by Michelle Bogdan-Holt
I was the first person in my family to go to college. I was born in Memphis, but my mom’s side of the family came from near Shiloh National Park in southern Tennessee, generations of working-class Southerners who taught me decency and faith, even as they carried the complicated inheritance of a region still reckoning with its past.
My dad’s grandparents immigrated from what is now Serbia and Croatia to work in the mines of Bingham Canyon and the Tintic Mining District. He was a Vietnam veteran who worked on cars, hunted, collected guns, and was a proud member of the NRA. He believed in responsibility, honesty, and country.
I come from people who didn’t have much but who told the truth and stood up for what was right. From them, I learned that strength isn’t loud, and that good people can see the world differently and still share the same hopes for their families and communities.
Because of that, I can often see both sides of an issue. I understand where fear comes from, and I know that people’s beliefs are shaped by their experiences.
But something has shifted. We’ve stopped trying to understand one another. Politics has turned into a loyalty test instead of a conversation. Truth, accountability, and decency, the values that once kept democracy steady, are coming apart, and too many have stopped noticing.
I’ve been a Democrat my whole life, but I’m tired. The party I believed in feels reactive instead of visionary, and the political climate as a whole has grown harsh. Somewhere along the way, empathy got mistaken for weakness. But compassion isn’t weakness. It’s courage.
We are living in a reckoning between fear and freedom. Power has replaced principle. Outrage has replaced empathy. And exhaustion has become our greatest threat.
But there is still time to turn toward one another, to listen more than we shout, to care more than we condemn. The future of our democracy will not be decided by politicians or parties, but by the everyday decency of people who refuse to give up on each other.
Michelle Bogdan-Holt, Logan
