Twenty-eight years ago, famed science-fiction author Octavia Butler published her apocalyptically prescient bestselling novel Parable of the Sower, which illustrated what America would look like when climate change, economic instability, and a white Evangelical Christian fascist movement took hold and converged.

Sound familiar?

The eeriest part about this novel is the way in which cultural and political norms were slowly erased. There was no major war, no invasion; instead, a sense of collective lethargy set in across the nation, and things went from bad to worse. Religious fundamentalism seized the country, slavery was reintroduced, water was scarce, and all the social safety nets that the government once provided were rolled back in favor of privatization. If you could afford police protection, health care, the creation of roads and bridges, great—if not, you were out of luck. Butler was clearly ahead of her time. She combined her brilliant imagination with a keen understanding of human behavior to illustrate where the U.S.A. was headed if we continued our ostrich behavior of sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that what was unfolding before our eyes wasn’t happening.

Right now, America as we have come to understand it is unraveling. In this radically new normal world, doctors and health care workers are accosted for trying to keep the public safe, poll workers are threatened for counting votes, anyone who aides a pregnant person seeking an abortion in Texas can be sued, mass shootings are commonplace, and historic climate events are happening weekly. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright famously said regarding fascism, “If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, people don’t notice it. So I am concerned about chicken plucking.”

We all should be very concerned.

Contrary to what people think, America’s democratic erosion didn’t begin with Donald Trump; it began with the birth of the Tea Party as a response to a Black man having the audacity to think he could be president. It was the first time in modern history when White Americans were demanding to see the president’s birth certificate because in their minds even though Black Americans were brought here by their ancestors and built this nation, we certainly didn’t have a claim to it — let alone be permitted to run it.

President Barack Obama wanted to believe in the best of Americans as opposed to the reality of who they truly are. Better put: Obama is who America aspires to be while Trumpism is who America is and sadly has always been.

We are a country that made Juneteenth a federal holiday while criminalizing the teaching of critical race theory. We are a country that goes around the world scolding underdeveloped nations about democracy and women’s rights while refusing to pay women in this country equal to men and disallowing people with uteruses to make decisions about their own bodies. We’re a country wrought with blatant contradictions and saddled with elected officials who spend their energy gaslighting the public into believing all is okay and that if you just use paper straws and vote, all will continue to be well.

The reality is much starker.

Under Democratic presidents and congresses, we have witnessed the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the demolition of Roe v. Wade, and a rise in White supremacist groups. As our country grapples with multiple climate disasters, we have Democrats like Joe Manchin who are “uncomfortable with climate language” in a historic infrastructure bill and actively deny Black and Brown Americans access to the ballot in favor of upholding the filibuster. You see, it’s too easy to just slap the blame of where we are right now on Republicans and Republicans alone. The reality is that you teach people how to treat you, and most people will do their worst if unchecked — insert Trump’s criminal presidency and the January 6 insurrection as examples.

Like children, politicians need boundaries and accountability; otherwise, they will run amok.

The 243-year American experiment is facing an existential threat like we have never seen before. Voting alone will not save us. We turned out in record numbers during a pandemic, and instead of celebrating our resilience, Republicans are punishing Americans for daring to believe they have a voice in their democracy.

How can you change what you refuse to face? How can you build tactics for what you choose to willfully ignore because the reality is just too hard to swallow? Democracy isn’t stagnant. If done correctly, it evolves as often as the people do. It expands. It grows.

America is changing. The ground we once thought was stable is shifting beneath our feet. It’s scary and it’s painful like all births, but we must push through if we are to survive. Lauren Olamina, the heroine in Butler’s Parable series, said this, “All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.” What we change into, however, is still very much up to us, but only if we take our heads out of the sand and decide to get to work.

[alt|h/t]