Feeling Our Way Back to Democracy

The FXBG Advance 7/7/26 Midday Read

By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST

Taylor Smith/Unsplash

A friend told me recently about his 30‑year‑old daughter. She’s liberal, politically aware, and furious. Not mildly upset, not rolling‑her‑eyes frustrated—furious. She watches what Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have done to our institutions, to our neighbors, to the basic idea of truth, and her whole body tenses up. She snaps at relatives, doom scrolls late into the night, and talks openly about giving up on this country.

I don’t blame her.

If you’re paying attention, it’s hard not to feel shaken and even furious about what’s happening. Courts bending toward one man. A president treated as a king. Violent extremists rebranded as patriots. Basic facts about elections and public health turned into weapons. Being rattled by all of this isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a sane response to a country that is clearly off‑course.

And let’s be honest: you don’t have to be a Democrat to feel this way. Many independents and lifelong Republicans here in the Fredericksburg area are just as troubled by lawlessness, corruption, and contempt for basic norms. Whatever party we come from, we share an interest in honest government and a peaceful transfer of power.

The trick is what we do with those feelings.

Over the last few years, I’ve come to think about it in four simple steps: feel, name, aim, act. It’s not a magic formula. It is, however, a way to keep our outrage from either burning us out or turning us into the very thing we fear.

Feel

First, we have to feel it.

For my friend’s daughter, that means admitting she’s scared and angry, not just “annoyed.” For a lot of us in Fredericksburg and the surrounding counties, it means letting ourselves register that something is genuinely wrong—not just with one politician, but with a whole set of norms and guardrails that used to feel sturdier.

Many of us were raised to treat emotion as a sign of weakness or unseriousness. “Keep a stiff upper lip.” “Don’t let them see you sweat.” I spent much of my professional life in institutions—the military, the federal civil service, consulting—where composure was part of the job description. What I’ve learned, though, is that pretending not to feel doesn’t make the anger or fear go away; it just drives them underground, where they come out sideways. We bottle it up, and it leaks out as cynicism, sarcasm, or quiet withdrawal from civic life.

So yes: feel it. Say out loud, “This scares me.” Say, “This makes me furious.” You’re not crazy. You’re awake.

Name

Second, we need to name what, exactly, is wrong—who’s doing what, to whom.

This is where we move from “everything is terrible” to “here are the specific ways our democracy is being weakened.” Is it the deliberate spread of lies about elections? The threats against school board members and election workers? The tidal wave of disinformation on social media? The steady assault on the idea that no one is above the law?

When my friend’s daughter and I talked, I asked her to try something: “If you had to list three things, not thirty, that most enrage you about the current situation, what would they be?” It took her a moment. Then she said: attacks on voting, cruelty toward immigrants, and the rewriting of January 6th as a noble cause. Once she named them, her anger started to feel less like a fog and more like a map.

Naming matters because it keeps us from turning on each other. If “America” is the villain, or “all politicians,” or “half the country,” then everyone becomes the enemy and nothing can be fixed. When we name particular actions and actors, we can hold them accountable without giving up on the larger experiment.

Aim

Third, we aim our energy at things we can actually influence.

This is where a lot of us get stuck. We flip between two channels: national cable news and national social media. Both are designed to stoke outrage, and both are almost completely beyond our direct control. No wonder people feel helpless.

My friend’s daughter lives in a community a lot like Fredericksburg. She has a local registrar. She has a county board. She has a school board. She has neighbors who haven’t yet tuned out. Those are the targets that matter.

Aim means asking, “Where does my effort punch above its weight?” For some, it’s registering new voters in Spotsylvania or Stafford. For others, it’s monitoring a county or city council meeting. For some, it’s teaching kids how to spot disinformation before they repost it. For others, it’s simply refusing to share unverified rumors, even when they flatter “our” side.

And we don’t have to do this alone. When we join civic groups, parties, faith communities, veterans’ organizations, and grassroots networks that share our concerns, we multiply our strength. One voice is easy to ignore; a roomful of neighbors, or a crowd on the courthouse steps, is harder to brush aside.

We don’t have to do everything. In fact, we can’t. But if each of us chooses one or two specific fronts where our skills and relationships give us leverage—and we join others who are doing the same—we stop flailing and start doing politics again.

Act

Finally, we act.

We vote, and we disavow disinformation. Those are not small things; they are the bare minimum of democratic responsibility. But they’re not the maximum either.

Acting means:

· Voting in every election, not just presidential years.

· Protecting the integrity of that vote by supporting honest politicians and election officials, and pushing back against those who would intimidate or replace them.

· Correcting lies when we hear them, calmly and firmly, even when it’s uncomfortable.

· Joining or strengthening the local organizations that will still be here long after any one national figure is gone.

· Showing up together—in town halls, rallies, and public hearings—so that independents, traditional conservatives, and Democrats who care about the rule of law can see they are not alone.

When my friend worries aloud about his daughter’s bitterness, what he’s really afraid of is that her anger will curdle into hopelessness. That she’ll decide this country isn’t worth the effort. That’s a risk for all of us.

The answer isn’t to tell her to calm down, or to “be more positive.” The answer is to honor her outrage as a sign of moral health—and then invite her, and ourselves, into the disciplined, often unglamorous work of repair.

Feel. Name. Aim. Act.

We can’t control what a president, Congress, or the Supreme Court does tomorrow. We can control whether we bottle up our fear, whether we let our anger spray in all directions, or whether we channel it toward the patient, local work of winning our country back—one precinct, one conversation, one election, one coalition at a time.

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Phil Huber is a retired Army Reserve colonel, a federal civil servant, and a retired consultant who writes on civic education. He lives in Fredericksburg.