A Reminder, America: We're Nothing Like Donald Trump

There's a goodness in us that he can never take away.

My husband, Ed, raising the flag at sunrise. Always the Marine.

Hello, fellow citizens. Like you, I’m an American finding myself living now under an ugly, dangerous regime promising to take me down, to make me buckle, to end my good life as I know it. Like you, I I never would have thought this possible, growing up in the home of the brave, in the land of the free.

It doesn’t matter now how Donald Trump and his ugly regime wiggled their way in, it only matters that they’re there and as promised, after only a month in, they’re already doing grave damage. I wish I could say it’s by accident, that it’s inadvertent, that the wreckage already accumulating is out of sheer incompetence. None of that is true. It’s deliberate. It was planned—it was years in the planning—and somehow, in the most crucial election of our lifetimes, millions of our fellow citizens were duped into falling for it.

It happened. We’re under a dictatorship. We’re falling fast toward fascism. All signs point to a complete collapse of our admittedly faulty but essentially workable system. We may be going under for the last time.

Democracy is dying, if it’s not already dead. There’s nothing we can do about it.

Surrender now!

That’s the message coming from the Trump camp. Loud and clear. What they don’t know or have forgotten is that we Americans (those of us who are not them) still hold the wild card:

We are now and always have been exceptional.

We’ve thrived, we’ve become a world power, we’ve kept our democracy going because throughout it all we’ve always believed we’re decent people, we’re capable, we’re on the right side of justice and freedom. We’ve not always been good at it, but we’ve never stopped working to keep it that way.

What’s happening to us now is an anomaly, a mistake, a glitch in the cog of our working wheel, brought on by hubris, greed, prejudice, and, yes, the constant broadcasting of those all-important, ubiquitous lies.

But mainly it was inattention. Pure and simple.

We’ve always expected our leaders to work for us and not against us, even when they’ve shown signs they might not, because we’re Americans. It’s how we operate. It’s what we do. Or at least what we attempt to do. We work toward the common good.

Even when all signs were pointing toward just this outcome—for decades, not just years—we’ve refused to believe what was right in front of us. It’s been built into us that this is not who we are. These current leaders driving us over the cliff are there in spite of who we are, not because of who we are.

And yet there they are. Donald Trump is mad with power, getting crazier by the minute, and so far, for whatever reason, it looks like every Republican in and out of Congress is going along.

It’s normal for the rest of us to be terrified. They’re out to terrorize us. They can’t win unless we’re sidelined and quaking in our boots.

But we’re not! We’re fighting back, at least this month. If we can keep it up we’ll win. They’ll lose. I think we can do it. Because through it all we’re the good guys. The good guys always win in the end.

I’ll always believe that as a country we’re basically good. I have to. It’s who I am. When I was a mere child during WWII my parents convinced me that even tiny, insignificant me could have an impact on the war effort if I believed what I was doing—crushing tin cans because every bit of scrap metal was crucial, tying up bundles of newspapers (sorry, I don’t know why), taking my dimes to school to buy War stamps—was important. I was doing my bit as an American.

I’m still tiny, both in stature (just under five feet) and significance (I’m a nobody. You may have noticed.), but I believe in my heart and in my bones that as an American I can make a difference.

Believing is the first step toward making a difference. The second step requires figuring out where I stand in all of this. Which side am I on? (You may have noticed we’ve all taken sides.) I don’t have to think long about that one. I’m on the side of goodness and right and justice; the same side I decided on way back when I was a little kid smashing cans to keep that mad killer, Adolph Hitler, from taking over all of Europe.

The third step is in not letting Donald Trump or anyone else bully me into submission. I mean, think about it: If I wasn’t afraid of Hitler in the 1940s when I was a little kid, why would I be afraid of another Fuhrer-like madman as an adult? I’m old. What could Donald Trump do to me? Take away my Social Security? My Medicare? My laptop? Not without a fight he won’t.

I’m in it to win it. If I can manage to live long enough, I’ll be there to celebrate the results of this battle. Flags will fly, we’ll have parades, we’ll breathe. We’ll laugh and sing and start all over. Future generations will be safe, and they’ll build again. We will rise.

And all because we remembered who we are.

We are Americans.