Trump has destroyed America’s character. Only we can revive it | Opinion

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Thomas Paine wrote these words in December 1776, only weeks after General George Washington’s ragtag Continental Army had slipped across the Delaware to New Jersey to escape the clutches of advancing British regulars.

Morale was low; the soldiers were destitute — many froze to death that winter — and a good number of those who could have provided sustenance turned their backs on the revolutionaries and the Declaration of Independence in favor of continued foreign rule and self-interest. Defeat was imminent, and with it the end of the promise of what Lincoln would describe years later, at the end of another great war, as “a government of the people, by the people and for the people”.

It’s no exaggeration to say we’re in similar trying times today. The only difference being that the challenges to our freedom and common decency aren’t foreign (at least not yet) but the consequences of a deranged, narcissistic and demented president, aided and abetted by a cadre of immoral sycophants, armed goons, and a servile, Republican-led Congress. It’s enough to make a person vomit.

Consider this: In the space of a year (an eternity to those who follow his madness), Trump has enlisted thousands of jackbooted thugs to unravel decades of domestic tranquility, upended the global economy, of which we are a part, with mindless and punishing tariffs, killed off 80 years of a mostly successful international order, threatened the foundational independence of the Federal Reserve, ordered the FBI and Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies, alienated important friends, neighbors and allies around the world, given support to the territorial ambitions of Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, abandoned the rule of law, and generally sought to bring about a dictator-centered Orwellian global order having a Trump-monogrammed Western Hemisphere as its centerpiece.

This isn’t idle political observation. It’s a recitation of the very real things that are being carried out each and every day, in plain sight, to undermine the principles on which our country was founded. And isn’t without violence. As David Brooks of the New York Times and others have pointed out, Trump and his testosterone-jacked defense secretary have been quicker to resort to killing people, often innocent ones, than any administration in memory.

In 2025 the U.S. carried out or contributed to 622 overseas bombing missions, eliminating people in places ranging from Venezuela to Iran, Nigeria and Somalia — not to mention Minneapolis. So much for the “America First” promise to avoid foreign entanglement. So much for the restraint that used to keep the world’s nuclear powers from doing the unthinkable.

What should disturb us most, however, is Trump’s deteriorating mental acuity, and with it the fiction that he is “a very stable genius” with a “morality” that can counter his bloated sense of self-regard, his grandiosity and his sickening quest for money. Calling him a spoiled, petulant child is only the half of it. He’s a sick man, maybe even a sociopath or a psychopath, and most certainly an inveterate liar. (See promised tax returns, Epstein files and stolen 2020 election.)

If you think you, your family and your farm or business are immune to this, that it’s something that’s only happening in Minneapolis or something that is convincingly explained away by Fox News, then think again. Trump has had you squarely in his sights since he took office. He and his Christian nationalist supporters have taken aim at your right to say and read what you want, worship where you want and live in your home without fear of someone kicking in your door. As of last weekend, he’s even compromised your lawful ability to carry a concealed weapon without risk of being shot 10 times.

All the while, he’s continued to support his billionaire big tech friends’ assault on your children’s mental health and your right to live free of surveillance of your comings and goings, voting record, and, by extension, your beliefs. All the while he’s abandoning important trade alliances and destroying export markets, forcing farmers to become ever more dependent on federal handouts just to earn a living. All the while he’s doing his utmost to withdraw support for public education and terrorize anyone who promotes critical thinking and historical literacy.

So, what can we do about it? How do we persevere in the face of tyranny? How do we replace the incessant grimness with hope?

In a word, we persevere. We remember that we have the right to vote, the right to petition our senators and representative to redress our grievances, the right to call for the removal of a president and a cabinet who are leading us down the road to perdition. Most importantly, we keep alive the flame in our hearts that tells us, instinctively and without reservation, that this is our government, not Trump’s or his oligarchs’, and that no amount of state terror can take it away from us.

That’s what Thomas Paine exhorted during the despairing winter of 1776. It’s what we should be exhorting now.

Douglas Siddoway farms and practices law in Fremont County.