Power, Illusion, and the Fire Next Time

There comes a moment in the life of every nation when it must confront the truth of itself...not the myth it tells the world, nor the fantasy it repeats in its classrooms and parades, but the raw, unfiltered truth. America, in this hour, stands at such a precipice. The mask is slipping, the curtain drawn back. And what is revealed is not the radiant promise of liberty and justice for all, but the cold machinery of a power structure that has long preyed on ignorance, division, and fear. The warning signs have been written into our history. Now, they are carved into the present.

Donald Trump’s actions (reckless, unilateral, and drenched in authoritarian bravado) are not anomalies but the logical conclusion of a system that has allowed impunity to grow unchecked. To launch aggression without immediate threat, to violate constitutional norms without consequence, is not merely poor leadership...it is the wielding of power divorced from accountability. And yet, Trump is not the architect of this decay. He is its symptom, its figurehead, its reflection in a cracked and clouded mirror. He is what Baldwin would call “the American lie made flesh,” a distraction from the deeper malignancy eating at the nation’s soul.

To understand Trump, you must understand the conditions that birthed him. The nation’s institutions...its media, its schools, its pulpits...have for too long peddled the illusion of fairness, while Black and Brown communities have borne witness to the truth. For us, the American Dream has always been precarious, often weaponized against us.

As Malcolm X once said, 

“We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.”

The oppression you now feel, the anxiety rippling through White America, is familiar to those who have been redlined, surveilled, incarcerated, and killed with impunity.

And we must now address an uncomfortable but necessary truth: fear is not an excuse. When White women and men claim they were “raised into” racism, or “pressured” by toxic norms, we are reminded that character is revealed not when life is easy, but when it demands moral courage.

Dr. King declared,

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Silence is complicity. And every individual blessed with privilege must answer: What did you do when the world called you to conscience?

The justice system in America has never been neutral. Its scales have always tilted toward those who can buy immunity. Black America has lived in its shadow for generations. The call today is not for violence, nor vengeance...it is for vision. It is a summons to gather, to organize, to awaken our shared humanity. As Malcolm would say, it is time to “stop singing and start swinging.” Swinging not fists, but ideas, strategy, and solidarity.

But to confront the system, we must first unmask it. Trump is not the wizard behind the curtain. He is the curtain. Behind him are the financiers, the lobbyists, the military contractors, the billionaires whose wealth thrives off division and war. Those who speak truth to this cabal...those like John F. Kennedy, who spoke of a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy...often meet a violent end. Yet history demands we speak anyway. Because silence is the language of tyranny.

Religious institutions have not escaped this critique. From the Vatican to the evangelical right, many have bowed not to God, but to gold...to empire, to politics, to profit. They’ve cloaked injustice in the robes of righteousness, sanctifying the very forces that Christ himself overturned in the temple courts. The corruption is bipartisan, systemic, and global. And until it is named, it cannot be dismantled.

Racial division is the smokescreen. As long as we are at each other’s throats (Black versus White, immigrant versus citizen) the architects of inequality remain unchallenged. While we argue about flags and pronouns, corporate profits hit record highs. As Baldwin warned,

“As long as you think you're white, there's no hope for you.” 

Because whiteness is not a color...it is a political construct, designed to divide the working poor from one another.

This nation’s greatest con is convincing us that race is the battlefield. But look deeper. The real fight is, and always has been, about class. The wealthy elite (less than one percent of humanity) have engineered systems so that the rest of us pay for their yachts, their wars, their tax shelters, and their golden parachutes. And too many of us carry that burden quietly, heads down, hoping for crumbs from the table.

Real justice (economic justice) requires a coalition. Not the fragile alliances of convenience, but a fierce, intentional, multiracial, intergenerational movement. The working class of all colors must see that their struggle is not against one another, but against the mechanisms of profit over people. Until that coalition rises, the boot on our necks will remain.

Today, White America is beginning to feel what Black America has long known: the weight of surveillance, of joblessness, of medical bankruptcy, of being disposable. The tide is turning. And in that tide is an opportunity...an invitation to finally become the nation we pretend to be.

But that will not happen without reckoning. The legacy of European conquest is not just historical...it is ongoing. The legacy of colonization, of slavery, of genocide, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is still with us. The trail of devastation has a face, and that face has been draped in the banner of “civilization” while committing uncivilized atrocities.

Yet still, we endure. Still, we hope.

As King reminded us,

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

But it only bends when we push it...when we organize, when we protest, when we refuse to be silent. Let no one mistake this moment for despair. It is, in fact, a birth. A rupture through which a more honest America may emerge.

Let us be clear-eyed but not cynical, outraged but not broken. The fire next time, as Baldwin prophesied, is not merely the fire of destruction...it is the fire of transformation. It is the heat that purifies. And in that flame, we will either forge a more perfect union, or perish in the lies we refuse to confront.