What are we doing out here? Democracy works only if voters are well-informed, engaged, and committed to getting to the polls.

Throughout 2024, conservative broadcast and social media misinformed audiences about crime, immigration, the economy and more. People hunkered in their social media silos. Democrats bumbled. Sycophantic pols who previously labeled Donald Trump delusional and/or criminal lined up behind him. Billionaires anxious to increase their riches praised Trump and lavished millions on him. My faith in our democracy plummeted.

Now we are saddled with a megalomaniacal, venal, narcissistic leader and his cronies who are threatening to sic the military on peaceful demonstrators at home, as well as on Mexico, Panama and Greenland; taunt, abandon or even attack our allies; mimic and embrace autocrats, impose Christian fundamentalism and onerous tariffs on Americans; cease efforts to protect public health, public lands and environmental integrity; and decimate public education, among other atrocities.

In July 1846, Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail because he refused to pay six years of a delinquent poll tax at a time when America was waging what he viewed as an unjust war (Polk’s Mexican war) and while slavery was still practiced. According to some accounts, Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”

As Donald Trump is about to take control, I lay awake at night, at a loss for what to do. I recently sought advice from my Congress members, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Rep. Jim McGovern. I sent this email to their offices:

“Dear (Senator, Representative) I am writing to ask a few serious questions. What can be done to prevent Trump’s use of military force to take over Greenland and/or the Panama Canal? Do the Democrats have any strategies? For more than 6 decades, I have venerated truth, compassion, science and equality. How should someone with those principles react to the kakistocracy of billionaires about to take control of our country? As we enter the second Trump presidency, are ‘good Americans’ to act like the ‘good Germans’ of the 1930s, i.e., roll over in acceptance of mounting tyranny and lawlessness? I would appreciate a more detailed response than ‘Thank you for contacting my office.’”

I am still waiting for more than the auto-reply “Thank yous.” Withholding taxes as a form of civil disobedience is no longer an option for most of us. But it is looking ever more likely that legitimate political opposition is futile. If some form of civil protest lands people in jail, it will fall to all of us to look in the mirror and ask not what are they doing in there, but what are we doing out here?

Are we ready for that?

John Varner lives in Amherst.