Trump Is Threatening the Very Things that Saved Democracy in the 1940s

Hate and division are stoked as a matter of political strategy. Our moral and mental defenses are fogged by a constant barrage of propaganda.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt | Library of Congress Harris and Ewing collection via Picaryl

My friends, if democracy has faced a comparable challenge, it was in 1940, after France had fallen.

Americans gathered around their radios in fear as they learned the terrible news.

Paris fell on May 14. A puppet government was installed and a negotiated surrender…