The following is the opinion of the author and only the author. The following statements do not reflect the opinion of the Keynote, its staff, or Keystone School.
Trust in democracy.
Three words have echoed in my mind since the election on November 5th, 2024. I have been raised to trust democracy. I was so confident in our democracy that I signed up to work the polls. I showed up to Clear Spring Elementary at six in the morning filled with that trust. When I left that night, I still held that trust close. It has been hard in the past week to keep that trust.
When I was ten years old, I trusted democracy to protect women. The first election I consciously remember, I went to bed in 2016 believing Hillary Clinton was the next president of the United States, and I woke up to the reality of Donald Trump as the 45th president. When I donned my pink suit, I trusted democracy to keep me safe. I had held pink fibers close as a shield—a shield I believed could carry a woman to the White House.
When I was fourteen years old, I trusted democracy to protect me. I sat in my eighth grade classroom clothed in a mask and wrote “Joe Biden will be president” over and over again in the back of my physics notebook. My manifestation techniques certainly did not win the election, but eighty-one million people’s votes did.
At eighteen years and forty-one days old, I trusted democracy to protect itself—I did not believe the American people would pick a felon as the president of the United States of America. I trusted the American people had moved past the notion that a woman could not effectively run our country. I trusted the democratic system I was participating in for the first time, a shield of an “I Voted” sticker across my rights.
At eighteen years and forty-nine days old, I’m not too sure I should trust democracy with all too much. Should I trust democracy with my body and my rights? I do not know if I can trust democracy with the world my generation is set to inherit. I do not trust the choice our democracy made—I do not trust Donald J Trump to act in the best interest of our country.
At the end of the day I must have trust in democracy, but the key part of that element is democracy. The January 6th riots were not a display of a strong democracy with trust given to public officials, and I fear a presidency controlled by that mob. Donald Trump is now going to be the President of the United States again, and I’m praying that I get to vote for the next president in 2028. The chance of using the constitutional provision to send Congress home to create recess appointments to his cabinet is highly likely—a cabinet based not on quality or knowledge but a test of loyalty. What does a Fox News Host have in common with the governor of South Dakota, Elon Musk, and a Former Congressman with sexual misconduct allegations? They will all be loyal to Donald J Trump.
I have never held much respect for Mike Pence. Yet, here I stand incredibly proud of the man. Mike Pence trusted democracy on January 6th. He let the American people make their choice, and he respected that choice. I worry that the Mike Pences of the Republican party are fading away—the ones that trusted in democracy rather than the infallible Mr. Trump.
Ultimately, we will go through this. Donald Trump will become the next president of the United States. Democracy has made its choice. The choices ahead of us will define the next era of our nation. In 2028, will Trump-era politics still define us? For how long will they define us?
There are many things I wish I could tell Donald J Trump. Most of all I wish I could ask him this:
Do you believe in Democracy?
Should I believe in Democracy?
I have been waiting for a change in our country since I was ten years old. When 2016 rolled around, to me it was just about a woman being president. It was seeing someone who looked like me in power. In 2020, it was about the rights of queer youth across our country, the rights of people of color, the rights of women to make their own choices with their bodies. In 2024, it is about all of that and more. It was about democracy. I have grown up in Trump-era politics. The past eight years and their campaigns have come to define the political landscape of our nation. I wonder if we will come back from this.
In my mind rings James Madison’s Federalist 10:
I ask you to sit with that statement.
I want you to sit with it and continue to
Trust in Democracy.
