Close to Home: Please, don't ask me to keep quiet about Donald Trump

Many of our friends have been saying since the presidential election various versions of “I don't like all this conflict; can we please just focus on the positive/quiet down/give the man a chance?”

It's one thing for a conservative to make that argument. It's a form of trying to assert more territory in the political arena. But for a liberal - someone who believes in women's rights, religious and ethnic diversity, environmental protections, labor rights and other issues - to make the argument is, well, confusing.

A lot of people were concerned, after the divisive campaign that Donald Trump ran, that his strategy would be classic “divide and conquer.” Instead, what we're seeing is even more insidious: “shut up and be conquered.”

The people who voted for Donald Trump may have had faulty information about him or about Hillary Clinton, and some of it may have been put out by foreign powers. But those who voted for him did so freely. The Electoral College is arguably obsolete, but it's the current rules of the game. It's hard to argue that Donald Trump is not legally the president.

But he's just the president. He's not the dictator. The founders of this nation created a structure in which checks and balances among the branches of government would keep any one branch, and in particular the executive branch, from becoming all-powerful.

In ratifying the First Amendment to the Constitution, they added another check on the government: the voices and collective presence of the people and the press - and the political pressures of those voices and that presence.

The founders of the nation assumed that public life would be a vigorous, even raucous conversation about what we should do as a nation. The rights of free speech, peaceable assembly, and petitioning of the government exist specifically so that people who disagree with the proposals or actions of the sitting president and Congress can state their opinions and make their arguments. Elections are not the completion of a political process. They're one step in a continuous process.

Donald Trump, and the Republican majorities in Congress, would like to replace the Affordable Care Act, which has saved lives, with a plan likely to cost more and do less for people. They'd like to roll back environmental laws that have improved our air, our water and the land we live on. Many would like to change Social Security and Medicare in ways that would harm lower-income workers. Many, perhaps most, of them would like to overturn Roe v. Wade and take us back to the days of back-alley abortions and women dying from them.

Many would support laws and policies that would discriminate against women, people of color, Muslims, and just generally people who don't fit a 1950 view of the right folks. Many reflexively support police officers, even that minority of officers who brutalize citizens unlike themselves. They would like to take many actions that I find offensive and damaging to American life.

I plan to spend not just the next four years but the rest of my life arguing for a progressive nation that honors all of its members; that offers people who are facing hard times a hand up so they can succeed; that protects the disadvantaged, the displaced, and the discriminated against; that continues to make the American dream outlined in the Declaration of Independence possible for everyone.

There's no requirement to join the public debate about what we as a nation should be doing. If you choose not to, I will respect that. Specifically, when I'm a guest in your house, or if we're talking individually, whether face to face, on the phone or online, I won't bring up politics. I may well bring up politics in a more public setting, online or in person, where you're present. If it makes you uncomfortable there, don't feel obligated to read or listen.

Please, offer me the same respect. In particular, don't urge me to shut up. I have chosen to join the public debate, and I hope that my voice will have some effect. My role as a citizen is too important to me not to participate.

Bill Houghton is a resident of Sebastopol.