Hats off to my favorite uncle and WW II vet, Leo Woodside. Uncle Leo was a Navy man and served in the Pacific for most of the war. He was my mother’s older brother who along with my grandmother jumped into the breech when my mother suddenly died for which I will be forever grateful.

I remember him proudly marching with other vets on Memorial Day and receiving the applause of people lining the sidewalk in our small town in Maine. For young and old, and especially the vets, it was a festive and solemn occasion, complete with the playing of taps and a gun salute. For me and my friends, not yet teenagers, it was an opportunity for us to weave our bikes in and out of the parade and enjoy ice cream and candy.

The normalization of threat, intimidation, and violence in our culture and politics should be a matter of grave concern to tens of millions of democratic minded Americans. It is a growing danger, galloping across our country at this very moment.

Driving (and legitimizing) this spike and spread of violence to intimidate opponents and settle political conflicts is a powerful right wing, racist, amoral authoritarian party and movement. If they can, Trump and gang would like nothing better than, to paraphrase Clausewitz’s famous words, turn violence into merely the continuation of politics by other means.

Like any cancer, it must be resisted – and resistance can take many forms, not least at the ballot box. Otherwise it will only get worse and become a springboard to what at one time was an unimaginable future for our country.

The interesting thing in the Economic Policy Institute report is that the surge in strike activity this fall is a continuation – perhaps on a new level – of a trend that began in 2018. No less interesting is the challenge to link the strike surge with struggles in the political/electoral arena. The energy of one would amplify the energy of the other. It seems to me that the leadership of the AFL-CIO is positioned to play a special role in this regard.

A big challenge in the coming two years is to convince people that the future of democracy, as we know it, will likely hang on the outcome of next year’s midterm elections and the presidential elections two years later. The existential threat to democracy posed by Republican rule may seem evident to you, but it isn’t in my experience evident to lots of other voters – tens of millions I’m afraid. They don’t necessarily see the existential threat to democratic governance and democratic rights were Trump and gang back in the driver’s seat.

How to change their perception isn’t so simple however. But I know one thing for sure. It won’t happen if Congressional Republicans, along with the help of Manchin, Sinema, and a few other Democrats, are able to block the main legislative initiatives of the Biden administration.

Joe Manchin’s refusal so far to sign onto Biden’s reconciliation bill blocks the passage of transfomative legislation that breaks from the old governing orthodoxy of the past 40 years. It would, if passed, make the lives of tens of millions much easier as well as address climate issues and much else.

On the other hand, if it doesn’t make it through Congress, the political, not to mention economic, fallout could be severe if tens of millions come to believe that democracy and democratic governance can’t “deliver.” And thus not worth defending.