By Sheila Suess Kennedy
August 25, 2026
A story my mother used to tell really sums up the state of the American experiment.
A young boy failed to talk. His parents took him to specialists, all of whom said he was normal, but still, he never spoke. Then one day, when he was nearly five, he looked up from the breakfast table and said “This toast is burned!” His mother was astonished. “Why haven’t you ever talked before?” “Well,” he responded, “Up till now, everything’s been okay.”
A lot of Americans who haven’t been “talking”—who haven’t been civically engaged, who haven’t bothered to vote, who’ve been quiet because from their standpoint, everything was going along okay—have suddenly realized the toast is burned. Now, they want to talk, but they aren’t sure who to talk to, or how to frame their concerns.
In less than three months, America will hold a truly momentous election. The result will depend upon the degree to which a majority of us understand how badly the toast is being burnt–the degree to which a rogue Court and a greedy and criminal administration are destroying what I have called “the American Idea.”
The coming election will not pit Republicans against Democrats. As a good friend of mine–a man who spent several years as a high-ranking elected Republican–likes to say, the Republican Party we used to know no longer exists. It has been replaced by a cult that has hijacked the name.
The coming election will also not be a contest between Democratic Socialists and so-called “mainstream” Democrats. We simply do not have the time or bandwidth for Democrats’ usual circular firing squad.
There are a number of things that the coming election is not. It’s not a referendum on the fewer than 1% of trans girls playing sports on women’s teams. It isn’t a referendum on whatever “woke” is thought to mean these days. Given the profligate spending of the Trump administration, it won’t involve different approaches to fiscal responsibility. In fact, the coming election will be almost entirely devoid of policy argumentation.
Instead, it will determine the continued existence of the America in which most of us grew up.
We will go to the polls–hopefully in very large numbers–to decide whether this country will continue to pursue the two elements that have historically defined us: liberty and civic equality. (Note that I said “pursue,” because we have yet to perfect those elements, but they have always been the national goal.)
The Founders gave us a system that was intended to protect our “inalienable” rights. They didn’t believe those rights were granted by government; instead, they believed the proper function of the state was to protect those pre-existing human rights. When a government can decide who has rights and who doesn’t, rights become privileges to be awarded to those favored by a given administration.
The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly added civic equality to the Bill of Rights. In America, all of us have the right to be treated equally by a government bound to the rule of law. A government that privileges citizens of a particular race or religion is unAmerican.
Those are the fundamental American principles that are at stake this November.
American voters will decide whether to return to office the assortment of cultists, cowards and White “Christian” nationalists who have empowered the most corrupt and incompetent administration in American history–an administration that has wrecked the economy, damaged public health, diminished America’s global reputation and authority, trashed the “people’s house,” and rewarded its sycophants while engaging in a campaign of retribution against those who dare to stand against it–an administration that has trashed the nation’s Constitution, ignored the restraints of the Bill of Rights, and dared anyone to do anything about it.
This is an administration that believes itself to be a monarchy, headed by a profoundly ignorant, mentally-ill and increasingly senile malignant narcissist.
If the polls and surveys are right, some sixty percent of Americans know that the toast is burnt. If those Americans come out to vote, and if Trump’s efforts to suppress the vote fail, we can eject the administration’s fellow-travelers and begin what will be an arduous and lengthy process to recover our country, and repair the systemic inadequacies that facilitated this disaster.
Sixty percent is a majority, but there is something very wrong with America’s civic education when forty percent of us do not disapprove.
If the unAmerican forty percent turn out, and the sixty percent spend their time and energies squabbling with each other, we really could lose America.
This former Republican says Vote–and Vote Blue No Matter Who.
Sheila Suess Kennedy is Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. As an attorney, she practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis before becoming corporation counsel for the City of Indianapolis in 1977. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 1th Congressional District and in 1992, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environment al Affairs in 1998.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
