Americans are waking up. A grand reckoning awaits us | Robert Reich

About a year ago, at the start of the Trump 2.0 regime, a woman was about to pass me on the sidewalk and then stopped, turned toward me and almost shouted: “It’s a fucking nightmare!”

It has been a “fucking nightmare”.

But sometimes a nation needs a nightmare before it can fully awaken to long-simmering crises.

Martin Luther King Jr mobilized the nation against racial injustice by making sure almost everyone in the United States saw its horrors – on the nightly news, watching peaceful Black people getting clubbed and arrested for exercising their rights.

Were it not for that painful national exposure to racist brutality, we wouldn’t have gotten the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act.

Something similar happened in the first years of the 20th century when muckraking journalists revealed the monopolies, corruption and public-be-damned arrogance of the robber barons.

Were it not for that painful national exposure, we wouldn’t have gotten the reforms of the progressive era.

A similar dynamic is playing out as Americans witness the nightmare of Trump’s neofascism – its mindless cruelty, blatant attempts to silence critics, wanton destruction of much of our government, open racism and misogyny.

Trump has revealed himself in ways his first-term handlers wouldn’t allow – as a sociopath who posts AI cartoons showing himself shitting on millions of Americans who marched against him. A malignant narcissist unable to respond to the tragic killings of Rob and Michele Reiner without making it all about himself. A chronic liar who says prices are dropping when everyone knows they’re rising.

As Americans see all this, outrage has been growing. We are beginning to mobilize – not all of us, of course, but the great majority.

Record numbers of us marched on 18 October, No Kings day. Democratic candidates have won just about every special election and every mayoral and gubernatorial contest, and a remarkable number of down-ballot races in bright red states and cities. Maga is coming apart. Trump’s polls are tanking.

We are organizing and mobilizing with a resolve I have not seen in my lifetime.

The US had to come to this point. We couldn’t go on as we were, even under Democratic presidents. For 40 years, a narrow economic elite has been siphoning off ever more wealth and power.

I’m old enough to remember when the US had the largest and fastest-growing middle class in the world. We adhered to the basic bargain that if someone worked hard and played by the rules, they’d do better than their parents, and their children would do even better.

I remember when CEOs took home 20 times the pay of their workers, not 300 times. When members of Congress acted in the interests of their constituents rather than being bribed by campaign donations to do the bidding of big corporations and the super-wealthy.

I remember when our biggest domestic challenges were civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights – not the very survival of democracy and the rule of law.

But over the last 40 years, starting with Ronald Reagan, the US went off the rails: deregulation, privatization, free trade, wild gambling by Wall Street, union-busting, monopolization, record levels of inequality, stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics.

Corporate profits became more important than good jobs and good wages for all, stock buy-backs and the wellbeing of investors more important than the common good.

Democratic presidents were better than Republicans, to be sure, but the underlying rot worsened. It was undermining the foundations of the US.

Trump has precipitated a long-overdue reckoning.

That reckoning has revealed the rot.

It has also revealed the suck-up cowardice of so many CEOs, billionaires, Wall Street bankers, media moguls, tech titans, Republican politicians and other so-called “leaders” who have stayed silent or actively sought to curry Trump’s favor.

America’s so-called “leadership class” is a sham. Most of them do not care a whit for the rest of the US. They are out for themselves.

The “fucking nightmare” is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s “leaders”, realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils.

But the nightmare has awakened much of the US to the truth about what has happened to this country – and what we must do to get it back on the track toward social justice, democracy and widespread prosperity.

I’d like to believe that the horrific darkness of this past year is a necessary prelude to a brighter and saner future.

• Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now