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To the Editor:

It became clear to me a number of years ago that if I failed to learn the life lesson in front of me it would come around again, and the price would be higher. This applied to whether it was the first time the lesson came up or the third. As a result, there have been times when I have been incredibly committed to “learning the lesson” so I could avoid the higher price. This time is one of those times. I am diligently looking for the lesson I need to learn so that a future threat to our democracy can be staved off, at least for a while. I am unable to foresee how difficult a more expensive lesson would be.

So far, three things have emerged:

• Feeling unseen and/or unheard is awful.

• Battling, tit for tat, I’ll squash you down and then you’ll squash me down seems to be an abysmal failure.

• Many people across the political spectrum seemed genuinely terrified that their way of life would/will disappear.

It has taken everything that has gone on before this point in time to bring us to this moment. With that kind of history and deep-rootedness, it will take some time to make decisions that will work better for all citizens of the United States as we move forward to strengthen our democracy. For too long it has seemed we have voted for gladiators to go into the arena to fight for us as opposed to doing the hard work ourselves of maintaining a participatory democracy. It may be time to bring Civics back to schools.

Jo Weaver

Zuni