America needs a moral reckoning in 2026

America needs a moral reckoning in 2026
Defeating Trumpism requires fluency in moral language

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published January 8, 2026 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) We are only one week into 2026, and already the execrable nature of 2025 is overflowing into the new year. Adjectives like “horrible” or “gruesome” fail to capture the full texture and energy of what Donald Trump and his MAGA forces are doing to the country’s democracy and to the American people, and yet too many Americans still insist “this is not who we are.”

They are wrong. Decades — and at least 150 years — of historical evidence proves that Trumpism is an American-made phenomenon and not something transplanted from abroad or brought here from another dimension through a crack in the time-space continuum. This is exactly who the nation is. Otherwise, Trump would not have been elected twice by tens of millions of people — many of whom would gladly put him back in office for a third term if given the opportunity.

America’s collapse into neofascism is more than a crisis of America’s political and social institutions. At its core, the Age of Trump — distilled in the ugliness of the president’s second term in office — is a moral calamity that demands a great reckoning if our democracy is to even survive in 2026 and beyond. This work begins by making a moral inventory of Trump’s abuses, a list that is long and still growing. It is overwhelming by design.

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Fortunately, there are secular public voices that are speaking this moral language who should serve as examples for their peers.

In a recent essay, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explained that the second Trump administration has done great damage to America’s “moral purpose” in the world and that “the moral challenge he and his regime pose to the soul of this nation has become clear: the loss of our core ideals, the deterioration of our founding principles, and the abdication of America’s moral authority in the world.” ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/01/08/america-needs-a-moral-reckoning-in-2026/