Democracy As We Know It

We took democracy for granted.

For those of us who were born into it, stories of revolutions and uprisings were just that—stories. They belonged to textbooks, history documentaries, the distant past. The images of people risking their lives in the streets, of governments silencing dissent, of families torn apart by war—these were lessons, not warnings.

Stories of war and scarcity—of food rationing, black markets, and nights spent in silence, too afraid to speak—were things told to children to teach them gratitude. White terrors, dictatorships, regimes that ruled with iron fists—those belonged to other countries. They were tragic, yes, but foreign. They were not part of our history. They were not part of our identity.

Until they were.

No one ever believes it will happen to them. No one imagines that the rights they’ve always had—the ones they’ve never had to fight for—might not always be there. That laws could shift overnight. That a peaceful protest could turn into something else. That words spoken too openly could come at a cost. That neighbors might start looking at each other differently.

And yet, history has never belonged to other people. It has always belonged to all of us. The question is never whether democracy can fall. It is only ever a question of when, and who will let it happen.

What if democracy has never been a guarantee?

What if it was always something that had to be fought for?

How far are you willing to go to defend it?