"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."
- "Concord Hymm", Ralph Waldo Emerson
At North Bridge in Concord, MA on this day in 1775, American revolutionaries engaged with British Army troops under Lt. Col. Francis Smith, igniting the American Revolutionary War. Eight years later, the war was won and the 13 British colonies became the first states of the United States of America.
Today, we face the greatest domestic threat to our democracy in the person of mentally unstable authoritarian Donald "Absolute Authority" Trump, who has shown his contempt for institutional and moral norms, and who has gone about undermining the checks and balances that the Founders established to prevent authoritarian rule. We'll overcome that threat if we organize, unify, and vote in massive numbers like we did in 2018. Two weeks ago in Wisconsin, the voters came out in the midst of a pandemic to show their Rethuglican legislators that voter suppression wouldn't work. Follow their example.
