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If you’re angry about what Trump and Musk are doing to replace democracy with a Trumpian autocracy, you have every right to be.

If you’re angry about Trump pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists and is now trying to make them the victims and heroes on that day, you have every right to be.

If you’re angry that Trump is letting Musk get into your private data the government is holding, you have every right to be.

If you’re angry about Trump’s open corruption in paying off Musk for paying off his debts by having the State Department award Tesla a $400 million contract, you have every right to be.

Indeed, for more reasons that I can list here, every American ought to be angry.

Being angry is an affirmation of the Constitution, of the rule of law, of three co-equal branches of government, of having a president instead of a king, of having competent people in government instead a president’s stooges.

Being angry is the only sensible emotional response to Trump, Musk, cowardly Republicans in Congress, and voters who are okay with all that is going on.

I’d go so far as to say that if you’re not angry, you’re either trying to be too nice or you’re not paying attention. Either way, you’re among the kind of people history shows helps make tyranny possible. Silence is appeasement and complicity.

There are, of course, too many Americans who like what Trump is doing. They believe his lies about what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.

It’s pretty stunning when you think about it because Trump has done nothing to benefit his voters in the least. Not only that, he’s admitted he isn’t going to do anything for them. He’s too busy breaking things to do anything about the cost of living or preventing price gauging by major corporations, especially drug companies, or make housing more affordable.

What is more, apparently Trump supporters have a strange view of the world that makes them believe that any negative consequences of what he is doing will affect Democrats, but not them.

If prices rise because of inflation or tariffs, only Democrats will have to pay them. If children’s cancer research funds are cut, the potential long term damage it will have will only affect children of Democratic parents. If nursing homes residents are forced to leave because Trump and Musk cut Medicaid that pays for them to be be there, only elderly Democrats will be affected.

This mind set is one of the reason the spinelessness of House and Senate Republicans is such an enigma. Their support of Trumpian autocracy is at the same time support for the diminishment of their own role as the legislative branch of our democracy, but Republicans act as if only the power of congressional Democrats will be reduced to nothing.

Makes no sense, but, then, none of it does because Republican support for Trump has never made any sense, which is why sensible Republicans like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Mitt Romney are no longer in the Party.

That’s why the rest of us not only have the right to be angry, but an obligation to be. Not blind anger, but righteous anger, anger that arises when good is under attack, when justice is being denied, when the virtues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are vilified and attacked, anger that leads us into what the great civil rights leader John Lewis called “good trouble.”

We are on the verge of the unthinkable, of Trump exerting the type of autocratic power over the entire government that our Founders explicitly tried to ensure would not happen when they wrote the Constitution.

It’s called a coup, say historians Timothy Snyder (Yale) and Ruth Ben-Ghiat (NYU). They both insist based on their vast knowledge of history that what we are seeing is “a coup.” As Snyder put it last week, “Of course, it’s a coup!”

Economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman calls it an autogolpe which he defines as literally a self-coup that takes place “when a legitimately elected leader uses his position to seize total control, eliminating legal and constitutional restraints on his power.”

He then adds, “Are Musk and Trump trying to pull off an autogolpe here? Of course they are. And they are doing so with, as far as I can tell, the full support of every Republican in the House and the Senate.”

Legal scholar and professor of law Joyce Vance goes a step further in identifying Trump in particular as the primary reason our democracy is under threat:

“Presidents don’t ordinarily ignore court orders,” she writes. “That’s a hallmark of the balance of power between the three branches of government and a key part of the rule of law that forms the essential architecture for our democracy. Because of the possibility that Trump will push through that norm, there is reason for us to be deeply concerned about the state of our democracy.”

Of course, all these scholars could be wrong, warning us of something that is not actually happening, but what if they’re right? The evidence seems quite clearly to be on their side that a coup is underway in plain sight.

It seems to me that being a loyal patriot means being angry about that…and angry at everyone who is supporting him either directly and indirectly.

History tells us that we cannot afford to be naïve about this. Naivete is one of the things fascist leaders count on to work in their favor.

Most Germans didn’t take Hitler all that seriously early on, and even German leaders were as naïve as the people were. When President Paul Hindenburg and his Chancellor, Franz Von Papen, asked Hitler to become Vice-Chancellor in 1932 in order to gain the Nazi Party support in the Reichstag (Parliament), he refused. He wanted to be Chancellor

Hindenburg and Von Papen finally agreed to let Hitler take Von Papen’s position as Chancellor because – get this – they believed they could control him. We all know how that turned out.

Naivete makes the ascendency of authoritarian rule easier than it would be by making resistance to it less than it needs to be. Righteous anger is the anti-dote, anger that energizes us to make good trouble for Trump, Musk, congressional Republicans, and Trump supporters.

The courts are making good trouble for them at the moment, and we must speak out in support of them. It’s one branch of government left that is fighting back.

Democratic governors are as well, along with the Democratic minority in the House and Senate. They need to know we’re not only behind them, but are expecting them to resist.

What intensifies my anger at Trump supporters is the fact that they are feeding Trump’s hunger for adoration. Praise is not enough at this point in his life. He wants to be adored, worshipped even.

Trump lies the way he does because telling the truth would make him feel ordinary. He needs to be seen as royal, divinely blessed, a special instrument of God, whose words are true solely because he utters them.

In street language, Trump wants to be somebody, the greatest “somebody” in the history of the presidency.

He wanted to be somebody in his first term, but didn’t know how government worked well enough to gain sufficient power that made him feel like he was. This time around he has the Project 2025 playbook to show him how.

Donald Trump is all about Donald Trump. Nothing else. But his voters have never gotten that. They crave his shadow being cast upon them as much as he craves their worship.

That’s why in spite of reliable reports that his attempt at destroying USAID is killing babies, mothers, and the elderly in the poorest regions of the world, they are standing fast beside him.

If that doesn’t make you angry, check your pulse, you may be dead, but not know it.

This is not a fight any of us who believes in America and in American democracy wants to have. We want our political leaders to focus on laws and policies that are consistent with the Constitution and reflect the ideals on which the nation was founded.

On a personal level, we want to work, play, love, be a good neighbor, live life in a normal way without worrying about our democracy is being stolen from us.

But that is not a luxury we can afford at the moment. Instead, this is a fight we must wage in the ways available to us, such as:

• Voicing our anger to family and friends and in any appropriate circumstance about what Trump and Musk are doing.
• Expressing support for the court decisions that will prevent Trump from controlling everything.
• Emailing or calling our Senators or Members of Congress.
• Joining a demonstration where we live.
• Paying attention just enough to know what is going on every day.
• Sharing this blog and others like it on Facebook or emailing them to others.

The fight to save our country is going to be a long one. The damage Trump is doing will be considerable, and that will be discouraging. Friends, family members, and neighbors will justify what he’s doing.

Fatigue and weariness will tempt us to give up, to turn attention away from the avalanche of government busting orders and actions Trump is throwing at us.

But if we are genuinely angry about it all, I can promise you we will have all the energy we need to make good trouble for anyone and everyone who is supporting Trump’s coup.

And that is what we must do – defeat them. Let’s not fool ourselves. We cannot win them over to sensibleness, to reality, to facts, to truth. Instead, we have to defeat them with the same – sensibleness, reality, facts, truth, and ultimately, with votes.

Put simply, the fight we are in is between those of us who believe in Lincoln’s government of the people, by the people, for the people, and those who support a government of Trump, by Trump, and for Trump.

For the first time since the Civil War, remaining the United States of America is once again in the hands of its citizens, in your hands and mine.

We cannot shrink from the challenge, not only for our sake, but for our children and grandchildren and their children.

I have said this before, but it bears repeating. There are three kinds of people in the world: (1) those who make things happen; (2) those who let things happen; and (3) those who wonder what happened.

Trump and Musk are counting on most Americans being the second kind who will ignore what they’re doing only to wake up at some point in the future and wonder what happened to their country.

People like you and me must be the the first kind. We must make things happen by stopping the coup Trump and Musk are trying to pull off!

In the truest sense we must stop the steal, only this time the real one.