OPINION: It’s time to wake up

When we’re around someone continuously over many years, we hardly notice their physical changes. I think the same applies to our perspectives on society, government and politics. We are so close to everything — especially with our 24-hour news blitz — that we might not be fully aware of how much our country has changed in only a few decades.

Imagine what it would be like for someone to regain consciousness after a 20-year coma.

A former U.S. president, who has been impeached twice, is facing federal charges for his illegal storage and handling of the country’s classified documents, and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.

Numerous individuals who worked for the former president have either been jailed or are facing criminal charges.

Several members of the former president’s political party, as well as a significant number of American voters, continue to support him unswervingly — no matter what he does — from denying the results of the 2020 presidential election to helping organize an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The U.S. Supreme Court and many federal courts across the country have been stacked to favor the former president and his followers, and election districts have been gerrymandered to the point that a popular vote means little. Voting suppression across America is rampant.

I’m certain that once awakened, the coma patient would be baffled by terms like “fake news,” “AI deep fakes,” “deep state,” “woke,” “tweets” and “MAGA Republicans.”

Scholars who wrote extensively about democracy, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, John Locke, Thomas Paine, as well as Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill, would be incredulous if they were alive today and witnessed, as the resurrected coma patient, what has happened to America.

Perhaps they might note that America’s population has grown too large for democracy to work as it was fashioned by the country’s founders. Or, that the power and influence of lobbyists from large private corporations have put a stranglehold on a congressional body that was designed to represent the entire population, and not just a select group.

Reading a current newspaper, the fully awake coma patient might experience despair and pathos for what has transpired during his long sleep. There might be a temptation to roll over and drift back into unconscious bliss. Or, he might feel outraged, pledging with a firm resolve to change things — to make democracy work once again for all Americans.

I submit that many Americans have been in a figurative coma, and that slowly, gradually, we’re waking up. We need to arise from bed with “renewed vigor,” as John F. Kennedy was known to say, and begin working earnestly to save our country. Our founding fathers told us long ago that participatory democracy is the only kind of democracy that works, and that would be sustainable.

We’re waking up. It’s time to stop yawning and get to work. A good start would involve paying more attention to issues of the day, voting from an informed position and not receiving all of one’s news from a single source.

A lifetime Alaskan since 1946, Frank E. Baker is a freelance writer who lives in Eagle River.