I’m posting this long-ish excerpt of Robert Reich’s newsletter because it reflects some of my thinking as this year has unfolded:
[S]ometimes 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 October 18, No Kings Day. Democratic candidates have won just about every recent special election and 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.
America 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 America 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 Reagan, America 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 buybacks and the well-being of investors more important than the common good.
Democratic presidents were better than Republican, to be sure, but the underlying rot worsened. It was undermining the foundations of America.
Trump has precipitated a long-overdue reckoning.
That reckoning has revealed the rot.
He goes on to discuss the failure of all the elite institutions which is profound. It’s pretty clear they are all in the tank. But then, what would we expect after 40 years of making profits the highest form of American achievement and turning corruption into a cost of doing business?
It has been coming for a long time. And the hope is that Trump’s crude overreach has exposed it as nothing else could have done, precipitating a crisis. Sometimes that’s what it takes for real change to take place.
Reich concludes by warning us that the “leaders” (his quotation marks) know they may only have one more year to make their killings unrestrained, so it may get even uglier if that’s possible. But the country has been through worse. We’ll get through it.