most important one I’ve ever made so I entreat you to read to the end. “tl/dr” is part of the reason this country’s in the shape it’s in.

For three years, I have had the privilege of serving as executive committeeman, representing district 15 on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party (EC of the TNDP). That is usually a boring, quiet job, but for the past month it has not been. As many of you reading this may know, we recently voted to remove Carol Abney as treasurer of the state party. Many Democrats throughout the state are friends and admirers of Carol, and were extremely frustrated when members of the EC could not immediately provide details for why this happened, and still cannot in certain areas. This is partially because the details of executive session meetings, per Roberts Rules of Order, must be kept confidential unless and until the body votes to do otherwise, and it is partially because it involved grievance petition details that, to protect the process and everyone involved, MUST be kept anonymous and completely confidential or else aggrieved people in the future will be afraid to come forward. Some of the relevant information did get leaked -selectively and in a misleading manner, to benefit Ms. Abney, whose supporters have come to her defense and, essentially, called for Democrats to declare war on the state party. They have framed the situation as the state party holding backroom secret meetings as part of some immoral conspiracy to come after her.

Because she has been free to present her side and our hands have been tied to explain or defend ourselves, the party has been in an uproar for the whole month of March, with many people relentlessly attacking the state party. This has continued even after the EC voted Sunday to allow members, in a limited way, to engage with our constituents about the findings against her. I hesitate to restate those here, as this post is not actually about her, but I can tell you this: according to Tennessee law, one can have multiple residences, but only one primary residence for voting purposes. And, also according to state law, that residence can NOT be commercially zoned. I can also tell you that an EC member leaking confidential information to third parties, according to bylaws, is grounds for removal from the EC, especially if it pertains to grievance petitions.

For the last week-and-a-half, the rhetoric against the state party has been deafening. My entire spring break consisted of receiving dozens and dozens of messages from people in my district, many of whom I’ve known for years and considered friends, berating me and accusing me in the harshest terms of all manner of foul things, including corruption and taking bribes or of just being stupid and gullible. There have also been many, many public statements on social media along the same lines, from people who had not been given the full picture by the EC (by necessity) or were given a misleading picture from other quarters (by design). And I have not been able to defend myself. The same thing has been experienced by dozens of my fellow EC members. It has been so relentless and the stress so great that several times in the last week I’ve had to take nitro pills for my heart condition, something I’d not had to do in over a year, not even when I was receiving death threats from MAGA extremists. At the same time I received only a tiny number of reassuring messages, and none publicly. Because the EC is still limited in the extent we are allowed to address people’s questions or the level of detail we are able to provide -both to protect the grievance process and to protect ourselves from threatened lawsuits -almost no one (neither aggressive detractors nor sincerely concerned people) is satisfied, and the rhetoric has not abated. If anything, it will soon be ratcheting up since a vote was taken tonight to remove Ms. Abney from the EC completely on the basis of her leaking confidential information. For the small number of EC members like myself who are facing a contested election to keep our positions, it will be even more intense now.

This type of internal strife is a godsend to Republicans, and a grave threat to every Democrat running for office. My family is not able to weather this atmosphere without relief until the election in August. It is a strain on our emotional health and a literal threat to my physical health.

Six months ago, my political column in the local newspaper was canceled due to the large number of credible death threats I received in the week after Charlie Kirk’s murder. The editor made that decision purely out of concern for my well-being, knowing me well and knowing I would never back down and allow myself to be silenced by bullies, even with threats to my life. I’ve continued to speak out in any way I could (and in fact my newspaper column is starting back up very soon). The thing is, though -I was able to take security measures to defend my family against would-be MAGA assassins, and their threats only made me bolder, but I was not prepared -and I don’t know how to be prepared -for metaphorical assassins on my own side, including some of my own friends. Further, I do not want to be responsible -even to a tiny degree -for any further heated division that threatens my party and the campaigns of so many good people who have had the courage to step up and run for office as Democrats in our present environment.

My favorite movie has always been High Noon. It taught me many valuable lessons the first time I saw it at age eight. You have to do what you know is right and you have to fulfill your civic duties and honor your oath of office, even if the whole town is against you. Even if it comes at great personal cost to yourself. And you have to defend your community, even when your community refuses to defend you. I have endeavored to live my life by those principles. You have no idea how much I have yearned to tell my side of the story, to tell the whole truth about this situation -but my oath and my duty prevented me, and through all of this I have honored them.

And now, like Gary Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane, the job is finished and I have to take off the badge. I do not need a title to serve my community and the principles of my party, and it is unsustainable for me to hold onto it under these circumstances. Therefore, after the vote to expel Abney, I submitted my resignation to the state chair, as I said last week I would do if we were ultimately unable to provide people with the answers they demand. This is not a reflection on Chair Campbell or the state party, who throughout this have acted on their conscience and dedication to their oaths and duty.

I told Carol Abney weeks ago, and others on the EC have told her since: if there is anything in your life whatsoever that could be used by the opposition to attack us, or cause division in a time when we need unity, you should let go of your concerns for your own benefit (and your stubborn pride) and quietly resign rather than risk facilitating harm to the party and its candidates. That is what she should have done then; it’s what she should be doing now. Instead, she has said repeatedly that if things did not go her way she would burn this party to the ground. She has been trying to do exactly that, and is no doubt doubling her efforts at it at this very moment. It would be hypocritical of me to ask something of Carol Abney I would not do myself. I am not willing to sacrifice my party and its principles for my own comfort or advantage. I am willing to sacrifice myself instead, in hopes such a dramatic action will make some people step back and consider the seriousness of the situation. I have kept my oath, and am now willing to relinquish it if so doing enables me to freely say these things today and help, at least a little, to extinguish this dangerous fire that I did not start and which threatens us all.

One of my greatest personal heroes has always been Congressman Davy Crockett of Tennessee. Not for the Alamo, but for the fact he sacrificed his political career to oppose Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal policy. His lifelong motto was “Make sure you’re right, then go ahead.” Too many people either skip straight to the “go ahead” part without making sure they’re right, or know they’re right and are afraid to go ahead. I refuse to be one of those people.

I do want to share with you, though, something I have realized after all of this. While many of the people angry at the party and at me have been longtime friends of Carol Abney, I was struck by how many of them barely knew her or had never met her at all. This leads me to believe it was not all about Carol. I think the wildfire intensity of it -especially from rural Democrats -is a sign that they were already having bitter feelings toward the party because they felt we had been ignoring them or leaving them behind, and to them this seemed like just another betrayal, and the seeming blanket of secrecy around it only further reinforced that feeling, and it all came gushing out. I can see that, and I can understand it. We’ve been talking a big game about reaching out to rural counties this past year and you haven’t seen results yet -but many of you do know that Carol is a champion of rural causes. We have been working on some things, that I think are very promising and that I’ve had a hand in, but we’re just starting to get them off the ground. The party needs to try harder, and to make every county party and every member of it feel seen, heard, and valued, especially now that we have all 95 counties organized for the first time in forever. They need to look for more ways to avoid making you feel like you’re in the dark. But what we’ve seen these past weeks? The vitriol and outright hatred? That’s not how to get it done. That is playing into our opponents’ hands.

So now, please. Let’s all take a deep breath and calm down.

Let’s return our attention and our energy to where it should be: opposing Donald Trump’s policies and what he has turned the Republican Party into. Let’s not allow anyone to lead us down the road of making our party like his, with conspiracy theories and cries of fake news, all designed to protect the interests of a selfish few. Put down the torches and pitchforks.

Thank you to those who have supported me through all of this.

And thank you, sincerely, to all of you who supported me before this, even if you have not done so the last couple of weeks. It has been an honor to serve you to the best of my ability, and I did not want to stop. Perhaps I will be able to do so again -I hope so.

I leave you with a few Cherokee words that mean a lot to me. Stiyu -have courage. And another: Gadugi, the sacred obligation to all work together for the good of everyone. And one I have striven to live by: duyukdv. Harmony and balance, and the way of goodness and rightness.

And with an English word that has always meant a lot to the left: solidarity.

Finally, one more Cherokee word. What they say instead of goodbye.

Dodadagohvi. We will see each other again.

---Troy D. Smith

A Liberal Dose, April 24 2026 "Too Fast to Be Furious: The Temperamental Drift"

 

A Liberal Dose             April 24, 2026

“Too Fast to Be Furious: The Temperamental Drift”

Troy D. Smith

 

Historians are trained to argue, as are academics in general. We are trained in doing deep research and finding sources, facts, perspectives, root causes, repercussions, and context in relation to other aspects of history. Then other historians do the same thing, in an effort to present a counter-narrative, and “discourse” is created. I regard this process as an ongoing conversation about historical topics, with each new generation of historians (and their arguments) building on what came before, bringing us closer to that elusive thing called “truth” -which, like Zeno’s paradox about continually halving the distance between one object and another, can only be approached but never fully reached. Although this process can be very dry, it can also be very passionate and sometimes a little ugly (both in print and in person). I like to define academic writing as writing something that will only be read by ten people who hate you. Nonetheless, that discourse is expected to take place with professionalism.

Political writing, especially opinion pieces, are also arguments. It is usually not just an expression of some free-standing opinion (like Andy Rooney’s pieces used to be on Sixty Minutes). It is most frequently an effort to be persuasive to an audience and inspire them to tackle some issue or effect some political change that the author finds (in their opinion) very important. It is even more susceptible to becoming passionate or heated than are interpretations of history. And that is expected. It is nearly impossible to persuade anybody to do anything without first emphasizing the stakes. Ideally, though, when two citizens with opposing views express them to one another, even heatedly, they do so within certain parameters of civil behavior, and with the viewpoint that their opponent loves their country as much as they do, they just disagree on how best to express it. This has been true since disagreements arose between Jefferson and Hamilton when the ink was barely dry on the Constitution.

Boy, those were the days.

 It’s been a long time since civility or professionalism showed their heads on the public scene. Pre-existing groups, such as political parties, have tended to cluster at extremes -extremes in policy, and extremes in debating it. Talking politics -even with people on your own side! -leads some individuals to go from 0 to 100 in a split-second where aggression is concerned. This has led not only to crass rhetoric but to violence, and many factors have contributed to that situation. But it keeps getting worse.

I have been warning of that in this newspaper throughout the decade of the 2020s, in columns with titles like “Some of Y’all Need to Calm Down and Take a Breath” (June 20, 2025). It has become practically expected, and definitely not out of the ordinary, for a political columnist to be threatened with physical injury. Of late, I’ve been receiving metaphysical threats from people on my own side who disagree with me on some things, as have some of the conservative-leaning columnists in this paper in the past. That phenomenon has the same symptoms as if it were coming from the other side: people jumping straight to anger and outrage, then on to harsh attacks, without waiting to find out the facts. Facts themselves seem to have gone out of style. Fury has become the driver for what passes for discourse these days.

Of course, there is very much a need for righteous anger sometimes. But even that needs to be directed to the right sources, and DIRECTED period, not like a shotgun blast. People who wish to effect change must let even their anger be strategic. Anger without focus makes one easily misled and misdirected, and easily herded into traps. I’m not singing kumbaya, I’m still going to argue passionately for what I believe in -I’m saying don’t be Sonny Corleone. Stop and think, don’t just react.

The times are dangerous enough already.

 

--Troy D. Smith is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech University. His words do not necessarily represent TTU, nor are they connected in any way with his job- they are his own opinions on matters of public concern, and an expression of his First Amendment freedom of speech.   

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 March 27, 2026 "Unsilenced and Back in the Saddle"

A Liberal Dose

Unsilenced and Back in the Saddle

Troy D. Smith

March 27, 2026

 

This piece represents my return to sharing political commentary -from a left perspective and with historical context -after a six-month hiatus due to numerous death threats I received in the days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination (despite the fact I had never commented on that subject). Since this is, in effect, a fresh start, and since it may appear in news outlets outside my hometown, I thought it might be appropriate to re-introduce myself before getting into the political opinion part.

My name is Troy Smith. I was born and raised in White County, in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee -a region my family has lived in for well over two hundred years. I am a history professor at Tennessee Tech University. My specialties include indigenous studies, the history of race, and the American South. I am from a rural blue-collar background and spent more than twenty years doing janitorial work before becoming an academic. I’ve lived other places -including a couple of years doing mission work with Haitian immigrants in the Miami and New York City areas, and six years getting my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois -but Tennessee is my home, and I love it.  I am also an author of fiction, mostly westerns. My first published work appeared thirty years ago in Louis L’Amour Western Magazine, and I’ve won a couple of Spur awards from Western Writers of America. Finally, I am politically active -serving my district on the Tennessee Democratic Party executive committee. The words and thoughts in my column are my own, though, and in no way officially represent the TNDP or TTU.

That whole paragraph was meant to drive home the fact that, though I work at a university, my background is not one of elite privilege but as one of Tennessee’s working poor -and I have never let go of that experience. I know very well what it feels like to be from rural poverty, and to be looked down on for it on a personal level while seeing my state, especially the country and small-town parts of it, repeatedly taken advantage of, taken for granted, put down, and being flat-out cheated by con artists and fat cats looking to make a fast buck off of us. And I’m tired of it, as I bet you are. So I have spoken up, and continue speaking up, despite the efforts of those who would like to keep voices like yours and mine silent. Exercising the right to speak up is the very essence of what it means to be American, and so is the refusal to be denied that basic, natural right.

I am speaking up about the fact that voters in this state -especially in the rural counties -have been sold a bill of goods comprised of empty promises in order to get their vote. We were promised that prices would go down “on day one”, but they keep going up and up. We were promised the full release of the Epstein files, and the protection of the innocent and vulnerable -but this administration has fought tooth-and-nail every step of the way to keep that information out of our hands, and have outright admitted they are doing so to protect their billionaire friends. We were promised no wars, yet they just started one without having even the vaguest plan of how to win it. The federal government, and the Republican-controlled government in this state, keep setting us at each other’s throats to distract us from the fact they are picking our pockets. Don’t forget the governor’s private school voucher plan, that is draining money from rural school systems and hardworking teachers while benefitting his wealthy friends.

They think because we are rural we are stupid and easily controlled. But people are waking up to the fact that the longer Republicans are in charge the worse things get.

Speak up with me, neighbors.    

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, January 7, 2026 "Have You No Sense of Decency?"

A LIBERAL DOSE, January 7, 2026

"Have You No Sense of Decency?"

Troy D. Smith

Five years ago.

Five years ago saw the Capital stormed for the first time since the War of 1812. Like the rest of the world, I sat and watched in horror as MAGA faithful, spurred on by Donald Trump, surged into the building and viciously assaulted police officers, wandered the halls calling out for Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, erected a scaffold to hang the Vice-President for his refusal to obey Trump's wish for him to refuse to certify the results of the election, thereby setting the stage for a fake elector scheme to subvert the outcome of a free and fair election. Watch the body cam footage of the Capital police... it's horrifying. And the lame-duck president was sitting in the White House watching it on television and cheering the rioters instead of calling for them to stop, or ordering forces in to quell them, and saying that maybe his VP deserved to be lynched anyway. Anyone with the slightest grasp on history recognized this as a potential Reichstag moment -that Trump was stalling, hoping the crowd would get even more violent so that when he finally did call in troops he could declare martial law and forcibly stay in power. Heck, as I said at the time, you don't even have to know history- you just have to have paid attention to Star Wars. It was an attempted insurrection, and on that day everyone knew it, no matter how hard they now try to retcon the events and their own reactions to it.

It was one of the worst days in U.S. history.

Many of us took consolation in the fact it didn't work, and that the shear ignominy of it would be a stake in the orange Nosferatu's heart. Many of us were heartened when Congress voted to impeach him even though he only had a couple of weeks in office; a conviction in such an impeachment would mean he would never be able to run for any public office again, and America would have successfully dodged a fascist bullet. Of course, Senate Republicans -led by Mitch McConnell, whose wife Elaine Chao served as Transportation Secretary and had been the object of ethnic slurs by the president, and who resigned from her position in protest after the riot. So McConnell knew how dangerous a returned Trump would be. But he, and most other Republican Senators, refused to convict the president despite overwhelming evidence -to appease Trump's voters and keep their loyalty in the midterms. They gambled that Trump's political career was over. Despite that, Americans like me breathed a sigh of relief. Biden was successfully installed and, we hoped, things could return to some semblance of normal.

Two or three weeks later I was approached by an officer of my home county's Democratic Party, who had in turn been approached by the editor of my hometown paper. They needed a leftwing contributor to balance their opinion page -at that time they had two conservative columnists, both of them very far to the right. They could find no volunteers, and I was told there was some trepidation over death threats for people publicly espousing a liberal perspective in a town that had gone almost 80% for Trump in the recent election. And thus I was able to add "newspaper columnist" to my resume. For almost five years I wrote that weekly column, which I titled "A Liberal Dose." To my surprise, a lot of people over those years told me how much the column meant to them and how often they agreed with me on things even if they were Republicans. My very favorite comment: "It's very rare to see a white person stand up for us Black folks in this town- and I have NEVER seen a white person stand up for Indians here." Despite that, even some of my conservative friends (including a couple whose opinions on such matters are based on their professional backgrounds) frequently expressed concern for my personal safety.  

This is the first essay I've put up in over two months, since shortly after my newspaper column (and in fact the whole opinion page) was cancelled due to the high number of death threats I (and the staff, it sounded like) received in the week after Charlie Kirk's death. At the time, I said I was going to keep putting these things out on my blog, and I did a couple, but at one point it looked like a larger paper might be picking up my column, so I was waiting to see how that played out. However, more than one member of my family implored me not to do that, when there were already enough people in my hometown that apparently wanted to shoot me. I felt like I had to honor that, especially since they might also be endangered by my actions. If left to my own devices, I would have plunged ahead -I've always said I'm just smart enough to know when to shut up, and just dumb enough not to. I'm glad my family is here to help me take stock of such things. It is worth noting that my wife, who makes her living selling jewelry online, was kicked off of her main platform at around the same time for comments she made condemning Christian Nationalism on her own Facebook page, which has been a hit on our pocketbook, and in a world where professors were being fired around the country for expressing any opinions about Charlie Kirk, the possibility of that happening to me could cost us our mortgage and our health insurance (though thankfully, in one of the worst cases of such injustice, a judge just in the past day or two found in favor of the professor -also in Tennessee, though not my university -and he has his job back, plus $500,000).

But it is past time for me to speak out again, at least in this format if not in print. This despite the fact that -due to MAGA -I'm having to take extraordinary security and defense measures -but so are all of our neighboring countries, apparently.

I've seen a lot of confusion online about U.S. actions in Venezuela, due no doubt to how shocking it is. I mean, the U.S. has embarked on many imperialist ventures in its existence, but we almost always PRETEND like that's not what we're doing. There's an element of that here- the Trump administration has repeatedly stated that the goal is to cut off the fentanyl coming to the United States... despite the fact everyone knows Venezuela isn't where fentanyl enters the U.S. No, the shocking part is that Trump is saying the quiet part out loud. He is announcing now that it is all about Venezuela's oil, which we are going to take because, somehow, it BELONGS to us. And we are going to "run their country" until they get a leader we approve of. He also reiterated his goal to possess Greenland, hinting he might use military measures to do so -and people know now that they have to take any and all of his childish threats seriously, because no matter how stupid and undemocratic they sound, there is always a possibility he will carry them out. He also made totally-not-veiled threats against Mexico and Cuba.

In other words, there is a very real danger we may enter a shooting-war with Venezuela. And Mexico and Cuba, and potentially other Latin American countries. And, if we invade Greenland, we will be at war with all our NATO allies. This is not a joke, nor is it an exaggeration.

Observers correctly point to this as part of a return to "spheres of influence" diplomacy, which was the norm until WWII (and which helped LEAD to WWII, with appeasement of Hitler). As many have pointed out, it is eerily like the dividing up of the three major nations in the novel 1984. In essence, it seems like the plan is to divide the whole world among the U.S. (who would get the whole western hemisphere, including Greenland and Canada), Russia (who would get Europe and perhaps Eurasia), and China, who would get Asia. In this scenario, the three powers would be like, I suppose, the Axis on which the world turns (and I sure hope you get that reference, but if you're under a certain age -due to MAGA attacks on truthful teaching of history over the last decade -I can't count on it.) Looking at it in that framework, suddenly it all makes perfect sense -from Trump's touting of the Monroe (now apparently Don-roe, according to him) Doctrine and actions in Latin America, to his frequent statements coveting Canada and Greenland, to his unbelievable deference to Putin no matter what he does in his own "sphere." Our nation in currently led by people who don't even PRETEND to love democracy and freedom, or the Constitution, or anything other than money and raw power- for their own narrow group of cronies.

And meanwhile, here at home, the military is patrolling the streets of American cities. Democracy is being strangled. The very concepts of history, truth, and objective fact are being strangled. And masked secret police are arresting people without warrants and apparently now shooting them in the face for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could go on and on, but the short version is: in almost every way, in one year's time, our country has been traveling at dizzying speed down the road of fascism, authoritarianism, and dictatorship.

Just like we kept telling people it would, but many were not listening because the cost of eggs had gone up.

On the day of the 2021 insurrection, out of curiosity, I got on Facebook and checked the timelines of my most conservative, pro-MAGA friends and acquaintances. Crickets. And I knew why: they were in shock like the rest of us, and were too deeply ashamed to say a word. Until a few days later, when they started making excuses and/or denying we had even seen what we saw that day.  I checked their timelines yesterday, the 5th anniversary of the insurrection and just a few days after the attack on Venezuela- they were crowing and bragging about both things. I checked them today, after a full day of news about the murder of that poor woman by masked ICE agents in Minneapolis -a white woman, mind you, who from what I have heard so far might not have even been there protesting, she may have just been passing through and got stuck. Guess what? CRICKETS. Because they know. They know how wring this is, and they are ashamed of it, and scared to stick their heads up and be recognized as supporting it. Until tomorrow, or maybe the next day, when they will have gathered up their nerve and are once more vacillating between denying the obvious facts and gloating and crowing over it.

I am reminded of the words of then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams during the lead up to the 1820 Missouri Compromise, about Southern supporters of slavery: "They have betrayed the secrets of their soul." That is, despite all their talk about freedom and democracy, at the end of the day they loved their white supremacy. He added that if there were one thing the country OUGHT to be broken over, it was the cruel hypocrisy of slavery. Of course, you may not see that quote at the Smithsonian, where the Trump administration has complained they talk too much about "how bad" slavery was and they should just skip over it.

I am reminded also of the words of Thomas Paine in The Crisis, published in Philadelphia in December of 1776, when things were looking bleak for the Revolution -and which was read aloud to George Washington's troops right before they crossed the Delaware River:

These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: It is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

These ARE the times that try our souls. Everything about our country, and its promise, and its potential though yet to be fulfilled, is being stripped away daily in real time before our very eyes. But this is NOT the time to shrink back. It is the time to stand up and be loud. It is time to speak out about where we stand; it is time to heap shame on the heads of these aggressors just as abolitionists did in the 19th century, all while telling our misled neighbors that THIS IS NOT WHAT THEY VOTED FOR. They voted for lower prices and no more wars. They were roped in by the illusory scam of a professional con artist who hungered for nothing but more money, public adulation, and raw unlimited (kinglike) power... and it's okay for those misled neighbors to admit it, and to now demand something better.

In the 1950s, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy had America tied in knots, rife with paranoia and turning on one another. His mad accusations and actions seemed to amplify day-by-day, until some feared it would destroy the country. Until people started to stand up. Until CBS anchorman Edward R. Murrow aired exposes of McCarthyism, telling the American people, "We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men." Until lawyer Joseph Welch said, on live television and to McCarthy's face, ""Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" And America began to wake up.

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency? Well, the greater part of the American people, who do not support any of this behavior, do. Now it's time to wake up the rest of them.

I close with this official statement from the Tennessee Democratic Party, of which I am proud to serve on the executive committee- and never before prouder than today.

--Troy D. Smith 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., nor are they connected in any way with his job- they are his own opinions on matters of public concern, and an expression of his First Amendment freedom of speech.

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, October 5, 2025 "Free Should the Scholar Be, Free and Brave"

 A Liberal Dose, October 5, 2025 

"Free Should the Scholar Be, Free and Brave"

Troy D. Smith

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Every fall since 2012 (except the year I was faculty senate president and had a lighter teaching load), I have taught a section of what Tennessee Tech University calls HONORS 1010. It is basically an orientation class for incoming Honors freshmen. I am one of several people who teach it each fall. The goal, both of the Honors program and of myself, has always been to make students think deeply about WHY they are in college, what it is for, and what it can be used for, instead of an exercise in jumping through hoops and learning how to fill out paperwork. It is my particular goal to inspire students in their first semester. There is nothing wrong in going to college to do well, I tell them... but you can also go to college to do GOOD.

For most of those years, I have been sharing with students an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "The American Scholar," a work I was first exposed to as a college freshman (thanks, Linda Mercer Learman!) I read the excerpt to them, pausing here and there to reframe the prose in 21st century vernacular to make sure they understand. To my delight, this year the director of the Honors program has recommended that everyone teaching the class share this excerpt and discuss it.

I actually wrote about "The American Scholar" two or three years ago in my newspaper column, which as you may know was canceled recently due to a dramatic uptick in threats against my life. But I am revisiting it, because it is more pertinent now than it has ever been... and because it is more pertinent to ME than it has ever been. 

Here is the excerpt from "The American Scholar," first delivered as a speech by Emerson in 1837, that I share:

"In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, — free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, 'without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution.' Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar, by his very function puts behind him. Fear always springs from ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tranquility, amid dangerous times, arise from the presumption, that, like children and women, his is a protected class; or if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, — see the whelping of this lion, — which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it, and pass on superior. The world is his, who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance, — by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow."

And here are my thoughts, interpretations, and re-phrasings of it:

A scholar -a seeker of knowledge and learning -must be brave. They must face the political issues of their day, no matter how scary they are, because being a scholar does not give you a free pass when it comes to danger and controversy -if anything, it puts you in the crosshairs. The scholars are always among the first classes that authoritarians and dictators come for, lest they continue to bring understanding, education, or inspiration to the people. For that matter, so are the poets, the artists, and even the comedians.

So turn and face those issues, those problems. The more you learn about them, the less frightening they are. Once you gain knowledge about those issues, it is your duty to spread it -because, at that point, any of the bad things plaguing us all can only do so if YOU ALLOW IT. So do not allow it. Do not be silent. Do not be fearful.

Emperors, autocrats, and tyrants hold power only insomuch as people believe it to be hopeless to oppose them. It is never hopeless. To paraphrase a certain Jedi Master, they can never win -for if they strike us down they only make us stronger. They act always in weakness, never in true strength. Never in truth.

The world is his who can see through its pretension. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

So look up from your microscopes, your rhymes, and the misleading safety of your diversions. Take your head out of the sand. It is time to look around us with courage, with determination, and to light our way with the sacred torch of truth and knowledge. 

To be free, you must be brave.

  

--Troy D. Smith 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., nor are they connected in any way with his job- they are his own opinions on matters of public concern, and an expression of his First Amendment freedom of speech.

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, September 23, 2025 "Why Are They All So Angry?"

 

Welcome to my first blog in my post-newspaper career. As many of you know, my regular column -and the whole opinion page -was ended recently by my hometown paper, over legitimate concern for my well-being due to several anonymous death threats they received about me in the days after Charlie Kirk's killing (even though I had not said a word about it). So now I am back to the days when my opinion pieces only appear on my own blog. It is incredible how violent things have gotten, and how quickly, and the degree of absolute rage on the right.

I am reminded of a clip from The Joy Reid Show six days ago. She summed it up perfectly, but I disagree with her final assessment. I am going to paste a lengthy quote from her statements below, plus a link to the actual segment.

"Why are y'all so angry? You have the White House. You have both houses of Congress. You have a Supreme Court that is completely obedient to your president. They're willing to give him unlimited power. They're willing to say that he can take Seal Team 6 and kill anybody he wants.... they're willing to say that ICE can racially profile anyone they want. You guys have everything you want -you have legal racial profiling, you've ended DEI, you've ended affirmative action, you have everything. Why are y'all so angry? You've banned all of our books. You've banned Black History. You've banned the 1619 project. You don't have to compete with women for jobs, you've chased them out of the military... you've gotten rid of all the Black History in the museums, museums are terrified... they're afraid to tell the real history. People who work for the federal government are afraid to say the word black. You've canceled black scholarships, I guess you're damn near ready to get rid of HBCUs... What more do you want? What are you so angry about? ...You've almost got the pilgrims again -you can come and cough on the Natives and wipe them all out... yet you're still so angry. I genuinely don't understand it."

I'm with her so far. The MAGA right has literally everything they wanted, yet they are still frothing at the mouth in fury, demanding liberals be fired or shot or both. What is the source of that anger?

Reid has a theory. "What y'all are angry about is that while you've gotten everything you wanted on the right, we on the left won't give you love for it, we won't respect you for it, we won't hail you for it. You want us to fete you, you want us to embrace you... you don't just want to run us and tell us what to do and tell us what to think and what to read and tell us what history we can have... what you really want is to sit at our table... you're mad at us because we do not want to be with you."

While there may be some truth to that, it does not explain the depth of MAGA rage. They don't really care if we like them or not. They don't want to be in our club, or have us in theirs. There is something deeper at work.

"Making America Great Again", for many people, means returning to the social structure and mores of the early 1950s, before the Civil Rights Movement. A period of white male dominance. True, all of those people are not white (though a good 95-99% of them are) and not all are male, but they are all invested in that patriarchal racial hierarchy of yesteryear, and either want to be white-adjacent if they are minorities, or seen as good obedient submissive women. Either way, it is an appeal to the protections they perceive to get from a racial patriarchy.

They are invested in the structure that, essentially, this country was built on, and feel threatened by efforts to move away from that structure. Even, and in some ways especially, by us folks that Reid called "the spicy white people".

They are angry because they've even HAD to take over the government and use the force of law to return us all to yesteryear. Their position should have never been threatened or questioned to begin with. They're not mad because they want us to love them, they're mad because THEY WANT US TO KNOW OUR PLACE AND KEEP IT. And they expect us to be obsequiously grateful for even being allowed to be in that place at all. They are not sad little schoolchildren crying because the other kids are excluding them for their rudeness -they are Eric Cartman, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Respect my authoritay!"

Any hint of resistance to that authority on our part -or even questioning the rightness of it -must be crushed immediately as harshly as possible. "Those people" need to learn their place.

This was the impetus of the wave of violent racial pogroms after WWI that started with the Red Summer of 1919 and culminated in Rosewood and Tulsa later. In almost every single case, the riot started when a group of racist white folks were enraged at the sight of a black veteran in uniform, comporting himself with dignity like he was equal -being "uppity".

As the Compromise of 1820, establishing a dividing line in the country between slave and free states, was being debated, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams had some thoughts. Those who mouthed platitudes about loving freedom, and even of admitting slavery was wrong, were still taking action to preserve it. About such people, Adams said "They have betrayed the secret of their souls." That secret being- they liked being "superior." And they began agitating for a war to preserve that superiority.

Some of my conservative friends are going to read this and say I am full of crap. To them, I say look deep into your soul and ask yourself why YOU are so angry, even though you're getting everything you said you wanted. And share your reasons with us. Meanwhile I have some conservative friends who are NOT filled with the same sort of rage. What is the difference? What do some carry inside themselves that others don't?

Think about it.

  

--Troy D. Smith 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., nor are they connected in any way with his job- they are his own opinions on matters of public concern, and an expression of his First Amendment freedom of speech.

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