You are not alone in this nightmare

Robert Reich
23 March
Drag artists and their supporters rally during a protest against Trump administration changes at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 8, 2025.

Many of you are struggling with despair. The level of anxiety, stress, grief, and terror among good people today is in the stratosphere.

Many of my students are not sleeping. Friends are haunted by what Trump and Musk and others in the regime are doing. Others I come across on a daily basis are freaked out. As for me, I’m furious.

Some MAGA types ridicule all this as “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” but they’re wrong. None of us has witnessed this degree of cruelty, this much disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution, this extent of nihilist destruction.

I will continue to give you the best analyses, most helpful advice, and most realistic assurances I can. But please know you are not alone in this nightmare that is now a daily daymare.

The poet Alison Luterman sent me this poem to share with you. (Thank you, Alison.)

Side by side on a log by the bay.

Sunlight. Unleashed dogs,

prancing through surf, almost exploding

out of their skins with perfect happiness.

Dogs who don't know about fired park rangers,

or canceled health research, or tariff wars,

or the suicide hotline for veterans getting defunded,

or or or. We've listed horror upon horror

to each other for weeks now, and it does no good,

so instead I tell her how I held a two-day old baby

in my arms, inhaling him like a fresh-baked loaf of bread,

then watched as a sneeze erupted through his body

like a tiny volcano. It was the look of pure

astonishment on his face, as if he were Adam

in the garden of Eden making his debut achoo,

as if it were the first sneeze that ever blew,

that got me. She tells me how her dog

once farted so loudly he startled himself

and fell off the bed where he'd been lolling,

and then the two of us start to laugh so hard

we almost fall off our own log. And this

is our resistance for today; remembering

original innocence. And they can't

take it away from us, though they ban

our very existence, though they slash

our rights to ribbons, we will have

our mirth and our birthright gladness.

Long after every unsold Tesla

has vaporized, and earth has closed over

even the names of these temporary tyrants,

somewhere some women like us

will be sitting side by side, facing the water,

telling human stories and laughing still.

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/.
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