Something dramatic has happened.
Many people who consider themselves non-political or independent, or moderate Republican, or who even voted for Trump last November, can’t avoid seeing what’s now come so clearly into the open.
And they’re finding it terrifying.
They’ve watched Trump order the Texas National Guard into Portland and Chicago, over the objections of the mayors of those cities and the governors of Oregon and Illinois. They’ve heard him call for jailing the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois for opposing these moves.
They’ve heard him threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act and send federal troops all over America.
They’ve watched Trump’s ICE agents drag people out of their beds in the middle of the night, zip-tie them and their children, and haul them away.
They’ve seen Trump’s prosecutors indict the attorney general of New York state because she held Trump accountable for fraud. And seen him threaten to do the same to a California senator because he conducted hearings in the House exposing Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol.
They’ve heard Trump say he can kill anyone who he claims is an enemy combatant trafficking drugs.
They’ve heard Trump direct the IRS, FBI, and Justice Department against liberal groups that oppose him — George Soros’s Open Society Foundation; ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising organization; Indivisible, the community-based resistance organization.
And they watched him take off the air comedians who criticize him — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel.
All across America, millions of people who have avoided politics, or identified as independents or moderate Republicans or even Trump voters, are shaken by what they’re seeing and hearing.
It’s no longer Democrat versus Republican or left versus right.
It’s now democracy versus dictatorship. Right versus wrong.
It’s no longer a war on undocumented immigrants. It’s now a war on Americans.
It’s no longer a foreign enemy. It’s now the “enemy within.”
Across the land, average Americans are realizing that they too could be dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night by Trump’s ICE agents, or tear-gassed and arrested by Trump’s National Guard, or targeted by Trump’s prosecutors, or shot by Trump’s military.
The Big Reveal is that all of us are now endangered.
Multiple polls show Trump’s approval tanking, but I think it runs deeper than this.
Something dramatic has happened over the last two weeks — as America sees more vividly than ever who Trump is, where he and his trio of lapdogs (Miller, Vought, and Vance) want to take the country, and how we’re all potential targets.
The Big Reveal is impossible not to see. Trump and his lapdogs are doing all of this completely in the open. They have no shame.
Most Americans abhor what they see, because what they see is abhorrent.
This is how the great sleeping giant of America awakens, roars, and puts an end to it.
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/.