Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, March 21, 2025 "An Attack on the Essence of America"

A Liberal Dose

“An Attack on the Very Essence of America”

Troy D. Smith

I don’t know about you, but my wife and I had a scary afternoon on Saturday. Watching the Nashville news, and even national broadcasts, as they namedropped streets and roads right near our neighborhood… huddled in the center of the house, away from windows, watching as radar tracked the storms via apps on our phones. It was scary, but we dodged a bullet this time -other people, in other places, didn’t. People were killed. I was worried about our next-door neighbors, whose previous home had been destroyed -and who had been seriously injured -in the Cookeville tornados of 2020. I’m sure many of you had a similar experience last weekend. I also thought about one of my grad students, whose thesis project -nearly finished -uses weather data to map out the most endangered parts of White County in flooding situations, which have been escalating in recent years.

So think about this. The federal programs, like NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), that enable us to see those storms being tracked, on TV or online, are among the many things targeted for crippling cuts by Elon Musk. So, too, with federal disaster relief if the worst should happen. In fact, that student I mentioned would have had her funding cut, her education ended, and that project which could be so important for our community canceled if a judge had not issued a stay on Musk’s order to cut all research funding. Some of my friends can sit in their comfy chairs and say that the government is too big and everything SHOULD be cut, but if it actually happens they will have very bad days when the next round of tornados hit. Things like this are the whole reason we even HAVE government- to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare.

Speaking of welfare, let’s talk about social security. You’ve probably heard all the outlandish claims Musk and Trump have been making about hundreds of thousand of people aged 150+ being on the social security rolls, or dead people continuing to collect monthly checks. None of that is true. Much of it is due to the fact -a verified fact -that Musk’s tech bros didn’t know how to read the charts, and misunderstood them. You know, the guys who accidentally fired the people in charge of nuclear weapons, and who removed references to the Enola Gay because they thought it was a DEI project for gay people. So why do they keep spreading these stories even after they are proven untrue? To undercut the public’s faith in the social security system, to make you think it is rife with corruption, so that you won’t complain when they start cutting it, which has always been their goal. They’ve already fired half its employees and shut down several of its offices. When your mama’s check shows up late, or is half its regular size, or doesn’t show up at all, what are you going to do?

You know good and well this is not just Trump and Musk. It is the whole Republican Party. Remember in Genesis, when Abraham pleaded with God for Sodom and Gomorrah, and said “Lord, if only ten righteous people can be found there, will you spare the city?” Well, you’d be hard pressed to find ten Republican politicians who would stand up to Donald Trump, over anything. We couldn’t even find enough Republican politicians in our state’s General Assembly to stand up to Governor Lee’s school voucher scam. It is all about cutting everything to benefit the rich, and make them richer.

And despite the fact that I am an elected member of the Tennessee Democratic Party, I am willing to acknowledge that there are some in our party, nationwide, who don’t seem too keen on standing up, either. They want to maintain the status quo, keep their heads down, not rock the boat, and follow the same tired playbook that has led us to where we are. But there are plenty in our party, among the leadership and on the ground, who are ready to stand up and fight for you, the American working class… whether you voted for us or not. And that’s what we need. This is not the time to roll over, give up, or hide our heads in the sand. What we have been seeing these last few weeks is nothing short of an attack on the essence of what America was meant to be, and in a time like that we need fighters.

You may be big enough to take my freedom away by force, but you will never be big enough for me to just hand it over without a fight. We need fewer Chamberlains and more Churchills. To paraphrase Churchill during WWII: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and on the streets, we shall fight in the hills.”

We shall fight in these here hollers.

And we shall fight for YOU. Not for some billionaires.

Stay tuned.

--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