Where to start when describing July?

We could start with Independence Day — the day 54 brave individuals severed ties with a monarchy that ruled without their consent. How ironic that, 284 years later, almost to the day, the U.S. Supreme Court created a modern-day monarchy by ruling that presidents are above the reach of the law.

The conservative roadmaps for Trump’s second administration also came into public view. The list of retrograde policies in Trump’s platform, in Project 2025 and in Project 47 include draconian anti-immigrant measures; the replacement of civil service employees with political loyalists; sweeping deregulation; and an educational agenda that will sanitize K-12 curricula, mandate “school choice” and threaten academic freedom in universities. The Department of Justice will be weaponized against political opponents, and efforts made to severely restrict ballot access and reproductive health care. Barriers between church and state will be weakened.

That brings us to the assassination attempt. We note that the assassin was a young Republican male with unclear motives and that the target was a candidate whose rhetoric has actively promoted political violence. Notably, Trump declared that there were “fine people on both sides” when talking about the death of a counterprotester during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. He also summoned the Jan. 6 mob as part of his plot to overthrow the election — something for which he has never apologized or offered sympathy to those who died. Rather, he promises to pardon the participants, whom he calls “patriots.” The courts placed gag orders to stop his open invitations to violence against witnesses, judges and jury members involved in his criminal and civil trials. Promises to weaponize the Department of Justice against political enemies, his alliance with the NRA and threats to use the military against domestic protests also suggest his love affair with violence. Efforts to blame the incident on Democrats who have called out his behavior is classic gaslighting. Rather, his calls to violence simply came full circle.

In the aftermath, the Republican National Convention is portraying Trump as a martyr, saved by a god who supports their dystopian vision of a time when America was great. Voters and the GOP conveniently ignored Trump’s conviction as a felon, civil judgments of sexual assault and fraud, his incoherent rants about sharks and boats with electric batteries, and active threats of retribution and revenge. The selection of JD Vance to be vice president suggests a doubling down on hardline positions against reproductive rights, immigration and support for Ukraine and NATO. Of most concern, he has vowed to support future efforts to overturn elections they don’t win.

Where to go from here? Instead of ignoring, denying and hiding our nation’s culture of violence, racism and misogyny, we must acknowledge their deep societal roots. Our love affair with guns and the NRA has resulted in the deaths and injury of thousands every year. Yet we refuse to place even modest restrictions on gun ownership and use, elevating the Second Amendment over our inalienable right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Digging deeper, it’s not hard to find the real source — a perceived need to protect against “other.” The election of a Black man to the presidency fueled gun purchases and Trump’s election. That underlying racism can be traced to the arrival of slaves in 1619 and is still openly embraced by many. Immigrants are the current boogeymen. Efforts to take reproductive autonomy from women also smack of toxic misogyny and the need to keep women in their “place.” Heaven forbid that a woman of color become president.

This month’s Utah Supreme Court ruling gives hope, as the justices clearly stated that we — the people — have the right to legislate government reform through ballot initiatives. The Better Boundaries case in question protested the Legislature’s gutting of an initiative that ensured fair, nonpartisan voting districts drawn according to specified guidelines such as respect for natural boundaries and communities of interest. Thus, our future votes may have greater impact. Meanwhile, Republican legislators, in protest, may try to make ballot initiatives harder to pass, while still enacting laws that ban books, restrict our right to control our bodies, and pretend that Utah’s population is monochromatic and uniform in its beliefs and needs.

In summary, we must oppose all violence as a solution to our problems. Ballots, not bullets, are more powerful, even as the GOP seeks to limit ballot access and contest valid election results. Further, we must not stop speaking the truth regarding the inherent dangers in the white-Christian nationalism promoted by Trump and his allies. We cannot allow them to gaslight us into silence by proclaiming that we are the problem. Vote while you still can. Speak out. Our democracy and our freedoms depend on it.

Ellen Brady, of Murray, is the issues director for the Women’s Democratic Club of Utah.