In recent months, Granite Staters have gotten louder about preserving democracy. With a former president back in office, activist groups across the state have taken action in the streets, and at the State House, demanding democratic preservation. But what does that mean? To discuss this we have Dr. Christina Cliff, associate professor of political science at Franklin Pierce University. Welcome, Dr. Cliff.
This article has been edited for length and clarity.
By Rosemary Ford and Caitin Agnew
Melanie Plenda:
To start us off, several activist groups in the state say “we need to preserve democracy.” What do they mean by that?
Christina Cliff:
Different people have different meanings at different times. Democracy, by definition, is government for the people, by the people. What they're protesting is what they see as an erosion of things like checks and balances, particularly with executive orders essentially bypassing Congress. That seems to be the democracy that they're concerned about, because those executive orders and those executive decision-making processes seem to cut out the people requirements of U.S. democracy.
Melanie Plenda:
Why do people think our democracy is at stake? What rights are being jeopardized, and who is concerned?
Christina Cliff:
I think there's a variety of different groups and individuals concerned for different reasons. You know, particularly LGBTQ+ organizations are going to be worried about transgender bans that we've seen in the military and in athletics. There's going to be immigrants, both lawful and undocumented, that are concerned, particularly with the recent ICE raids and potentially changes to birthright citizenship. There's a variety of different people concerned.
There's other decisions that more broadly affect people, like changes to environmental protection policy and changes to tariffs. All of those have the potential to impact various groups of people, and that's really where their concern is coming from — that, individually or collectively, they feel that things are changing, and they don't have what they consider their usual say in those changes.
Melanie Plenda:
Some people say democracy in the U.S. has always been flawed. Are protestors trying to preserve something broken, or trying to reinvent it?
Christina Cliff:
I think there's a variety of groups in the United States that would tell you exactly how flawed U.S. democracy has been, particularly people of color and women, for instance.
Democracy is fundamentally flawed. It is going to be, because you have people who are fundamentally flawed. Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst form of government in the world, except for all the others that have been tried. It's going to be messy. It's going to be problematic. Are the protesters trying to preserve a broken system? A little bit, because we don't like change, but are they also potentially trying to fix the broken system?
I think some people felt like they had made some strides in fixing some of the things that they thought were flawed in our democracy,and now those changes are being rolled back. And I think, really that's where a lot of the concern and the anger comes from that.
Melanie Plenda:
There's been several protests this year, including a nationwide “No Kings” protest on June 14th. What was the purpose, and who is involved?
Christina Cliff:
It was individuals. It was groups. The whole purpose was to sort of collectively let the Trump administration know that they didn't believe he should have or should be taking as much power into himself as he has been, again, primarily with executive orders. It was intended to be semi-reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution, demanding rights.
Melanie Plenda:
A number of people believe we are in a time of crisis. What might they be referring to? And how do we navigate what truly is a crisis?
Christina Cliff:
Crisis gets defined differently by different people. Like the Trump administration has argued repeatedly that the reason they're making executive decisions are because there are current, immediate crises. They said this with the immigration enforcement, and just in the last several days, sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C., saying that crime was a crisis there. The Trump administration is arguing that those are immediate, current crises for other folks.
I think some of the perception of crises outside of the presidential administration is a broader issue of our politics and our society.
One of my bigger concerns is that what we're creating in terms of damaging democracy and damaging the political environment is polarization — not of our elected officials, but of our average citizens. We've been making people pick sides. And if they pick a side that isn't ours, we reject the person — not the idea, not the beliefs. We reject the whole person, and what essentially the average person is starting to see is an extremist approach to politics, where it's not just you have to be on my side, but if you're not on my side you're a bad person and you're a threat.
That's becoming normalized, and that's what has the potential, as much as anything else, to damage our democracy. If you cannot have the people work together towards a common solution, you can't have democracy. You won't have democracy.
Melanie Plenda:
While we are on the topic of protests, when have we seen protests similar to the ones we are seeing today in the U.S.? Was democracy at stake then? And what were they fighting for?
Christina Cliff:
The United States has a long history of protest and protest movements. Obviously, there have been some incredibly successful protest movements.
The Civil Rights movement, for instance, the protests against the Vietnam War had an effect, and more recently, the Black Lives Matter movements and protests started conversations. These protests have to start conversations, because conversations then lead to discussions. Discussions then lead to decisions, and then you fundamentally get change. But you have to keep in mind, too, the Civil Rights movement was decades long, right? The Vietnam protest took years.
That's one of the things with the current protest. You had the big nationwide No Kings protest, but if you go to any town in New Hampshire, on the weekend, you might see eight to 10 people in town square with their signs and stuff. You have to appreciate their dedication, but that's not necessarily the kind of protest movement that is going to demand or make change.
Melanie Plenda:
Is there any significant difference between those protests and today's?
Christina Cliff:
I think part of it is that not everybody sees the current environment as a crisis. The number of people that see this as a crisis is significantly different. When you had the Civil Rights era movement, it wasn't just people of color that were protesting — they had allies. When you had the anti-Vietnam War protest, it wasn't just the hippies, it was everyday people coming together and making a statement.
I wonder about whether or not this particular movement can get allies outside of the dedicated protesters. Can they pull people in? I think that's a fairly significant question for the protesters that want change.
Melanie Plenda:
You held an event at Franklin Pierce University called “You Might be an Extremist if …”. You briefly mentioned the polarization of picking a side. Tell me more about that. And how could that contribute to a failing democracy?
Christina Cliff:
Extremist ideology is basically the idea that there is an “out” group that is a threat to your “in” group, and extremists define those “out” groups however it fits their narrative. But one of the reasons I gave that talk on campus was that one of the questions I wanted people to ask is, “Do you tend towards thinking about politics in particular, in an extremist fashion? Do you base someone on what you find out about somebody's voting habits, judge them and judge their entire character based on that?”
Now, everybody has potentially had these thoughts at one point. That doesn't make you an extremist, but it's something that we need to be paying attention to — are you separating yourself out? Part of the problem is, once you start doing that, you reject any possibility that the other people have valid points. You have convinced yourself that your group, that your ideas are right and necessary and that everybody else's ideas are wrong and dangerous. That’s not a functional place to be if you want to have a democracy.
That's very much what I worry about. It has become normalized to think that way. We have politicians, we have pundits, we have average people on the street thinking that way and talking that way. We need to be aware that we're doing it.
Melanie Plenda:
Recently, there was a violent scuffle involving a neo-Nazi group and peaceful protestors at the State House. How does freedom of speech fit into a democratic society?
Christina Cliff:
You have to have freedom of speech. Do you have to have the American version? Not necessarily. Freedom of speech is one thing. Fistfighting is another. That's not freedom of speech anymore. That's a physical altercation.
We give hate groups space because we can't come together and condemn the hate speech. Does anybody think that their giant flag and their masks and what should be embarrassing rental truck getaway — did anyone think that was cool? No, they don’t.
But there's a lot of people across this political spectrum that aren't willing to say, “You’ve got freedom of speech all day, but we're not going to tolerate and support and acknowledge that.”
We have a number of organizations in this state that do this kind of thing on a semi-regular basis. We've seen protests at drag story hours. We've seen protests on the street. We've seen banners hung from highway overpasses. It's to get attention.
There was a moment a few years ago dealing particularly with school shootings, called the “No Notoriety Movement” — don’t name them, don’t give them the air time, don’t give them attention. I feel like we’re missing that boat.
It's a polarization. Again, it's people literally feeling like they are right and everybody else is wrong. And not only are they right, but they need to defend and demand change that fits their narrative.
Melanie Plenda:
Dr. Cliff, Can a democracy survive without a shared sense of truth?
Christina Cliff:
Maybe. It’s not going to be a democracy that the vast majority of people want. It's more of an oligarchy, where whoever shouts the loudest and demands that their truth be right would be in charge, and then everybody that follows them would be — but you'd also see that rotate over time. You'd see that fluctuate. I
I do think this goes a little bit along with the polarization. We do have to come back to the realization that there are objective facts in the world. You may not like them, but they exist. I think misinformation and disinformation, accidentally or deliberately, spreading inaccuracies has become so prevalent that we don't take the time to pay attention to whether it exists. It’s helping fuel that there is no truth.
There are objective truths. We're so bombarded with content that is either misconstrued or just false that we're having a hard time deciphering where that truth exists. That's really about people working on their information literacy, taking the time to take a look and research stuff. Again, we’re all very busy. We don't necessarily have all the time in the world, but if something's really important to you, take the time to make sure you know what it's about.
Melanie Plenda:
Lastly, what can Granite Staters do to help our democracy move forward?
Christina Cliff:
If you want to protest, protest. It's a public effort to draw attention to an issue that is important to you. Get out and try to rally support for your cause. But I do think, on a secondary level, think about how angry you want to be about politics. Do you want to be mad? Do you want to be furious? Do you want to push your kids, their friends away from politics so that we have a whole generation of people who are like, “Oh no, I saw how bad that gets,” and opt out? We already have a low young voter turnout rate.
Think about how you want to engage in politics and do you want to be angry. And the second part of that is — don’t take the easy way out and opt out. Pay attention, because otherwise you may end up in a system that you really, really don't like and isn't healthy for you. So you have to work at it. You have to be engaged, and you have to figure out if you really need to be angry.
Melanie Plenda:
Thank Dr. Christina Cliff for joining us today.
“The State We’re In” is a weekly digital public affairs show produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication at Franklin Pierce University. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.