How democracy could survive the Trump attack if voters awaken!

By Donald A. Collins | 22 June 2026
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

A book published last year entitled “The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives” offered valuable instruction about how our democracy could survive its current challenges.

A recent article enthusiastically reported how the authors gave penetrating insight into how a democracy works, and what actions citizens need to take to stop Donald Trump.

The article entitled “Historians Warn U.S. Democracy’s Survival Depends On This Key Civic Skill. And It’s Disappearing”

It begins,

As the United States nears its 250th anniversary, two historians of the world’s longest-lasting democracies say the country’s fate may depend on whether Americans can rediscover a declining civic skill: compromise.

“We have to figure out a way to compromise, to strike bargains,” Josiah Ober, a Stanford University political scientist, historian, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said when asked how the U.S., as a democracy, can last another 250 years. ‘Without bargaining, the whole collective self-government thing goes down the tube.’

Ober and fellow historian Brook Manville have become experts on this, having studied what worked, what failed and what lessons modern democracies can take from Ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and the founding of the U.S. Their findings were published in their book, ”The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives.”

The Trump administration has scheduled a series of high-profile events ahead of the 250th-anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

‘We’re not in the worst shape,’ Ober said of the U.S. today, but there are signs similar to ones seen before other democracies fell apart.

These include infighting among citizens, extreme political polarization and a decline in civic engagement and education, he and Manville said.”

You can read the entire article here.

The authors doubtless could see early on where the Trump administration was headed, but their important perspectives are particularly apt at this time to empathize why democracies doesn’t survive or why they fail us as is so fully covered in their book.

The main points in this book are highlighted in its title with the words “civic bargain” as citizens frequently are constantly confronted with challenges presented and whether to accept those bargains. Whether to accept or deny as the citizens of Minneapolis did against ICE.

Unfortunately, the authors point out that civics knowledge has been too often ignored or untaught to our citizens. A poll reported that 47% of Americans could not name the three branches of our federal government. The book takes great pains to suggest ways that this ignorance could be improved, but improvement will not be a quick solution but requires a carefully organized long-term policy.

Trump is well on his way to authoritarianism using every possible means of dividing voters through intimidation, claims of hidden enemies, and other common practices cited in the above article.

The authors have aptly summarized ways citizens can use to help restore confidence in our government. Of course, by Number One voting, but also by helping organizations which bring us together such as charities, social clubs, and showing up for public events, such as parades or peaceful protest against government overreach, such as the ICE invasion of Minneapolis and its continuing attack on immigrants.
One great builders of cohesion between so many people of all political, ethnic and ideological persuasions are the big athletic events at which large segments of the population are committed to their teams. The perfectly recent example of course is that 2 million people showed out on the streets of New York when the Knicks won their first basketball championship in some 53 years.

Immigration has always been vital to our country’s success but was demonized by Trump and others. There is a present shortage of a new arrivals, many, who bring many needed often special talents!

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Los Angeles, CA, has spent over 60 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of 17 books: “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”, “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”, “Common Sense: When will Trump be Impeached, Indicted, and Exited?”, “Trump–unrestrained dangerous liar!”, “Our Ethnic Mix May Save Us!” and “Trump will be gone before November 3, 2026!”.

The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives | Policy Stories (Ober)

Josiah Ober | The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives | Notre Dame CCCG

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