On the first Monday of November – Election Day eve – my father would have turned 100. Election Day frequently fell on his birthday over his almost 87 years. He took voting very seriously, as did my mother (who would have been 99 in August), and they instilled in my sister and me a deep respect for the sanctity of an institution so threatened these days.

Both were born toward the end of what has been called the “Greatest Generation” of Americans: those who served in the military during World War II but also were shaped as youths or young adults by the Great Depression.

My father saw action in Europe in 1945, in the last months of the war, and remained in Germany with the occupation army. During that time, he visited the infamous and horrific Dachau concentration camp near Munich not long after it was liberated by the Allies. I don’t know what condition the camp was in when he was there, and he never really talked much about what he saw. But I know that it made a lasting impression on a pretty innocent 19-year-old kid from suburban Chicago.

He returned home, married my mother, and the two moved to the University of Mississippi, where he got a pharmacy degree on the GI Bill. There they witnessed firsthand the Southern Jim Crow era at its height, and their eyes were opened to the evils and injustices one group of human beings can impose upon another.

Whatever their views were before those experiences, they returned to the Midwest with enlightened opinions on racial and gender equality and social justice — which only intensified over time. This was not easy for them, and for the rest of their lives they were at ideological odds with many friends and family members on these issues. To their credit, though, they managed to maintain close connections even with those with whom they had the strongest disagreements and still advocate strongly and ceaselessly (especially my mother) for the DEI causes so intensely under attack by the current administration.

Both have been gone for more than a decade; I still miss them terribly. But part of me is also relieved that they didn’t have to witness these past 10 years, and especially the last 10 months. As much as I regret that my mother, a lifelong Cub fan, missed celebrating their 2016 World Series win, I honestly don’t know how she could have survived election night a week later, so intense would have been her horror and dismay at the outcome.

I do know that, were she still alive, she would have been marching in last month’s No Kings rally in Glenwood Springs, along with the thousands of us other folks dubbed “terrorists” by the MAGA minions — even if I had to push her in a hospital gurney.

Thinking about them and the rest of their Greatest Generation cohorts, I have to wonder what those others would have made of what Trump and his enablers have been doing this year. I’m sure a good number of them (one of my uncles included) voted for him in 2016. But would have they again — especially given his two impeachments, multiple felony convictions and close association with Jeffrey Epstein?

I like to think that those would have been tipping points, and if nothing else they would be as appalled as my parents at the actions of this current administration. I have to believe that most of them would recognize the parallels between the fascism they fought against 80-plus years ago and the authoritarianism this administration seems hell-bent on imposing on us. How could even my folks’ most conservative childhood friends not compare the federal immigration agents currently terrorizing residents in their suburban Chicago hometown to Nazi storm troopers?

The question is: How many of us, who have the power to effect change, also see this? If the results of this month’s off-year election are any indication, maybe enough of us are. Across the country, anti-Trump candidates convincingly won gubernatorial, mayoral and other contests, and California voters overwhelmingly passed a congressional redistricting proposition.

Here in the Valley, school board candidates Tammy Nimmo and Kathryn Kuhlenberg won by wide margins over their politically conservative opponents, the latter having been backed by significant outside campaign contributions. In addition, several tax initiatives easily passed, which will generate additional revenue for early child care, schools and fire protection.

It’s too early to tell how this election’s outcome will affect next year’s midterms, but for those of you wondering about health care, food accessibility or the high cost of living, perhaps a recent incident at the White House can serve as an indicator of the administration’s response — this during the longest federal government shutdown ever. A man in a group visiting the Oval Office suddenly collapsed with a medical emergency. All there bent down to help him; all except one. In a photo, Donald Trump is seen standing behind his desk, turned away, a look of indifference, or possibly annoyance, on his face. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this pretty much says it all for me.