These are truly scary and rough times
16 March 2025
This blog contains excerpts from an essay by Robert Reich.
I cannot say this any other way: These are truly scary and rough times.
Trump appears at the Justice Department and calls for his opponents to be jailed.
Purges career officials and installs political hacks more loyal to him than to the United States. Fires inspectors general. Demotes senior prosecutors.
Threatens law firms that represented people he considers his personal enemies.
He and Musk mow down wide swathes of our government.
Republican lawmakers, fearful or unprincipled, say and do nothing.
And on it goes.
You have every right to feel depressed and enervated. You have every reason to despair.
But wait.
It’s possible that future generations will look back on this scourge and see something else — not just what was destroyed but also what was born.
Even prior to Trump, our democracy was deeply flawed. The moneyed interests were drowning out everyone else. Inequality was reaching record levels. Corruption — legalized bribery through campaign contributions — was the political norm (Musk is the logical ending point). The bottom 90 percent were getting nowhere because the system was rigged against them.
It’s entirely possible that future generations will look back on this awful time and see the seeds of fundamental reform.
Many of you are leading this. In hundreds of thousands of ways, you are beacon lights. You are the beginnings of positive change.
Whether it’s your appearances at Republican town halls, or your phone calls that are daily jamming the Capitol and White House switchboards, or your mountains of emails and letters, or your myriad actions protecting the vulnerable in your communities, or your grass-roots activism in Wisconsin and elsewhere: You are the groundswell of America’s new resistance, the green shoots of our future democracy.
The backlash to Trump is growing. His disapproval ratings have jumped nearly 10 points since he was sworn in. People are flooding meetings and rallies, demanding an end to Trump and Musk’s reign. Bernie, AOC, and other progressive politicians are drawing huge crowds.
But as long as we are alive, as long as we are resolved, as long as we are taking action to stop the worst of this, as long as we are trying to make America and the world even a bit better — have no doubt: We will triumph.
See also: Undaunted: Judge Beryl Howell holds the line
Three quotes from President Teddy Roosevelt
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As Steve Hahn much of what Americans took for granted in the supposed "liberal consensus" rested on a fragile foundation. Illiberalism has also been a constant current in American history and often supported by state and Federal legislators and courts. Illiberalism is the preference for hierarchy rather than equality, community rather than individual rights, and exclusion of "outsiders" as defined by race, religion, or ethnicity, and even their expulsion. You could listen to Hahn, a Pulitzer-prize winning historian at NYU on YouTube in the link, or read his book to consider that long trajectory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn3wGEGk4Ck&t=1656s
https://www.harvard.com/book/9780393635928
What is being taken apart by Trump and Musk, following the blueprint of the Heritage Society's Project 2025 was first created by FDR and extended by later Democratic Administrations. Social Security payments began in 1935 and have been going out smoothly since then, making a huge difference to the problem of poverty for older Americans and the disabled. Medicare was established in the Lyndon Johnson presidency, and was attacked even then as "socialist" by Republicans such as Ronald Reagan. Healthcare access was extended to tens of millions of poorer Americans by the ACA (Obamacare) which the first Trump presidency tried so desperately to kill. It couldn't because of one Republican senator of integrity, John McCain who did not vote with other Republicans in the Senate. FDR's New Deal was attacked as socialism at the time, and Republicans since Reagan have tried to roll back various aspects of it. Union power was broken by government policy (as in the air traffic controllers' strike) and was also weakened by technological change in the nature of the American economy, which moved from manufacturing to services.
The middle-class consensus which prevailed during America's liberal window - from FDR to the 1960s, was destroyed by inequality. Reductions in marginal tax rates encouraged the growth of inequality, while winner take all technology as in social media concentrated fortunes. The concentration of power in a few hands has now resulted in the capture of the state by an unscrupulous long-term associate of gangsters and launderer of money from the Russian mafia. He has been pushed into power by tech bros such Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their associates (Andreessen, etc.). They are now running down the American government to strip it and only keep what will give them money through contracts.
In other words, we are at an extreme point, a point of inflection, in the long trajectory of American illiberalism. By definition, there will be tremendous push-back once the pain of the actions of those now running America is more widely felt and their motives are better understood. The take-over was so sudden, and so long planned to create the maximum shock that it took many by surprise. In retrospect, what has happened and is happening was not inevitable or fated to triumph. The Roberts Court played a critical role as Trump's enabler in avoiding accountability for crimes and taking power. Let us hope the rule of Trump and his clique of billionaires is short and that America can recover sooner rather than later, to take again its place among civilized democracies rather than with Putin's Russia as a corrupt oligarchy preying on weaker countries.
Thank you for this hopeful essay. I think you may be right, though it’s hard to see at the moment. As the very articulate commenter above says, the seeds for this were planted long ago. But perhaps this is what it is going to take for Americans to realize the value of a just society that is not based on a thirst for money and power. Perhaps it’s a process that humans are destined to relive again and again.