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MAKING AMERICA POWERLESS AGAIN: HOW TRUMP IS ROBBING AMERICA OF ITS
GREATEST STRENGTHS  
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Emes Ilyes
March 11, 2025
Common Dreams
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_ While Trump fixates on the symbols of 19th-century power, he
systematically dismantles the infrastructure of 21st-century American
influence. _

Faith Groups Hold "March For Dignity" In Los Angeles An immigrants
rights supporter holds a sign reading "Immigrants Make America Great"
before marching downtown during a March for Dignity on March 1, 2025
in Los Angeles, California, Mario Tama/Getty Images

 

Donald Trump [[link removed]]
fundamentally misunderstands power. He is not playing chess; he is
playing a reckless game of Jenga with the foundational components that
actually made America great. With each ill-conceived move, he pulls
out another critical block from our national structure, destabilizing
the entire edifice while claiming to strengthen it. His vision for
American greatness is anchored in a historically dishonest version of
the Gilded Age
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period he explicitly admires, when he believes "we were at our
richest." It's no coincidence that this era represented the apex of
white supremacist control following Reconstruction, when newly
enfranchised Black Americans were systematically stripped of their
voting rights and democratic participation.

"We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That's when we were a
tariff country," Trump has declared, revealing his nostalgia for an
America where oligarchs accumulated vast wealth while the masses
struggled in poverty, where women couldn't vote, and where Jim Crow
laws ensured white supremacy remained intact.

This conception of power is devastatingly wrong and dangerous. In
Trump's worldview, might is measured solely through domination:
tariffs, walls, military threats, economic leverage, and the unchecked
authority of the executive branch. His fantasies about seizing Panama
or purchasing Greenland
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reveal a colonial mindset where sovereign nations exist merely as
potential American acquisitions—trophies for his ego and extensions
of a twisted imperial vision. This approach not only reflects a
backward 19th-century understanding of power but abandons the very
sources of American influence that have made us a genuine global
leader for generations.

True Power Lies in Innovation and Academic Freedom

While Trump fixates on the symbols of 19th-century power, he
systematically dismantles the infrastructure of 21st-century American
influence. For the first time in modern history, China has edged past
the United States
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in producing the most frequently cited scientific papers—a critical
measure of research impact and intellectual leadership. Research tells
us what is true, research shapes reality, and research determines
which voices hold authority. The United States for decades led in
research and therefore was positioned to determine truth and shape
worlds. This position of power is now being deliberately eroded as
Trump attacks universities, academic freedom
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necessity for innovation and discovery—and withdraws vital funding
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History demonstrates that America's greatest achievements often came
from embracing the persecuted and marginalized whose lives were
threatened by authoritarian, white supremacist regimes.

The power of the United States has never stemmed primarily from
military might or economic leverage; it has flowed from our leadership
in knowledge creation. Researchers worldwide have looked to
institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for
guidance. The articles published in American journals have become
foundational concepts within disciplines, allowing the U.S. to lead in
virtually every intellectual field. When federal agencies generate
data and analyses that become the global standard, America exercises
an influence far more profound than any military operation could
achieve.

When Trump attacks universities that dare to uphold academic freedom,
cutting their federal funding and threatening scholars with
deportation, he isn't demonstrating strength—he's surrendering
intellectual authority. The recent arrest of Palestinian academic
Mahmoud Khalil
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green card holder detained by ICE "in support of President Trump's
executive orders"—reveals how quickly academic freedom can collapse
under authoritarian pressure. This is not projection of power; it is
its destruction. Trump is making the United States powerless and weak.

America's Power has Come from Welcoming the Persecuted

Trump's vision of American greatness is narrowly nativist, focused on
exclusion and ideas of racial purity that have ties to eugenic
projects that have historically ended in atrocities like the
Holocaust. Yet history demonstrates that America's greatest
achievements often came from embracing the persecuted and marginalized
whose lives were threatened by authoritarian, white supremacist
regimes.

When Hitler's Nazi regime drove Jewish academics and intellectuals
from Europe in the 1930s, America's willingness to welcome these
refugees transformed our scientific
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and cultural landscape. Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann,
Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi and countless others fled persecution and
found new homes in American universities and laboratories. Their
contributions to the Manhattan Project and beyond revolutionized
physics, mathematics, and engineering—laying the groundwork for
America's technological supremacy in the latter half of the 20th
century.

True power comes not from building walls and criminalizing free speech
but from recognizing talent regardless of origin or wealth. Trump's
methodical dismantling of immigration pathways and his demonization of
foreigners don't make America stronger—they deprive us of the next
generation of brilliant minds who might otherwise choose our
universities, our laboratories, our companies, and our communities.
Our greatest resource has never been the oligarchs who were invited to
buy a "gold card
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but the persecuted who found that this country welcomed them and
supported their work.

The Gilded Age's True Legacy

Trump's romanticization of the Gilded Age is an admission of his true
aim: the systematic dismantling of American democracy in service of
white supremacy—a defining feature of those years he aims to
recreate through his brutal agenda attacking diversity initiatives,
public service workers,
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universities, and fundamental human rights
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Between 1885 and 1908, all 11 former Confederate states reformed their
constitutions and electoral laws to disenfranchise African Americans
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Though these efforts couldn't explicitly mention race, they introduced
ostensibly neutral poll taxes, property requirements, and complex
literacy tests designed to prevent Black citizens from accessing the
ballot box. In South Carolina, these measures reduced Black voter
turnout from 96% in 1876 to just 11% in 1898. Across the South, Black
turnout plummeted from 61% in 1880 to a mere 2% by 1912.

This is a legacy of the Gilded Age—a retreat from democratic
principles that locked in white supremacy for nearly a century. The
era Trump celebrates as America's peak was precisely when our
democracy was most severely compromised.

The Choice Before Us

Trump's conception of power represents a devastating miscalculation.
By fixating on the trappings of 19th-century dominance—tariffs,
military posturing, white supremacy and misogyny, and oligarchic
wealth—he surrenders the very sources of influence that have made
America genuinely powerful: our intellectual leadership, academic
freedom, diverse talent pool, democratic institutions, and moral
authority.

The question isn't whether Trump makes America powerful—it's whether
his understanding of power belongs in a modern world. When he severs
relationships with allies, seeing cooperation as "weakness," he
doesn't demonstrate strength but reveals a profound failure to
understand how international influence operates in the 21st century.

True power has always resided in our democratic values, our
intellectual leadership, and our willingness to embrace the full
spectrum of human talent and possibility.

When he dismantles the Department of Education and undermines
scientific research, he isn't eliminating waste—he's surrendering
our most significant competitive advantage. How do we measure the loss
of a great mind who might have contributed to our understanding of
climate science, identified cures for devastating diseases, or
developed technologies to preserve our democratic systems? The cost of
his destruction is beyond measurement.

Trump is indeed making America powerless even in ways that he should
be able to understand through his myopic worldview—after all, he is
making America bow to the richest man on earth
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and embracing dictators
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who destroy democracy. But he is abandoning the very sources of
American power that have made us exceptional: our commitment to
knowledge, our embrace of talent regardless of origin, our democratic
institutions, and our capacity for moral leadership. The world could
once rely on the United States, that is no more.

The gilded America he envisions—where oligarchs extract immense
wealth from land and labor, where white supremacy reigns unchallenged,
and where democratic participation is systematically
suppressed—isn't a vision of American strength. It's a return to a
time when our nation's power was narrowly concentrated among the few
at the expense of the many. That is no power. That is a monarchy. That
is death to democracy.

True power has always resided in our democratic values, our
intellectual leadership, and our willingness to embrace the full
spectrum of human talent and possibility. By abandoning these
principles, Trump isn't making America great again—he's making
America powerless in the ways that truly matter.

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Emese Ilyés is a critical social psychologist and participatory
action researcher whose work examines community resistance and
collective survival in the face of authoritarianism. Her research
focuses on grassroots movements and mutual aid networks.

* Academic Freedom; Democracy; Immigrants; Trump's Gilded Age;
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