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There are two types of patriots in the United States. For both of them, the vision of what they want America to be harkens back to the nation’s origins, and, for different reasons, neither of them had a particularly good week. 

What the first group seems to like most about those early days is that wealthy white men ruled everything, women and “others” knew their place, and that the US was a “Christian” nation (though actually it never was). Oh, and the Second Amendment. They like that, too. 

This group consists of people with little flags in their social media bios who view themselves as the only “real” Americans. 

And yet, they cheer on the people who are betraying the ideals of the Founding Fathers — the same national ancestors who would be appalled by current efforts to eviscerate the Constitution they worked so hard to establish and defend. 

We’ll get back to that.

The other group may not even view themselves as patriots. After all, they see the flaws in America. What they want is a country that lives up to its promise and principles like liberty, equality, and economic opportunity for all.

We believe that the Founders would be proud of them (although a bit mystified by the complexity of today’s world).

It hasn’t been easy for these true patriots. 

They are told that wanting a better country for all — apart, perhaps, from super-wealthy individuals and corporations whose greed is like a cancer that is making the United States a worse place for everybody else — means that they “hate America.” 

The past few months have been particularly rough.

But before we get to their plight, we need to make clear that not everybody is a member of one of these groups. In fact, most people are not.

Instead, they are part of an apathetic majority that is simply struggling to hang on. Tens of millions of Americans either don’t understand what is happening or just don’t care because they don’t see how drastically their lives will be affected.

They are among the victims of the aforementioned greed, and the more money that flows into the pockets of rich elites, the more difficult life becomes for average Americans.

The gap between rich and poor keeps growing, everything is getting more expensive, tens of millions of Americans are one emergency away from destitution, the country is deeply divided, and everything is a hassle because companies are trying to squeeze every last dollar out of their customers while cutting costs to maximize profits for a few wealthy shareholders.

And nobody seems to be doing anything about any of that. 

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that so many Americans fell for a charlatan who promised to restore their country to greatness and gave them someone to blame for their legitimate concerns (just not the actual culprits).

While many of them are beginning to wise up to the fact that it’s all a lie and that this con man will make nothing better, great damage has already been done. 

Instead of improving their lives, Donald Trump is using the mandate they gave him to rapidly transform the United States into a right-wing autocracy.

With most of the traditional checks and balances having failed, it seems as though the only thing that can stop him and his acolytes and enablers now is a populace that rises up against him.

And that takes us back to the true patriots, who are the ones who have to come together to defy him — admittedly, no easy task.

They understand what’s happening but then see one institution after another fall to Trump, no matter which laws he breaks, which norms he shatters, or how corrupt he is.  

The MAGA acolytes on the Supreme Court and in Congress have abdicated their constitutional roles (which is a charitable way of saying that they are willing accomplices), red states are eager participants in the subversion of democracy, the media is too often failing at its job, and most corporations believe that it is more lucrative to go along with the takeover and pay the occasional bribe rather than develop a spine. 

And Democratic leaders aren’t doing a stellar job either.

Take this week, for example, to understand how quickly everything is deteriorating.

While the Supreme Court has been chipping away at the protections that the Voting Rights Act has afforded voters of color for six decades, it now seems poised to give it the death knell.

This would immediately lead to more red states redrawing their congressional maps to give the GOP an edge in next year’s midterms and shield Trump from any type of oversight. 

Meanwhile, Republicans in North Carolina, America’s most undemocratic state, proposed a new map with the goal of awarding themselves an extra seat. The state is already so gerrymandered that even though Trump won the state by only a couple of points, there are only four Democrats in North Carolina’s 14-member congressional delegation. 

Across the country, masked ICE goons are rounding up immigrants and Americans in secret-police-style raids. And when the “Department of War” isn’t blowing up boats in international waters (i.e., committing war crimes), it’s dispatching troops to supposedly war-ravaged cities run by Democrats.

Of course, nobody is being held to account for any of this. 

The opposite is true. 

On Friday, Trump commuted the seven-year sentence of disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) because he was a loyal GOP vote in Congress — thereby sending a message to Republican congresspeople that as long as they vote right, their most egregious behavior (personal and professional) will be ignored by the Administration.  And it’s not just the president. 

When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was asked to weigh in on the protective order that a former girlfriend of Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) had won in court, he professed ignorance and asked to talk about “serious” issues instead. 

Then there is Vice President JD Vance, who played down and lied about the reprehensible group chat in which several leaders of the Young Republicans exchanged some very disturbing and racist messages. 

No big whoop, according to the vice president, who doesn’t feel as magnanimous when people lose their jobs for pointing out that murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk held some reprehensible views.

And it is witnessing this endless lying and hypocrisy, all while knowing that Fox News and right-wing influencers will amplify it all as though it were true, that just might be the most exhausting aspect of all this. 

Among the self-serving circle of Trump toadies, Johnson is one of the main offenders. 

This supposedly pious man stands in front of reporters every day and lies about anything and everything, from the government shutdown to the GOP’s plan to fix health care. 

The speaker also spent a fair bit of time this week trying to characterize Saturday’s “No Kings” protests as a “Hate America” rally. 

And that brings us to why it was also not a great week for Republicans: After trying to convince Americans that the “No Kings” demonstrations would be poorly attended gatherings of terrorists and communists, the nationwide rallies turned out to be a smashing success. 

Millions of real patriots showed up and proved the GOP doomsayers wrong by engaging in peaceful and even festive protests that showed Trump hasn’t won yet. 

We hope that they not only inspired others to follow their examples but also drew new strength from realizing that they are not alone in this fight for America’s soul.

They are going to need it because, while Trump will ultimately fail, as all authoritarian regimes do, it will take many years to mend what he is breaking and heal the country.