Trump's bleak nightmare is also a rare opportunity

A few days ago I was approached on the street by someone I didn’t know.

“Are you Robert Reich?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I just want you to know …” she began, and then burst into tears. I felt awful but couldn’t think what to say. Then, in a flash, she was gone.

I don’t know what she wanted me to know, but I do know that lots of people are weeping these days.

They’re weeping for family members who have been arrested and abducted by ICE. For children arrested and imprisoned, even if their own families haven’t been affected. For people murdered by ICE or Border Patrol.

Grieving the children now dying around the world because they no longer have medicines that America used to provide through USAID or because they’re starving in places of war or famine in which America is implicated.

Crying for our planet being destroyed because Trump won’t adhere to the Paris Agreement and promotes oil and coal and kills subsidies for solar and wind.

In tears over the common decency that’s being demolished, as Trump reposts a video of the Obamas as apes, calls Somali-Americans “garbage,” and demands his name on an airport or train station in return for approving a vital transit project in New York.

Lamenting an America being sacked with impunity by billionaires like Jeff Bezos — handing Melania Trump $28 million while slashing the Washington Post newsroom and laying off thousands of Amazon workers, at the same time raking in billions of dollars more.

Or Elon Musk — planning AI data centers in space while his AI Grok floods X with sexually explicit images, and promising to flood American politics with more of his money.

And the shameless, wealthy, powerful men who abused young girls in Jeffrey Epstein’s island retreat and New York townhouse.

They’re sobbing because they’re sickened by what has happened to America.

Cry, our beloved country.

I understand the tears. I have wept, too.

But let’s not just weep.

As bleak as this era is, I hope you can also see in it an opportunity.

We could not have stayed on the road we were on even before Trump — toward widening inequality, a politics polluted by wealthy campaign donations and corporate super PACs, a market increasingly rigged by and for billionaires, an economy dominated by finance, and a climate collapsing.

So now we have an opportunity to begin the rebuilding of America. A chance to reimagine what we can become and how we can live.

To commit ourselves to stopping the self-dealing, crony capitalism, and legalized bribery that have led us to where we are. Override Citizens United and get big money out of our politics. Prevent the oligarchy from monopolizing our economy, owning our media, and taking over America.

An opportunity to update our Constitution and our means of self-government. Abolish the Electoral College. Stop political and racial gerrymandering.

And never again allow a loathsome wannabe king to tyrannize America and the world.

In other words, my friends, now is the time to rededicate ourselves to the values enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and FDR’s first and second inaugural addresses.

A time to educate the next generation so they don’t make the same mistakes. To teach our children and our grandchildren what happened and why, and instill in them a passion for democracy and the rule of law.

To read them the poems of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, Emma Lazarus’s “New Colossus” — which adorns the Statue of Liberty — and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington Monument.

To celebrate the courage of generations of American soldiers, the selflessness of our teachers and social workers, and the kindness of people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the people of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Yes, weep for what we have lost. But don’t just weep. Turn these losses into a new beginning — based not only on what’s gone wrong with America but also on what’s still good.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org