President Trump’s daily attacks on constitutional rights and the rule of law mirror a chilling historical pattern: the bystander effect that psychologists identified after Kitty Genovese’s death in 1964. As democracy faces its gravest threats, elected leaders and institutions assigned to defend our republic stand by and watch, paralyzed by fear while a criminal president and his allies systematically assault the freedoms that defined America for 250 years. More than 41 million Americans suffer from food insecurity while the president spends hundreds of millions of dollars on luxury, yet Congress and the Supreme Court remain silent.
On the early morning hours of Mar. 13, a 28-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was raped and stabbed outside her apartment building in Queens. Media agency reported that nearly 40 people saw or heard the attack but did nothing to stop it. This incident shocked the nation because no one had the courage to intervene.
Psychologists called it the “bystander effect” — when people freeze in the face of attack, each assuming someone else will act. This account, whether entirely accurate or not, provides an apt analogy to what we are witnessing today. The paralysis we witness in 2015 when Trump entered the political arena has only intensified, creating a travesty after travesty that threatens the very foundation of our republic.
Those who have served in the military — especially those who have been in combat — may be particularly sensitive to this experience of leaders and fellow citizens freezing. Warriors who risk their lives against foreign threats expect and count on the people back home to do their part against domestic tyrants who subvert democracy.
However, these same warriors who delegate the defense of freedom abroad now watch as domestic tyrants take away the very freedoms they fought to protect. Cowardice betrays America whether it happens at home or abroad. The 70,000 men who died in the rebellion against the world’s most powerful monarch generations ago, and the more than 1 million men and women who have died in America’s wars since, all counted on succeeding generations to keep their sacrifice meaningful.
The bystander effect is evident in Congress and the Supreme Court, whose jobs are to prevent the rise of dictators, oligarchs, theocrats, authoritarians and wanna-be kings. Our lawmakers and black-robed justices appear to fear retribution more than they fear betraying the Constitution. They are losing the jobs they aren’t doing in the first place, watching as Trump and the radical right are rapidly advancing the destruction of our Republic.
Most powerful institutions aren’t lifting a finger while the Trump machine is moving to permanently destroy representative government and the electoral system before voters can save them. Elections were meant to be the remedy for such inexcusable cowardice, but this remedy is being systematically dismantled. It is equally disturbing that 77 million Americans allowed themselves to be duped into handing the presidency to a convicted felon who tried to steal an earlier election.
Trump regained the presidency with many promises to America’s “forgotten middle class.” He is not keeping them. As I write this, more than 41 million Americans suffering from food insecurity have been made pawns in the federal government shutdown. The president spends hundreds of millions of dollars on a cavernous, gilded ballroom that no one else wanted when this money would be better spent on food banks.
Those who voted for him cannot claim ignorance of his conduct. They knew that Trump’s victory would allow him to escape trials on dozens of additional charges against him. The Constitution begins with the promise of justice, tranquility and a more perfect union. Now, retribution and bullying have replaced justice. Saccharine sycophancy has replaced public service, and there has not been a tranquil day in American politics since Trump became the dominant force.
Benjamin Franklin’s wry comment that the founders gave us a republic if we could keep it carries urgent meaning today. The men who created the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution — who stood up against a king’s abuses and died for our liberties — all counted on us to “keep it.” The generations that sustained the American dream through a civil war, two world wars, and the Great Depression fulfilled their obligation to the past and their custom of leaving children better and more secure lives than they inherited.
Perhaps they made a mistake. They assumed or hoped that succeeding generations would appreciate how blessed they were and would be principled enough and courageous enough to keep the U.S. safe from despots, degenerates and bigots. The founders created the tools for us to defend democracy. We must look deep within ourselves and our country and ask why those who have these tools are not using them. You have witnessed how institutions assigned to protect us instead corrupt the ideals that once made this nation a beacon of hope.
William S. Becker, a former official at the U.S. Energy Department and founder of its Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development during the Clinton administration, is the author of “The Creeks Will Rise: People Coexisting with Floods,” which tells the story of a community that moved away from a floodplain and proposes several FEMA reforms. His words carry weight from decades of public service.
The question facing each generation of Americans is whether we will recall the lessons of history or repeat its darkest chapters. Will you intervene when you witness the systematic assault on everything our ancestors rebelled against? Or will you become another bystander, freezing while democracy dies? The nation that once shocked the world with its courage now risks shocking it with its cowardice. Every day you remain silent, you corrupt the legacy of those 1 million souls who gave everything so you could live free.
