Apathy is costing us our democracy, in Kansas and the U.S. Participation is the necessary antidote.

Visitors look out April 9, 2026, from the top of the Statehouse dome. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

Municipal officials from Overland Park, Leawood and Johnson County gathered on a cold Friday morning recently, dedicating new signage framing an ugly past. A Johnson County resident had discovered an “N-word” Creek on old maps and reached out to them. For the historically uninitiated, Johnson County offered an early stage for the nation’s unfolding Civil War drama. 

Kansas free soil advocates fought Missouri slavers over popular sovereignty here, and the often-bloody encounters earned us the name, “Bleeding Kansas.” Such clashes lit the Civil War’s fuse. To the credit of municipal government, it confronted the issue, convening years of meetings and inviting public input about how to move forward.  

We need similar courage and focus but on a wider scale to address an ugly present in our run-amuck Legislature, where the supermajority no longer bothers even pantomiming fairness. 

An understandable weariness has overtaken many of us in Kansas and beyond. Fed up with the pettiness and petulance of politics, people have retreated from civic participation. But this situation can no longer be ignored. What we’ve run from has not only pursued but overtaken us — in the form of bullying and anti-democratic behavior shown by elected officials. 

Consider what Kansas Reflector reported this past week in its Power Plays series. 

Opinion Editor Clay Wirestone wrote Monday about state senate and house leadership’s “disregard of carefully erected guardrails meant to ensure discussion, collaboration and concentration enables a bountiful bonanza of poorly drafted, one-sided, ideological and outright unconstitutional laws.”

He noted: “Lawmakers never face the music.” 

Tim Carpenter wrote about leadership maneuvering a bill attacking trans rights: “The most provocative manipulation of the legislative process, in terms of advancing the bill, was deployment of an opaque rule permitting any member of the House and Senate to take the floor, seek termination of debate and immediately compel an up-or-down vote.” 

Other stories covered an attack on Loud Light’s indomitable Melissa Stiehler for stating a manifest truth, leadership rushing through the session as a means of stifling debate and not allowing two Kansas medical professionals (one drove two hours to be there) to testify because “they were not on the list.” 

This supermajority behave as guardians of a plutonomy fixated on the insipid. They’ve denied poor people the modest indulgence of candy and soda and last year denied school children a resolution supporting Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day. 

In a cruel exercise of power this session, members forced through a bill celebrating a racist obsessed with targeting highly educated Black women and Black pilots. How patriotic in the face of last week’s successful splashdown of Artemis with a Black pilot at the helm. 

These politicians no longer fear the electorate. They even gave themselves a raise. 

This situation conjures a phrase from statesman Ben Franklin, who referred to this fledgling nation as “a Republic, if you can keep it.” 

I spoke at the Creek dedication ceremony referenced above, praising officials for facing the pain and awkwardness of our region’s past. I shared how a group of fifth graders and their teacher gave me a matted and framed photograph of Michaelangelo’s David.  

The watermark block of text over the image came from famed civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, who credited the late art critic Bernard Benson for noting that this David was the only one depicted before killing Goliath. 

It reads: “David is standing there, thinking like T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, Do I dare? He has the rock in one hand and the sling over his left shoulder, and he’s watching this giant Philistine come down the Galilean hills. 

“He is thinking, ‘If I throw the rock and miss, I am one dead Israelite. If I just wound him, I’m in the same position. But, if I hit him and kill him, I’ve done a great deed for my people.'”

The beauty of the image, Kunstler wrote, was that David “is portrayed in the exact moment of hesitation that comes to everyone when the idea crosses your mind that you might stand up and say something, do something, prevent the library from banning a book, stop the injustice or whatever it happens to be.” 

We’re in that moment right now. 

According to University of Pennsylvania professor Richard Beeman: “Democratic republics are not merely founded on the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.” 

A toxic mixture of apathy, self-righteousness and misinformation has poisoned our democracy. It’s up to us to decide what comes next. 

In closing my remarks, I mentioned how what you run from pursues you, but I added: “What you face, transforms you.” 

Register to vote. Organize to help nonparticipants become involved. Start hosting town halls. Call and write to your legislators. Do something. 

Because until you show the bully who’s boss, he’s going to keep telling you to “shut up,” and he’s going to keep taking your lunch money. 

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.