Ever-present. Commonplace. Practically mundane.

Remember when?

Tomorrow I will post about legal marketing, or business development, or the business of law. Tomorrow, business as usual. 

Tonight I post as a concerned parent, a concerned citizen. Not business, not as usual.  

Like many of you, my upbringing included inventions of which my kids have only heard stories. Pay phones. Compact discs. Stick shifts (though we will try yet!). Parachute pants. I could go on. 

Amid headlines from D.C., it seems possible that my children may speak of democracy as I do of pay phones. As something we had, once. Ever-present, commonplace, practically mundane.  

I mean real, thriving, free democracy. 

• Where Americans speak their minds, and businesses act within the law, without fearing reprisal from their government, because they know their rights will be protected and upheld by courts.

• Where no one, no matter their office, is above the law.

• And where we are a nation united under a constitution, The Constitution of the United States. 

Tonight this type of democracy clearly is vulnerable. 

I suspect at least one close friend thinks I am alarmist. I hope he is right.

A colleague I admire and respect welcomed this administration as better than the alternative. Does he now wonder over the same risks for his children that I fear for mine? 

• Publicly persecuted businesses. The administration and its enablers want businesses to be afraid–and to be quiet.

  
  

• Legal residents detained without charges. The administration and its enablers want people to be aghast–and discouraged.

  
  

• Executive eagerness to undermine and defy the Judiciary. And Congress–that co-equal branch–sitting on the sidelines, or worse, actively enabling. The administration and its enablers want us to be sickened--and demoralized.

Are we crossing lines after which there are no clear routes back?

Have we already crossed them? 

When the dust settles, if we are in fact left with a weaker democracy than we have known and that I, at least, have taken for granted, what shall we tell our children we did to contest what we all saw coming?

I'll start by asking questions such as these. Yet we cannot stop there.

Where is the next protest? I will stand up and peacefully demonstrate for democracy–if only to confirm for myself that it endures, and to remind myself I am not alone.

Will you join me? We can figure this out together as we go.