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 Eugene 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