WHAT HAPPENS NOW

We know who he is. The question is who are we?

It’s a new day in America.

We’re starting now from a new conversation: one in which it’s fundamentally established that Trump has created the foundations of an authoritarian government. Also, according to the President, they’re “just getting started.”

It’s taken a while for Americans to wake up to the level of assault on our democratic freedoms that this administration represents. But we’re there now; a critical mass of Americans has made its way to “Hell no!” Trump’s policies do not reflect the views of the majority of Americans, he in fact did not win a “mandate” in November, and Donald Trump is not our king. Our task now is characterological: will we have what it takes to rise to the extraordinary challenge of effectively resisting this threat to our democracy? It’s definitely doable, but it will not be easy. We need to be as passionately convicted and as fiercely committed to our goal of protecting our Constitution, as those in Trump’s administration are to destroying it.

Ever since January 20th Trump and his minions have been on a rampage, marching through every sector of our society they can get their hands. With the President spewing executive orders like they’re the normal mode of governance, they’ve dismantled federal agencies; mined Americans’ private data; given near total power to an unelected ketamine-addled gazillionaire known for telling Joe Rogan that “empathy is the greatest weakness of Western civilization;” sought to dictate what universities can and cannot teach; abandoned our allies; shown favoritism to Russia in a brutal war that yes, they started; initiated an international trade war; taken over the direction of cultural institutions; extorted law firms; withheld humanitarian aid for the poor, the sick and the hungry both here and around the world; kneecapped scientific research; sought to nullify Congress; ignored judicial orders; and shaken down the UAE for billions of dollars that will go into the private coffers of the Trump and Witkoff families.

The totalitarians have made it through the door.

As horrifying as all this is, none of it should come as a surprise to anyone who’s been watching America closely over the last few decades. The problem is, too many have not been. Speaking of ill winds that produced this authoritarian storm, a friend very connected to the Democratic elite told me recently, “They thought they could contain it.” Yeah, right. Notice how different that is from, “We thought we were addressing the underlying causes of anger and despair that made our country so vulnerable to this.” I’ve repeatedly quoted Franklin Roosevelt’s words that “We won’t have to worry about a fascist takeover in America as long as democracy delivers on its promises.” My point was, we were not heeding his words.

For decades, the origins of fascism have been festering in America, but to put it bluntly, those elements are simply not visible from the Hamptons. The donor base of the Democratic party has been blind to the level of pain and suffering produced by chronic economic struggle among millions of Americans. They’ve done too little to address that suffering, arrogantly underestimating the danger it posed to the long term security of our country. From tens of millions without adequate health care, to an unsustainable dearth of economic and educational opportunities for the average American, to an obviously rigged economy in which the rich kept getting richer and the poor kept getting poorer, factors that should have alarmed anyone with an eye toward responsible governance were minimized by the establishment masters who ran things. Democratic elites drinking white wine and nipping at baskets of prosciutto and brie at fundraisers for their establishment candidates thought they had things under control. In my experience, anyone who bothered to speak for a few minutes to the caterers, servers, or gardeners outside would have known otherwise.

In the 2016 Presidential primary, two candidates said to the American people, ‘Your rage is justified. The system is rigged against you.” Those were Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the difference between them being that Bernie would have done something about it. The minute Hillary Clinton said, ‘Let’s continue the success of the last eight years,” she lost that election. Millions of Americans, including many who had voted for Obama, said, “What success, lady? I’m drowning here.”

I wasn’t surprised when Trump won the first time, because I had seen the anger that was out there. In the years since, I saw something equally dangerous to Democratic electoral prospects: rampant despair. Whatever successes President Biden achieved, he did not fundamentally restore America’s middle class or assuage the societal wounds that its destruction had created. For decades our democracy has not been delivering on its promises, and the rise of a political strongman who says he can fix everything was the most predictable thing in the world - both times. Despair is always prelude to the rise of an autocrat. As a friend of mine said after he had attended a Trump rally, “People will go for false hope before they’ll go for no hope.”

And here we are.

The first thing we need to do is stop listening to the pseudo-sophisticates who got us here, most of whom are understandably quiet right now anyway. Theirs is a politics of the past, and it needs to stay there. Those who drove us into this ditch do not know how to get us out of it.

Which means - and this is a positive thing - we have the opportunity to begin again. Whether we are sticking with the Democratic party or choosing to work through other channels, the chance exists to rebuild and reconstruct. And we must. The power to forcefully say “No” to Trump’s antics is rising - from judges, legislators, Governors, Attorneys General, lawyers, universities, and - most importantly, from regular everyday citizens. But none of this will work long term unless we’re simultaneously saying “Yes” to something else. No point in resisting fascism, if all we do is go back to the ruthless neoliberalism that made room for it to begin with.

Adam Smith, free market capitalism’s primary architect, said it could not exist outside an ethical context. Yet that’s exactly what happened. An economic order devoid of any moral restraint in the face of species and planetary suffering became the governing principle of our society, overwhelming the democratic and humanitarian values without which our nation has no soul. “Where there is no vision, the people perish” is a statement of fact. Lots of money made for a few people at the top who routinely exploit those at the bottom, is absolutely not a vision. Liberty and justice for all, absolutely is.

We can do better. We can re-envision the world.

Just as after the Depression, and after WW2, the United States government initiated significant changes to help prevent the recurrence of such disasters, we too must make major, fundamental changes in how we operate going forward. It will be difficult winning the electoral victories necessary to rid ourselves of the new authoritarianism that Trump and his political allies represent. It will be difficult, but we can do it. Americans have never surrendered to threats to our freedom before, and I know in my heart we’re not going to do it this time.

But beating Trump at the ballot box will not be enough. The seeds of his authoritarian vision have now taken root in mainstream politics, in ways that would have been thought impossible not too long ago. And they are likely to outlive his time in office. The only way our country will survive this is if we are willing to grow within ourselves the vision of a new America.

How this will happen is not nearly as important as our commitment to making it happen. The most important work is going on inside us. Are we willing to devote as much of ourselves as the task at hand requires? Because it requires everything. Are we willing, in the words of Lincoln, to “think anew, and act anew?” Are we willing to evolve, both personally and societally? If enough of us can honestly say yes, then we will be okay…or at least our children will.

That’s a big ask, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Madeleine Albright, in her book FASCISM - A Warning, made this very insightful statement: “The desire for liberty may be ingrained in every human breast, but so is the potential for complacency, confusion and cowardice.”

We know who Donald Trump is. The question the answer to which will determine our future is, who are we? The people we have been are the ones who created this mess. Only the people we are capable of being can transform it.