It is difficult for me to understand why so many Americans seem to like seeing our country divided into factions on social terms (friends/enemies), by racial background (white, black, brown, blended etc.), by gender and sexuality (male/female, straight, LGBTQ-plus, etc.), socioeconomic status (wealthy/poor) and so on. Why are they not protesting against the Trump administration’s moves to dismantle our democracy?

They could be writing letters to editors, emailing or calling their elected representatives, attending town halls, and/or marching in the streets. Haven’t they realized by now, after more than 100 days in the White House, that Trump’s is not an administration, it is an occupation?

Donald Trump is first and foremost a real estate mogul and a television celebrity, and he has filled his cabinet with businessmen and women, very wealthy folks, many of whom are former entertainers and are inexperienced in the tasks set before them. The chief qualification for their new position is loyalty to Donald Trump. Loyalty translated means they are prepared to support his executive orders, actions, demands and rules regardless of how nonsensical, anti-democratic, unlawful, arbitrary or harmful to humans or to the environment they may be. Examples abound: annexing Greenland; making Canada the 51st state; allowing the deportation of immigrants with no criminal background; setting tariff policy — and changing it — at will; challenging the 14th amendment’s birthright citizenship clause; the firing of thousands of experienced federal employees and eliminating many of their positions; leaving agencies that provide essential services short-staffed and ill-equipped to fulfill their mandates efficiently and without long delays to their clients; threats to withhold government funding from medical and educational institutions because their philosophy is not in line with that of the present government.

The bold experiment in democracy conceived by our founding fathers almost 250 years ago has established that our government is designed to regulate the economy, provide a basic safety net, promote infrastructure and protect civil rights — all this that individuals cannot accomplish through their own resources.

Our country has remained whole and free through its Revolutionary War and War of 1812, its Civil War, two World Wars, and the wars of Vietnam, Iran and Iraq, giant demographic changes, and changes in wealth distribution. It has worked to improve the lives of its people through adhering to the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all humans have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to the Constitution, which spells out how those rights are to be upheld. Our democracy is not perfect — no human society or form of government can be — but our legislators have been doing their best by the people who elected them in free and fair elections.

What has gone wrong? What are Trump supporters thinking?

In my ninth decade — born and raised in these United States, offspring of a banker’s son and a farmer’s daughter, product of the public schools and a state university — I am dismayed (putting it mildly) by the president’s and his cabinet’s ignorance of American history, the workings of our democratic republic, and blunt distain for the principles of democracy. They must clearly favor authoritarian rule, and Trump supporters must also. The only rule that Trump follows is one of power and money.

I do unashamedly admit that I have taken the government I’ve known all my life for granted. I’ve now come to realize that living in a democracy is both a privilege and a responsibility. Our democratic government requires accountability, not only to the Congress and to the Supreme Court, but also to the people who elected them.

As a responsible citizen paying my fair share of taxes, I enjoy the benefits of Social Security, affordable health insurance of my choice, living in a safe neighborhood, having the availability of nutritious food and also the availability of antibiotics along with alternative health modalities, enjoying an environment that is becoming cleaner and infrastructure that is improving, however slowly, because of government efforts through the taxes that I pay.

I am expressing my views opposing the present government while I am still free to do so. I believe that the drastic and sudden changes that the Trump Occupation is making will impoverish the citizenry, provide us fewer opportunities to learn because of restrictions to public education, free libraries and books, leave us less healthy due to misguided health recommendations and restricted access to vaccines, make us consumers less safe from exploitation by greedy companies and financial institutions, and possibly less free to worship as we please.

We will remain stuck in a society weakened by divisions in ideology and by the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, its citizenry living in fear, uncertainty and unrest, and decidedly frustrated in our pursuit of happiness.

Two graphs appearing in Richard Wilkinson’s and Kate Pickett’s book “The Spirit Level” show that greater equality makes societies stronger. One graph shows that health and social problems are closely related to income inequality among rich countries. The other graph shows that health and social problems are only weakly related to national average income among rich countries.

All of this being said, the question remains with me: how can so many people seem to want to live in this kind of America?

On June 14th, Flag Day, I am going to display my American flag as I do every June 14th, but not on my flag pole. It will be taped to a front porch window upside down. I googled to find out if it’s possible to do this without showing any disrespect for my country. The information I found was that an upside down flag sends a message that the country is in crisis. So I feel comfortable in carrying out my plan, because I do feel that my country is in crisis. Maybe some of you reading this commentary will feel and do the same.

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Elizabeth Kochar lives in Saranac Lake.