It’s a difficult time to be an American. That statement may seem offensive to the billions of people worldwide, where deprivation is a way of life. Americans are blessed and privileged. But they have allowed their country to become materially rich and spiritually poor. Their country has lost touch with its soul.

The United States set out 250 years ago to prove it could create and sustain a “more perfect union” with a government of, by, and for the people. The country was founded on the radical proposition that all people are created equal and are blessed by God with inalienable rights. It has survived social unrest, racism, brutal wars at home and abroad, economic collapse, energy crises, and political scandals to become the world's oldest continuing democracy.

However, Americans are experiencing what the 16th-century Catholic poet St. John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul.” It is a spiritual crisis with no set time limit. It lasts as long as necessary for a person or a country to emerge cleansed, purer, and more conscious of the work necessary to fulfill its destiny.

What’s unnerving is that the dark night has been caused by a single man and his cultish following. It’s not surprising, because it has happened many times in other parts of the world. America’s founders anticipated it might also happen in the newly created United States. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, pointed out that leaders are human and vulnerable to the temptations of greed and power. So, Jefferson and the other founders developed an operating manual, the Constitution, in which the national government consists of three equal branches, each with the tools to prevent the others’ excesses.

A decade ago, with most of the nation’s wealth concentrated in the hands of only 10 percent of its people, Donald Trump positioned himself as the champion of Americans who felt the economy had left them behind. Now in his second term as U.S. president, Trump has bullied the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court into neglecting their responsibility to prevent his totalitarian tendencies. The system of checks and balances has collapsed. The nation’s highest court has ruled inexplicably that he and future presidents can break laws while performing their official duties.

That freed Trump from accountability. He unleashed his most perverse instincts, including an insurrection in 2021 when he tried to overturn his election defeat to Joe Biden. In 2024, the American people made the mistake of giving the presidency back to Trump, and the darkest part of the dark night began. Over the last 17 months, he has destroyed government agencies that served as watchdogs to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. He maligned the news media, another essential watchdog, while his rich conservative supporters bought and took control of legacy newspapers and television stations.

Trump has shredded the Constitution and torn up the social contract that valued diversity, respect, civility, and decency in government and civil society. He welcomed white supremacists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, isolationists, homophobes, and anti-government groups into his tent. While families struggled to meet their rapidly rising cost of living, he used public funds to erect monuments to himself, plate his White House office in gold, and build a lavish ballroom for the billionaire class.

Trump made selfishness America’s foreign policy. He stopped aid to the developing world, undercut America’s support for NATO, and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. He has befriended despots and insulted America’s longstanding and most trusted allies. He has made America an international pariah.

Now, Americans' visits to other countries are like apology tours. One news outlet notes, “a significant number of U.S. tourists report feeling self-conscious or anxious about traveling abroad due to President Trump’s policies, rhetoric, and global perceptions. Surveys indicate that up to 72% of experienced U.S. travelers worry about receiving an icy reception or being judged overseas.”

So, yes, it’s difficult being an American these days. Every new day is another gut punch from Trump, who spends his nights posting offensive memes and tirades on his social media site. His videos show the U.S. military firing missiles into small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans, more than 60 so far, killing more than 200 people in blinding televised explosions, and claiming without proof that they were drug-runners.

Trump has ordered military strikes in at least 10 countries, including his ill-fated war of choice against Iran. He has taken over Venezuela’s oil fields, which hold the world’s largest petroleum reserves, and has talked about taking over Iran’s, the third largest. He has threatened to take Greenland away from Denmark by force and has hinted at attacking Cuba as well as several South American countries. He tellingly changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, a disturbing signal from the country with history’s most lethal military force and the world’s second-largest nuclear weapons arsenal.

One of Trump's closest White House advisors is a white supremacist and xenophobe who designed the president’s brutal, racist, and often unconstitutional treatment of immigrants and their families. Trump pardons criminals who support him, including convicted insurrectionists and financial backers, while launching malicious lawsuits and investigations against his critics.

He has squandered government resources on his monuments, tearing down a major section of the historic White House to construct a gilded ballroom for the billionaire class. He celebrated his birthdays with a military parade and a bloody spectacle on the White House lawn. On Trump’s behalf, his administration is denying public access to 3 million documents about the Epstein child sex-trafficking ring. Trump’s name appears thousands of times in the Epstein documents released so far.

However, there are signs that the dark night may be ending. Earlier this year, the people in Minneapolis, Minnesota, demonstrated the power of resistance after Trump dispatched thousands of masked and heavily armed government agents into the city’s streets to find, imprison, and eject immigrants. The agents shot two people to death – a mother and a nurse, both U.S. citizens – who were protesting peacefully against the occupation. The Trump administration lied about the incident and gave Americans a glimpse of what totalitarianism looks like. In response, millions of Americans have taken to the streets of their cities for “No Kings” marches that protest Trump’s presidency.

As I write this, Americans have just been reminded of what the country was, should be, and could be again. It is customary for each ex-president to build a library filled with archives and exhibits from their time in office. Last month, Barack and Michelle Obama opened their library in Chicago. As they addressed the nation, America’s other living presidents—George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden—sat on the stage behind them. Donald Trump was missing. He was not invited.

Obama invoked “the shared values that make democracy possible, a belief in the intrinsic dignity and worth of all people, and that no one is above the law or beneath its protection...a belief in the qualities of character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion, a sense of duty and honor” in our public as well as personal lives.

“The story of America at its best,” he said, “reflects a basic faith in the decency of our fellow citizens and the possibility that despite all of our differences, we can see each other and understand one another and make common cause together...”

“What I heard on every continent as president is that when American foreign policy lives up to our highest ideas, when we champion human rights and democracy and the sound stewardship of our planet, or we take the lead in eradicating disease and feeding the hungry and educating children, when we encourage cooperation between nations instead of trying to dominate and bully and squeeze very advantage just because we can, and most of all, when we show through our example here at home that even a country as big and diverse as ours can make democracy work, it turns out all nations including ours become more prosperous and secure and the world gets a little big brighter.”

“I’m not immune to anger or doubt,” Obama continued, “but I do know this. When we lose faith in each other...we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies, and keep those who are different in their place. I do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end.”

There were tears in the audience of thousands as he spoke. There undoubtedly were tears among the millions who watched on television. We could feel the Obamas pushing the confused and erratic needle of the nation’s compass back to true north. We could feel America’s soul again.

Perhaps a new dawn is coming, when the United States emerges wiser, brighter, and rededicated to its best self. That is our hope.