WATCH: What tyranny does to the soul — and how to fight back

What if the way Trump has bent American elites to his will is also the key to beating him?

We talked earlier this afternoon with Ruth Ben-Ghiat — and more than 5,000 readers of The Ink and Lucid — about her new piece about moral collapse under Trump. Ruth writes about how Trump has attacked the idea of America at the level of the human soul, hollowing out not just institutions but people. But that also means an organized opposition can take the moral high ground and remind Americans of what they can be, beyond Trump.

What does — or could — that kind of resistance look like? Can a progressive movement get the fossilized Democratic Party to face a reckoning? Is it time for a leadership fight, even if it seems inconvenient — and could that fight within the Democratic Party help mobilize people against authoritarianism?

More people want to be free than want to be chained. A real opposition has to build solidarity, and bring together a coalition of movement organizations, faith groups, and labor — but it also needs to offer a better vision of life, and of what this country can be.

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