If Americans Wake Up, A Grand Reckoning Awaits

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich / Daily Kos

 

Robert Reich served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor in President Bill Clinton's administration. (photo: Getty Images)

 

"We are witnessing a neofascist nightmare of mindless cruelty, blatant attempts to silence critics, wanton destruction of much of our government, open racism and misogyny."

 

Robert Reich / Guardian UK

29 December 25 

About a year ago, at the start of the Trump 2.0 regime, a woman was about to pass me on the sidewalk and then stopped, turned toward me and almost shouted: “It’s a fucking nightmare!”

It has been a “fucking nightmare”.

But sometimes a nation needs a nightmare before it can fully awaken to long-simmering crises.

Martin Luther King Jr mobilized the nation against racial injustice by making sure almost everyone in the United States saw its horrors – on the nightly news, watching peaceful Black people getting clubbed and arrested for exercising their rights.

Were it not for that painful national exposure to racist brutality, we wouldn’t have gotten the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act.

Something similar happened in the first years of the 20th century when muckraking journalists revealed the monopolies, corruption and public-be-damned arrogance of the robber barons.

Were it not for that painful national exposure, we wouldn’t have gotten the reforms of the progressive era.

A similar dynamic is playing out as Americans witness the nightmare of Trump’s neofascism – its mindless cruelty, blatant attempts to silence critics, wanton destruction of much of our government, open racism and misogyny.

Trump has revealed himself in ways his first-term handlers wouldn’t allow – as a sociopath who posts AI cartoons showing himself shitting on millions of Americans who marched against him. A malignant narcissist unable to respond to the tragic killings of Rob and Michele Reiner without making it all about himself. A chronic liar who says prices are dropping when everyone knows they’re rising.

As Americans see all this, outrage has been growing. We are beginning to mobilize – not all of us, of course, but the great majority.

Record numbers of us marched on 18 October, No Kings day. Democratic candidates have won just about every special election and every mayoral and gubernatorial contest, and a remarkable number of down-ballot races in bright red states and cities. 

Maga is coming apart. Trump’s polls are tanking.

We are organizing and mobilizing with a resolve I have not seen in my lifetime.

The US had to come to this point. We couldn’t go on as we were, even under Democratic presidents. For 40 years, a narrow economic elite has been siphoning off ever more wealth and power.

I’m old enough to remember when the US had the largest and fastest-growing middle class in the world. We adhered to the basic bargain that if someone worked hard and played by the rules, they’d do better than their parents, and their children would do even better.

I remember when CEOs took home 20 times the pay of their workers, not 300 times. When members of Congress acted in the interests of their constituents rather than being bribed by campaign donations to do the bidding of big corporations and the super-wealthy.

I remember when our biggest domestic challenges were civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights – not the very survival of democracy and the rule of law.

But over the last 40 years, starting with Ronald Reagan, the US went off the rails: deregulation, privatization, free trade, wild gambling by Wall Street, union-busting, monopolization, record levels of inequality, stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics.

Corporate profits became more important than good jobs and good wages for all, stock buy-backs and the well being of investors more important than the common good.

Democratic presidents were better than Republicans, to be sure, but the underlying rot worsened. It was undermining the foundations of the US.

Trump has precipitated a long-overdue reckoning.

That reckoning has revealed the rot.

It has also revealed the suck-up cowardice of so many CEOs, billionaires, Wall Street bankers, media moguls, tech titans, Republican politicians and other so-called “leaders” who have stayed silent or actively sought to curry Trump’s favor.

America’s so-called “leadership class” is a sham. Most of them do not care a whit for the rest of the US. They are out for themselves.

The “fucking nightmare” is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s “leaders”, realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils.

But the nightmare has awakened much of the US to the truth about what has happened to this country – and what we must do to get it back on the track toward social justice, democracy and widespread prosperity.

I’d like to believe that the horrific darkness of this past year is a necessary prelude to a brighter and saner future.

You gotta admit, Donnie knows when to whip out that bible - to cover his butt, to get Mike Johnson to say, "Whatever you want, boss," or just to make a few bucks with a special Trump edition.

Somebody Needs to Tell Trump Everybody Is Laughing at Him (except Venezuela)

 

Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)

He has surrounded himself with fawning toadies

Mona Charen / The Bulwark 

01 January 26

IN THE COURSE OF HIS LOSING RACE with the teleprompter during his Oval Office address on December 17, President Trump returned to a theme that obsesses him—respect. 

Even before his entry into politics, Trump was convinced that “weak” leaders, including Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama, were despised by other nations and that the United States was a laughingstock. 

As of 2016, according to a Washington Post tally, Trump had fumed at least one hundred times that other nations were “laughing at us.” Between 2020 and 2024, he probably exceeded that total, and in fact, even now that Biden is in the rearview mirror, Trump perseverates about how much Biden was scorned by the world.

After a litany of lies and an extra helping of gibberish (“We had men playing in women’s sports, transgender for everybody, crime at record levels with law enforcement and words such as that just absolutely forbidden”), Trump closed with the respect theme:

When the world looks at us next year, let them see a nation that is loyal to its citizens, faithful to its workers, confident to its identity, certain to its destiny, and the envy of the entire globe. We are respected again, like we have never been respected before.

His speechwriters might want to make a note that the word “of” should follow the words “confident” and “certain,” not “to.” And while we’re offering constructive criticism, the president might profit from a little thought experiment.

Suppose you are driving in a foreign country. It’s late at night and you get pulled over by a policeman. After examining your passport and driver’s license, he narrows his eyes, gives his palm a few smacks with his nightstick, and demands a $1,000 bribe to let your infraction go. You might pay the man, but do you come away from this encounter respecting him? Or do you drive off, shaken and angry, concluding that the cop and maybe the whole country is rotten?

The president seems genuinely not to grasp the difference between respect and fear, and because he has surrounded himself with fawning toadies, there isn’t anyone available to explain it to him. Accordingly, here is my modest effort to do so:

Dear President Trump,

Of all the wrong ideas you hold in your heart—that tariffs are paid by foreigners, that good looks are the chief credential for cabinet offices, that the 2020 election was rigged, that allies are bloodsuckers we’d be better off without—perhaps the most gobsmacking is your cherished notion that people respect you when they kiss your ass.

Sorry, that’s not true. They despise you on two levels. On the first level, because you’ve managed to get elected president, you do have leverage that nearly everyone must grapple with in some fashion. (Think of Volodymyr Zelensky.) That power comes not from you personally but from the great strength of this country, economic, military, and diplomatic. 

So yes, when you use that leverage to extort lavish praise from people, they will offer it. But they don’t mean a word of it. Not a word. And in their hearts they hate you for demeaning them in this fashion instead of treating them with respect.

The second level of contempt arises from the knowledge—recognized by the whole world, Mr. Trump, except you—that your extravagant need for attention and praise is evidence of your emotional stuntedness. 

With every renaming of a building you are sending up a signal that screams “I am so insecure!” And here’s the truth: You cannot piggyback on the respect John F. Kennedy earned by slapping your name on the arts center that was named by statute to be his living memorial. Your name may be side by side with his on the marble for now, but in our hearts, we will never respect you. Quite the opposite—for all of your depredations and twice on Sunday for attempting to hijack someone else’s honor.

It gets worse. It isn’t just that your ravenous hunger for recognition betrays a personality disorder, it’s that your particular style of seeking it really does provoke ridicule—that’s another word for “they’re laughing at us.”

The “Gulf of America”? Musing about absorbing Canada into the United States whether they like it or not? Decorating the Oval Office in a Saddam Hussein aesthetic? Threatening to expropriate Greenland from our ally Denmark? 

Truly great nations don’t need to prove their manhood by lording it over smaller ones. Imposing tariffs on islands inhabited only by penguins? Panting after a Nobel Peace Prize so flagrantly that you’re claiming to have settled eight wars? 

In two of those cases, there was no war. In the other six, the conflicts are either ongoing or were largely settled without you. Offering meme coins for sale to the highest bidder? Auctioning off pardons to criminals and leaders on the take? You bet they’re laughing.

Among the specific nations whose contempt you most often cited against other presidents, the go-to was China. China was, in your telling, always gloating about getting one over on Biden, Obama, etc. 

Well, just in the past few weeks, you have agreed to give China access to high-end microchips that are crucial for commercial and military use (and that were withheld by Biden), and you have held your tongue as China has pressured our ally Japan over its support of Taiwan. You even soft-pedaled the threat from China in your National Security Strategy. A younger Trump might have demanded, ‘What did we get in return?’ Nothing.

Our traditional allies are not always laughing. More often they’re wringing their hands as you luxuriate in the company of international outlaws like Vladimir Putin and Nayib Bukele, and mouth stupendous lies such as that Zelensky started the war with Russia.

In short, there has never been a president who has made the United States less respected than you have. We are, to borrow a phrase, disrespected like never before. Whether your twisted ego can recognize that is open to question, but what is not debatable is that virtually the whole world knows.

Once a clown, always a clown.  Some things never change.