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When I was a senior at the University of Texas at San Antonio 23 years ago, my psychology professor told us that if we watched and wrote a debrief on the movie “Thirteen Days,” which dramatized the events of the real-life Cuban missile crisis, we would get our lowest midterm grade thrown out.

I’m glad I took her up on that offer, and I definitely recommend all of you do the same. There’s a scene in “Thirteen Days” that portrays civilian Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara micromanaging from the Pentagon the U.S. Navy’s blockade of ships headed for Cuba. When a cargo vessel attempts to run the Navy picket, the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. George Anderson, tells the closest destroyer, “Clear your guns.”

Overhearing this, McNamara explodes with alarm and rebukes Anderson: “I believe the President made it clear that there would be no firing on ships without his expressed permission!”

“Firing on a ship means attacking a ship,” the admiral shouts back. “We were not attacking that ship! We were firing over it … Get out of our way, Mr. Secretary! The Navy has been running blockades since the days of John Paul Jones!”

From the admiral’s military perspective, the only way to get a rogue ship to stop was to fire a warning shot. From the civilian secretary of defense’s bean-counting perspective, failing to just let the ship go on its way constituted an attack.

Allegorically speaking, that cinematic scold carries a lesson that applies today. We live in an era of post-truth narcissistic politics where elected officials want maximum control of optics and narrative. Anything less than total submission by the public or unqualified praise from the media counts as “an attack” on them.

In order to have a free and open society, we need to be able to speak critically and report courageously on what our elected officials are doing. 

It is not an “attack” to write commentary that we had concerns about something in the state budget. It is not an “attack” to report the way in which policies were made, priorities were set, or bills were passed. It’s not an “attack” to say you don’t like what an elected official did. 

These are, however, political warning shots to the Establishment that the public has a voice that counts and the free media has an important responsibility to uphold. When the ship of state is sailing off course and not responding to public calls to stop, a political warning shot in the form of objective reporting or criticism is definitely appropriate.

Can we get real? We really are living in a patriarchal nanny state when the scolding and browbeating is strictly one way from Hawaii government to residents but never the other way around. 

Example: I love how for the last few weeks blue information signs have been popping up around Oahu streets indicating the number of times drivers stopped for pedestrians. (Pro-tip: If you try to read these signs while driving your car, please be careful that you don’t run over a pedestrian in the process.) 

Are we also going to put a blue sign next to the Honolulu City Council indicating the number of times they voted to enact things the public ferociously told them not to pass? 

Will we put a blue sign next to the Hawaii State Senate indicating the number of things they funded that no one wanted? Of course not, because among technocrats and tyrants, the place of a citizen is to always be bossed around and to defer to power without asking questions.

But Hawaii is not a technocracy or a tyranny. This is a republic, a sacred place where laws are made legitimate solely by social contract and consent of the governed. Elected officials are not demigods or rulers by divine right, they are public stewards who serve at the public’s pleasure. In order to maintain the proper place of public control and elected representation, our media needs to be free to report objectively and our citizens need to feel open to criticize courageously.

We need to break free of the plantation mentality that our role is to just keep our heads down and mind our own business. Our elected officials took oaths to defend and uphold the Constitutions of the United States and of Hawaii. Those who can’t stand the sunlight of media transparency or the headwinds of public criticism have no business representing Americans, because there is nothing more un-American than believing one is a king who rules with impunity over servants.

Our elected officials inadvertently reveal how they operate when they react defensively to reporting or public criticism. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be worried about. The fact that some of them see a vast conspiracy, coordinated campaign or attack behind anything that challenges their authority suggests to me that they have a guilty conscience that someone might be doing to them what they do all the time to their opponents.

I’m sure in the narcissistic world of some elected officials, they’d be content if the news media only reported on national entertainers or doorbell videos of cute children greeting each other and never wrote anything about politics except to worship and adore those in power. But we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, where to remain free, one must always be brave and question authority and seek redress of grievances.

The more we defer to authority, the more we treat elected personalities like Instagram influencers. The more we keep our heads down and are content with puff-piece reporting, the more we lose our freedom and civic power in Hawaii. Democracy requires criticism and open reporting. Let’s stop being so sensitive in Hawaii politics, and let’s prove once more the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.