Trump's sinister plot to overthrow democracy met with defiance — and true patriotism

Yesterday’s demonstrations across the nation in favor of democracy and against Trump’s dictatorship revealed the power of the people.

The energy, exuberance, and solidarity of those demonstrations stood in sharp contrast to Trump’s noxious display of tanks and military equipment on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. While Trump continues to politicize the military, hundreds of thousands of us are saying no to his usurpation of power that belongs to the people.

We will not be intimidated by the violence he has stirred up — not by the shootings of state legislators and their spouses in Minnesota, nor by the death threats against federal judges, nor by the thuggish removal of a United States senator from a Trump official’s news conference, nor by the arrest of a judge who didn’t cooperate with ICE, nor by the abductions of people from our streets and places of work.

We will be steadfast and strong, as we were in yesterday’s protests.

Trump’s parade was almost rained out. His regime is itself a dark storm cloud over America.

The moral squalor of Trump has brought us back to basics: Why we have a Constitution. The meaning of the rule of law. The importance of checks and balances and separation of powers. The centrality of our judiciary. The significance of due process and habeas corpus. The connection between near-record inequalities of income and wealth, and the record levels of money corrupting our politics.

Perhaps most fundamentally of all, the malignant narcissism of Trump has helped us understand the opposite — the true meaning of patriotism and the common good.

Patriotism based on the common good does not pander to divisiveness. It does not vilify diversity, equity, and inclusion. True patriots don’t fuel racist or religious or ethnic divisions. They aren’t homophobic or transphobic or sexist.

True patriots confirm the good that we have in common. They seek to strengthen and celebrate the “We” in “We the people.”

Trump is the opposite of a patriot. He is a traitor and a coward. His lust for power and wealth at the expense of the common good makes this one of the most shameful chapters of our history.

Yesterday we reasserted “We.” We did it largely peacefully. We gained strength from our solidarity. We celebrated of our numbers and our power.

We will be steadfast. We will not cower to a dictator.

We will win.

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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/