This is what they want:
The mom who huddles in her apartment with her children, afraid to send them to back to school.
The federal worker who looks over her shoulder, wondering if her colleagues and supervisors know of her political leanings and activity.
The reporter who doesn’t ask the question.
The Cabinet secretaries who grovel and abase themselves like North Korean subalterns, so desperate to please the Great Leader.
The farmer whose workers are leaving, but who won’t talk about it with the local news because he is afraid that ICE will raid him in retaliation for speaking up.
The college president who caves.
The CEO who cowers.
The citizen who remains silent.
This is what they want. A republic of fear.
There was a MAGA meme on social media for a while; maybe it’s still out there. “I drink your liberal tears.” They had coffee mugs.
Now they drink her tears.
Cruelty is intoxicating. Cruelty is contagious. Cruelty is empowering. This is the algebra of our politics now.
Donald Trump is the font of it all. A broken man, one of the strangest men in history. That fraying helmet of hair perched atop a fat, crinkled face that glows with peachy phosphorescence. A hulking bloat, draped in oversize suits or stuffed in tits-high pants and sagging acres of polo shirt. A man insanely insecure, so desperately in need of affirmation that everything he says contains, explicitly or implicitly, a wild boast and a relentless demand that he be praised to the skies by everyone around him at that moment. Anyone else, anyone normal, would be embarrassed to be Donald Trump.
But Trump has no shame. That is his secret power. He is, literally, shameless. So he can parade his vivid inadequacies—his ignorance, his vanity, his physical grossness, his overall gaucheness—before the world, shielded by this power of shamelessness. But there are times he needs more, and so he protects himself from the mortal threat that someone might stand up to him and compel him to recognize his own absurdity with an armor of cruelty. He is cruel. He must be cruel, must lash out, must smash, must humiliate and dominate any person who dares to notice how ridiculous he is, how wrong, how unlawful, how ignorant. That has probably happened a lot in Donald Trump’s life, and it has made him a master of cruelty.
This astonishing personality has captivated tens of millions of Americans. They have raised him up higher than almost any other American in our history. Why? How? There are structural economic reasons, yes; America was ripe for a populist revolt, as the 2016 campaign of Bernie Sanders showed. But Sanders is an eminently decent man. He lacked the elixir of hatreds, the cup of cruelty that Trump offers to all who follow him. This is the key to Trump’s demagoguery: He gives people permission to be the worst version of themselves.
The contagion of cruelty has now swept our land, and swept Trump back into power. The culture of cruelty is now the center of power in our country. The ideal of American solidarity, that way of life that recognizes we are all bound together in this nation, all brothers and sisters living in one shared national community, working out our differences under law through democratic debates—that’s a joke in Trump’s America. MAGA doesn’t even pay lip service to it. Oh, they prattle on about America all the time, but they don’t mean what Lincoln meant. Or Reagan. They sing “God Bless America,” when they ought to fear the judgment of a just and loving God. The only community that truly matters is MAGA. MAGA is America and America is MAGA. You’re in or you’re out. And once you are in, you are complicit, because MAGA is built and bound together by the endorsement of, and the participation in, this culture of cruelty. There can be no dissent. Dissent of any kind is dangerous, because it exposes the truth: That the ecstasy of being cruel is a sickness, not a triumph. That their grandchildren will be ashamed of them for this.
You’re in or you’re out. And if you are out, it is clear they want you to feel that you are living in a republic of fear. The shadow over our land lengthens and deepens by the day. Listen to the Attorney General of the United States threatening mayors and governors and citizens in towns and cities across America:
Fear is the governing language in Trump’s republic.
But you know all this. You are feeling it, living it every day. Your civic life seems to be shrinking. Many people will believe that the best course for them and their families will be to become small and timid citizens, to keep their heads down and hope the shadow doesn’t find them.
This is exactly what MAGA wants—because they are weak. They depend on your demoralization. Fear is their only way of maintaining and extending their power.
MAGA isn’t a majority in this country; not even close. It’s a minority, far smaller than even the 49 percent of the electorate who voted for Trump. Many people who voted for Trump do not support this radicalism, this cruelty. Just look at the startling shift on Americans’ attitudes on immigration in just a few months. MAGA is counting on your fear, and your silence—because they know there are many more of us than them.
You are not powerless. You are an American, for God’s sake. We are Americans. This is our country, and we are not going to surrender it. Find each other. Overcome minor differences; overcome major differences. There is only one issue before the country: Democracy. We will defend it, and if we join up and put our shoulders to the wheel of this great task—we will save it.
We begin with this: The first duty we have to our beloved country in this moment is to refuse fear, refuse their lies, and live in truth. The truth, as was said so long ago, will make us free. Speak it. Sing it. Holler it out. Live it.