Williams: Democracy is under assault, and not just in Ukraine. We need to stand our ground here.

"Russia is our friend" and "the South will rise again" were chanted in tandem several years ago in Charlottesville by torch-carrying defenders of the statue of a fellow white nationalist, Robert E. Lee.

Lee waged a frontal assault against the U.S. government, not unlike the mob who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a presidential election, egged on by a wannabe autocrat. If our nation still cannot distinguish between traitors and patriots, we should not be surprised at our slide toward fascism.

When Vladimir Putin called his invasion of Ukraine a "special military operation," he sounded like Republican apologists who maintain that the violent Capitol insurrection was "legitimate political discourse."

Save the fledgling democracy in Ukraine?

It's an open question whether we can preserve democracy here.

A majority of those surveyed say American democracy is "in crisis and at risk of failing," according to an NPR/Ipsos poll released in January, as reckless Republicans erode faith in our democratic process by clinging to the lie of a stolen election.

How did we get here?

Claudio López-Guerra, a political scientist at the University of Richmond who specializes in the study of democratic institutions, cites the numerous cultural changes that have taken place in democratic societies over the past three decades as the world has become more integrated.

"Some segments of the population feel that their way of life and their identities are under threat. This makes them more open to support leaders who promise to restore their lost dominance — to make the country great again," he said.

Therein lies the appeal of the Donald Trump slogan, with disastrous implications for U.S. democracy. For too many folks, whiteness has come to trump loyalty to nation.

In a move Ronald Reagan never saw coming, Russia has become a beacon of the American Right. Richard Spencer, the University of Virginia graduate and white nationalist, was quoted in the Washington Post calling Russia "the sole white power in the world."

Trump all but grabbed a megaphone and pompoms as he cheerleads Putin's bloodthirsty aggression, calling the dictator a "genius." This is in typically fawning character.

As president, Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian officials, constantly undermined NATO, took Putin's word over U.S. intelligence that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and was impeached for his attempted arms-for-political-dirt-on-Biden blackmail of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

As the Russian invasion unfolded, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon embraced "anti-woke" Putin for his hostility toward LGBTQ people. Putin, a former KGB agent, no doubt would smile at Gov. Glenn Youngkin's use of civilian informants to police the classroom and snitch on teachers whose lessons are deemed too "divisive" (read h-o-n-e-s-t) about racism. The current book-banning fetish would also get Putin's seal of approval as folks feed their resentments instead of nourishing democracy.

In doing his invasion calculus, Putin undoubtedly noticed the disunited state of an America politically incapable of responding cohesively to challenges. The existential threat of climate change and the lingering toll of the pandemic haven't come close to galvanizing us.

Tragically, our nation's unjustified 2003 invasion of Iraq robbed the U.S. of much of the moral authority it could use at this heartbreaking moment. The former Soviet Union, despite its appalling human rights record, was always eager to call out America's abysmal treatment of its Black citizens. More recently, Russian disinformation campaigns have inflamed our racial climate more than any schoolhouse lesson on systemic racism.

In the meantime, automation, deregulation, globalization and the dismantling of the welfare state have dramatically increased inequality, López-Guerra said. "This has led to a reasonable perception that traditional democratic institutions — traditional parties, establishment politicians, and so on — are not delivering, so people become more open to try something else. The result is polarization and social cleavages that are ready to be exploited by politicians."

Add the outsize role money has played in politics since the Reagan era, and the result has been an erosion in the democratic process, López-Guerra said. "Political leaders would not be able to get away with all these violations of democratic norms if they weren't sanctioned by their wealthy donors."

Those cynical politicians and their donors have us fighting over masks, vaccines and Critical Race Theory while the planet burns and they warm their hands over the fire.

No one is more aware of America's moral failings than its Black and Indigenous people, and yet both have felt that the ideal of America was worth fighting and dying for. People across the globe have been drawn by this nation's promise. We're at our best when we expand equality and opportunity.

If we don't defend democracy within our borders, we will fail it beyond them.