Americans are white-knuckling it as storm poised to push them over the edge

US President Donald Trump gestures during a midterm campaign rally at Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, US, October 30, 2026.

The midterm elections are a few days away.

The American people are still speeding down a metaphorical — and increasingly literal — river of fascist filth unleashed by Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and their MAGA forces. Trump’s second presidency is pushing the country’s political, moral, and public mental-health crises toward a breaking point.

Pollsters and analysts predict that Trump and his MAGA Republicans could be beaten back on Election Day, perhaps even swept away by a blue wave.

Pro-democracy Americans can see a way out of the Age of Trump in the distance. But between them and that possibility lie rapids, huge rocks, submerged wreckage, and the debris of all that Trump and his forces have destroyed.

The American people are white-knuckling it.

Like furious Titans, Trump, his MAGA minions, and their enablers are pounding the water with their fists, desperately trying to capsize the boat.

None of this is normal!

I worry that too many Americans have been riding in this boat for so long that they have come to accept its filth and foul air as normal.

In an extraordinary move, Trump has directed his Department of Justice to seek an injunction that would block Alaska from certifying its Senate election results if Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan loses to Democrat Mary Peltola. The administration argues that a second candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., could confuse voters. In effect, the Trump administration is arguing that if its preferred candidate loses, the election is void.

The Justice Department also wants more than 20,000 California ballots set aside pending verification of voters’ citizenship. On Wednesday night, U.S. District Judge David Carter rejected the request.

“Eroded trust in our democracy is irreparable. Once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred. If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger. This Court declines to be a party to such process,” Carter wrote in his decision.

Across the country, armed federal agents are visiting the homes of American citizens, questioning residents about their citizenship status and voting history. These appear to be acts of voter intimidation and violations of voting-rights laws.

Last Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that a small group of current and former national-security officials had been discreetly advising state governments and congressional lawmakers on preparing for the real possibility that the Trump administration will try to interfere in the midterm elections.

The Post explains that, “Their efforts are motivated not by political bias, they say, but a growing sense of alarm that President Donald Trump will harm American democracy by undermining the integrity of the vote to keep theRepublican Party in power.”

America is a deeply nervous country, and the anxiety is intensifying.

The midterms are a referendum on Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party. But anger at Republicans does not necessarily translate into an endorsement of Democrats. Many Americans are disgusted with what they see as a fundamentally broken political system. Trump is the most grotesque and extreme expression of a much larger crisis.

[The American people are experiencing extreme collective anxiety, if not something like a nationwide panic attack. To ground themselves, they can focus on their breathing and identify five things around them. They can breathe deeply, then exhale fully. A friend told me he had been experiencing panic attacks since Trump returned to power. I offered this advice, and he said it helped.]

A leader’s pathological behavior does not remain confined to the leader. It spreads across society.

There is the vile.

Several weeks ago, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon would broadcast the execution of Nidal Hasan, the convicted Fort Hood mass murderer and terrorist. Trump initially endorsed the execution, then pivoted in the face of public backlash. The prospect of broadcasting the killing of a man in a wheelchair was apparently too ghoulish even for him.

Trump continues to threaten Iran with annihilation and genocide if it does not surrender.

There is the racism and white supremacy.

In a series of speeches and social media posts, Trump has repeatedly portrayed Black Somalis as primitives and “low IQ people” from a “sh**hole country” who do not wear clothes, and then somehow come to America where they get rich and drive luxury cars because they are tricksters who commit fraud. In a Truth Social post, Trump told the (White) people of Minneapolis that they must “fight back” against the Black Somali “invaders” and that he would dispatch federal forces to support them in this crusade.

The president of the United States is inciting what amounts to a “race riot”— or a pogrom.

Trump has directed his Department of Justice to find a way to revoke Rep. Ilhan Omar’s citizenship. Omar is Black, a woman, the child of refugees, a Muslim, and a vocal critic of Trump and his fascist project. Her very existence, and what she represents, are anathema to Trump’s MAGA vision for the country.

Trump is becoming ever more The MAGA Cult Leader.

At a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, a video presented Trump as a prophetic leader chosen by God to protect the nation. Set to somber music, it declared: “I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. So, God gave us Trump.”

Trump’s followers are beating up protesters at his rallies. Trump encourages and praises their behavior.

[Watching the cumulative stress of the Age of Trump, I have been thinking a great deal about depersonalization: feeling disconnected from oneself, one’s thoughts, or even one’s body. It can occur in response to trauma or extreme stress. When a fuller history of this era is written, I believe we will learn that many Americans experienced episodes of what might be called mass depersonalization, but lacked the language to make sense of what was happening to them.]

Two weeks ago, Trump shared videos on Truth Social of people being mauled by tigers and other wild animals. In one, he used AI to depict himself frolicking with the tiger that killed a former child actor at a British wildlife park.

I received an alert about the video late at night. For a moment, I thought I was dreaming, or that I had drunk some tainted whiskey. Was I going crazy? I emailed a fellow traveler, a leading psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who keeps similar late-night hours.

Almost immediately, he wrote back:

If Trump were sane, instead of this stunt he’d be trying to walk back his demented statements and actions and appearing to be as decent as he can pretend to be. But, like Hitler invading the USSR, his delusional belief in his power and greatness leads him to think that whatever he does will be triumphant and accepted by followers who share his belief that he is a god.
The spectacle is not just absurd. It batters the public’s sense of reality.

I am one of the chroniclers and pilots on this ship, speeding down the foul river of the Age of Trump and American fascism. A pilot is usually responsible for navigating only one part of a long, dangerous river. No one pilot can know the whole river alone.

I asked sociologist Charles Derber what might come after the Age of Trump. Defeating Trump will not, by itself, restore the country’s political health.

Because he never stops, and the media dutifully report his lies, Trump’s constant assault normalizes his war to destroy all legal protection and civil rights. Fighting Trump means fighting his normalization of rage and repression. But going back to the world before Trump is not the answer. It will just return us to the earlier corporate system that also normalized abuse of workers and outsiders.
The resistance to Trump must refuse to normalize both Trump and the profit-hungry system that gave rise to him.

African American studies professor, author, and moral philosopher Eddie S. Glaude Jr. connected the political and emotional crisis to a deeper spiritual sickness in American society.

“We’re not well, and we’re so busy with the demands of living in this place called the United States that we won’t take the time to simply say, ‘We’re not okay. It’s not just them. It’s all of us.…. We are experiencing, in my view, an epidemic of selfishness in this country.”

[What are you seeing and chronicling? What dangers do you see that others may not be seeing as clearly?]

Whatever happens in the midterm elections next Tuesday, Trump and his MAGA regime will remain in power for at least two more years. Many Americans can see a way off this hellish ride. But those who have found a way forward must get back on the riverboat to rescue those who have been thrown overboard—and recover the bodies so their families can have closure..

Chauncey DeVega is a politics and opinion writer whose work examines American democracy, inequality, political power, and the enduring significance of race in American society and the wider world. He was formerly a senior politics writer at Salon. His essays and commentary have been cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC, NPR, The Atlantic and other leading publications. He hosts two podcasts, The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report.

Read the full, expanded version of this essay on his Substack, Indomitable.

From Your Site Articles