Sunday thought:
America’s trauma
We need to talk about it openly
Oct 05, 2025
Friends,
I’d like to talk with you about a difficult subject.
A significant number of you are disoriented by what Trump
and his lapdogs are doing. Many are deeply anxious. Some of us are depressed.
For years, medical experts have recommended that Americans
be screened for “anxiety disorders.”
But what many of us are feeling now is not a personal
disorder. It’s a rational response to a nation that’s becoming ever more
disordered.
What we’re experiencing is not a sickness or individual
distress. It’s a sensible reaction to a society becoming sicker and more
stressed.
Trump and the enablers around him aren’t just violating the
Constitution and disregarding laws. They’re not merely doing cruel and
vindictive things.
They’re also spreading fear and fueling hate.
This fear and hate are harming every one of us, even the
shrinking minority who support the regime. Hate is a corrosive that eventually
consumes the haters. Fear breeds more fear, which causes everyone to be afraid.
The harm may continue long after the reasons to fear and
sources of hate have passed into history.
I have a friend who suffered trauma at the hands of abusive
parents. She’s spent much of her life trying to cope with that trauma, trying
not to let it rule (and ruin) her life.
Another friend is the child of a Holocaust survivor. He has
spent much of his life trying to escape the ghosts of relatives he never knew
who were murdered by the Nazis, whose deaths have cast a dark shadow over his
own life.
Most of us are fortunate enough not to have suffered
childhood trauma from abusive parents or been raised in the dark shadow of the
Holocaust or other horrors.
But most of us are now suffering a trauma of a different
sort — from an abusive president and his lapdogs, and from the dark shadows of
fear and hate they cast.
Just as with my friends, many of us now feel powerless and
afraid. We don’t recognize our nation. We’re disoriented, vulnerable, anxious.
Trump apologists call it “Trump derangement syndrome,” but
the actual derangement is in and around the Oval Office.
I don’t think we’re talking enough about the national
trauma most of us are now enduring.
Some of you may assume there’s something wrong with you
when you can’t sleep or awaken feeling anxious. You may feel alone in this.
You should be aware of how widespread, and reasonable, your
reaction is.
Trump’s cruelty and vengeance will pass. Years from now
we’ll look back on this as a terrible period in America’s history. Our nation
will survive.
But the fear and hate he has sown could cause lasting
blight.
Recognizing this — being aware of the toll it’s taking and
will continue to take on us, even years from now — is important to our eventual
recovery, that of our loved ones, and the recovery of our nation and the world.
