The American people need to give up childish things and do the necessary hard work if they are to have any chance of saving their democracy from Trumpism and the larger right-wing antidemocracy revolutionary project. As James Baldwin counseled in a 1962 essay that appeared in the New York Times Book Review, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Unfortunately, there are very few indications of such newfound maturity. The American people remain in a deep slumber and state of learned helplessness as Donald Trump and his forces continue with the shock and awe campaign against American democracy, civil society, the rule of law, the Constitution and human decency. The mainstream news media as an institution appears to have chosen a strategy of anticipatory obedience and compliance, if not collaboration, in normalizing Trumpism and his attempts to become the country’s first elected dictator. The Democratic Party is mired in infighting and a perpetual post-mortem about how and why it was routed by Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans in the 2024 election. The concept of how to be an effective opposition party seems outside the grasp of its leaders.
