If you’re feeling despair over Trump’s second regime, I completely understand — yet I'm still hopeful about America.

There are ample reasons for despair, but Trump’s second term is exposing a reality that has been hidden from most Americans: the raw, stinking  power of the American oligarchy. And its use of obscene wealth to gain this power.

My hope is founded on Americans seeing and responding to this reality.

He's planning another giant tax cut for the wealthy.

To pay for it, he’s giving two billionaires — Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — the authority to target programs average Americans rely on. He’s putting billionaires in charge of key departments.

Meanwhile, CEOs are descending on Mar-a-Lago like moths to a flame in order to curry Trump’s favor. Musk, the richest person in America, has turned his giant media platform, X, into a cesspool of lies and bigotry in support of Trump.

Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person in America, and owner of Amazon, has reportedly agreed to pay 40 million dollars for Melania Trump’s documentary — for which she’s executive producer. Previously, Bezos blocked the newspaper he owns, the Washington Post, from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Mark Zuckerberg, the third-richest person in America, has chosen to allow lies and bigotry on Facebook and Instagram, presumably in support of Trump. Zuckerberg says the deciding factor for doing this was the “cultural tipping point” of Trump’s election.

And this is just the beginning of the oligarchic takeover under Trump.

So why am I hopeful?

Americans don’t abide aristocracy. We were founded in revolt against unaccountable power and wealth. We will not tolerate this blatant takeover.

There will be a backlash, and we will respond by helping our communities and protecting the most vulnerable.

And we will also respond in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election — by electing true leaders who care about working people and the common good.

And just as we did at the end of the first Gilded Age when the oligarchy revealed its hubris and grandiosity, we will demand and get fundamental reforms: Big money out of politics. Higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for what most Americans need. Busting up giant corporations. Regulating big finance. Holding huge social media platforms accountable to the public.

On the path we were on, the sludge had been thickening even under Democratic administrations. There were fundamental, systematic flaws that remained unaddressed. Inequalities have continued to widen. Corruption and bribery have worsened. We were on the way to losing our democracy without even knowing it.

It’s unfortunate that America has come to this point. But, as a friend put it, authoritarian forces have been building for years like the pus in an ugly boil, she said. The only way we work up enough outrage to lance it is for the boil to get so big and ugly that it disgusts all of us.

A few years of another Trump regime even more disgusting than the first will be hard on many. We cannot gloss over the magnitude of the suffering that will occur.

But when the oligarchy that controls us is exposed for what it is, the nation will see — more clearly than ever before — that we have no alternative other than to take back power.

Only then can we continue the real work of America: The pursuit of equality and prosperity for the many, not the few.