A message for the new year of hope and new beginnings.
Growing up in America, I felt safe, lucky, and proud of our democracy. Turns out those feelings were not lifetime guarantees in the land of the brave.
The first time I began to seriously question my safety and my government was September 11, 2001. I was thirty-three, a first-time mother focused on my growing family, career, husband and a new home we had just purchased and planned to move into later that week. I also had a two-year-old toddler, which meant my world outside my workday revolved less around global affairs and more around snacks, nap schedules, and preventing a tiny human from finding creative ways to injure himself. In fact, the movers were scheduled to help us begin packing and prepping for our move that day.
I woke up that morning to silence. That alone was alarming. Our home overlooked both the San Diego Bay and the airport, places normally defined by constant motion and noise. Both had been abruptly shut down. The stillness was unfamiliar, unsettling and eerily deafening, causing my husband to instinctively turn on the television. Something we never did in the morning as we rushed to get our toddler ready and safely dropped off with his nanny on our way to our respective offices. Mine at a music internet startup and my husband’s at Hewlett Packard.
I wasn’t all that engaged in politics at that point in my life outside of digital music regulations and licensing related directly to my job. I’m not proud of this, but the truth is I didn’t vote in the 2000 presidential election. Between raising a two-year-old, building a career, and trying to keep life from spinning out of control, I didn’t care enough to invest the time or energy to get to a polling station. I took my democracy for granted.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack that complacency vanished.
I didn’t realize in the moment, but as I watched a commercial airliner strike the second World Trade Center live on TV, then seeing the first tower give way minutes later, collapsing into smoke, fire, and chaos, my understanding of life, safety, and patriotism was being irrevocably rewritten. As a parent, the thought of all those families losing loved ones made it feel unbearably close to home. I was witnessing the death and destruction of 2,996 lives on American soil. The deadliest terrorist attack in history. These were dads and moms, sisters and brothers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. People with families like mine, living ordinary lives, going to work, boarding planes, never imagining it would be the last ordinary thing they’d do.
Although politics barely registered for me before that day. If I thought about it at all, I considered myself a moderate Democrat. When asked, I said I supported Al Gore, and in 2000 I sincerely assumed he would win with or without my vote. I was uneasy with the Bush administration and what I saw as its war-hawk instincts, but I paid little sustained attention. Yet in the days that followed the 9-11 attack, I felt something unexpected: gratitude and relief at seeing the President speak with clarity and resolve to the nation and to the world.
I instinctively trusted both the President and the government to do what was right in 2001. It did not matter that much to me if he was a Republican or a Democrat, what mattered is that he sincerely represented all of us regardless of party alliances. I had faith in our institutions and the moral resolve of our leaders to do what was right for national security and ultimately for me and my family’s safety. I believed the President when he said,
“Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.”
Although I was shaken, I was proud to be American and felt relatively safe in the knowledge that we would stand together as a nation and with our allies. Our President in 2001, like most others before him, was rising to the occasion and standing up for the entire nations’ best interests and national security. I took him at his word when he closed his speech with,
“This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.”
On September 12, 2001, I trusted my government to do what was right.
Two and a half decades later, that trust has been steadily dismantled: a decades long war in Afghanistan sold as defense and abandoned in disaster with the Taliban restored to power; an invasion of Iraq justified by lies and leaving chaos in its wake; a Great Recession where corporations, CEOs, and banks were rescued while millions of Americans lost their homes, jobs and futures; a pandemic that exposed a willful war on science bringing back measles, death and disease long since eradicated; a radicalized Supreme Court that stripped women of fundamental bodily autonomy; an insurrection whose architect was never prosecuted and rewarded with a return to power just five years later; an oligarchic class that openly bought the media, influence, policy, and immunity; and the open capture of our government by a xenophobic, Christian nationalist movement that has militarized homeland security and turned it inward, against its own citizens. This is just a sample of the most atrocious abuses of government in the last 25 years while I have been paying attention.
This is not democratic erosion by accident. It is collapse by design. Mostly architected by what used to be considered the Republican party and the conservative think tanks their donors fund.
January 2026, I no longer feel safe. I no longer trust my government to do what is right.
But I have hope and here is why…
In the years after the Bush administration, I began paying closer attention to politics. Listening more carefully to politicians, researching their policies before I voted, and reading history books with a new intensity. I’ve always loved historical fiction, but now I find myself diving into the real history behind the stories. My not-so-secret secret is that one day, I hope to write one myself, and I will.
That habit taught me something crucial: democracy is always evolving, always imperfect, and often painfully slow to correct itself. Our nation pivots from disaster to greatness, but usually only after enduring tremendous pain.
Consider the Gilded Age, when unbridled corporate power and the robber barons created stark inequality, eventually plunging the nation into the Great Depression. That crisis sparked the New Deal, a government that empowered people rather than corporations, creating Social Security, bank regulations, insurance protections, and unions. Reining in greed and empowering the common man. Truman and Eisenhower expanded international alliances with NATO and built infrastructure, even as their era carried the shadow of McCarthyism. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson reacted and pushed human rights forward. While The Great Society programs brought Medicare, Medicaid, education funding, public broadcasting, and landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Immigration Act. These reforms created a powerful, growing middle class with safety nets that made life comfortable. These programs and government was working to make life in America better, but admittedly not without some budget strain.
The 1970s ushered in a new set of crises: the protracted Vietnam War, an oil crisis, and stagflation. Calls for lower taxes and deregulation grew louder. Wealthy interests funded think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, reshaping economic debate and policy. In the 1980s, the wealthiest Americans regained decisive power under President Reagan’s “Reaganomics”, trickle-down economic policies which involved massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations, widespread deregulation, reduced social spending, and pro-business policies that favored private wealth over public investment. The result was a boom for the affluent and a national shift toward individual enrichment and supply-side economics. Wall Street and the greediest capitalists returned to power with Reagan, and made it clear they intended to stay, and profit.
Through it all, I’ve learned that democracy is not static. It bends, it falters, it rebuilds. History shows that progress is rarely linear, and the road to justice, equity, and stability is littered with setbacks. But also, with remarkable recoveries.
Paying attention, understanding the patterns, and engaging with the past has taught me that while democracy is fragile, it is never beyond repair.
History also gives us a roadmap. It shows that true greatness requires more than intelligence or ambition. It requires morality to override greed, reflection, grit, compromise, and empathy. Most importantly, it demands leaders who are daring yet humble, and willing to adjust, to listen, to do what is right. Franklin D. Roosevelt grew up wealthy, sheltered, and self-centered. Before polio struck, patience, empathy, and perseverance were not his nature. Life, disease, reflection, and compromise forged the character that delivered the New Deal and pulled the nation from the Great Depression. That humbled, wiser FDR is the type of leader we must seek today.
Our government’s past and present is filled with greed and incompetence. Today, we face a familiar danger: an administration driven by an insatiable lust for power and propped up by a greedy oligarchy. But this is exactly the kind of moment the Constitution was built for, and it still places power where it belongs: with us.
“We the People” must pay attention, speak out, show up, peacefully protest and vote. We must hold those in power accountable, demand leaders with character over brawn, empathy over greed, and the courage to elevate the public good over private profit.
Our satisfaction and trust with our government has eroded significantly since the 60s. The majority of Americans know that the current administration and much of the congressional leadership are morally hollow and resistant to change.
But that is not enough reason to despair. It is our call to action. We must use every tool, checks and balances, freedom of speech, and most importantly our vote to replace them and lift leaders who embody the values we need in both our state and Federal governments.
The next FDR is out there. We must find them, support them, and insist that morality, empathy, and public service come first.
I do not feel safe today in a country I love. But I am not afraid to use my rights to step up and speak out, because I remain hopeful for tomorrow. Because it is too important, and if we pay attention, act, and hold power accountable, America can still be the government for the people, by the people, and of the people. And that is a future worth fighting for.
There are no guarantees but there is hope, and I intend to embrace and act on that.
