When I was a kid, I loved cowboy movies. In a frequent motif, the handsome sheriff, wounded in a duel with a nasty desperado, whom he had killed, limped into the town’s saloon and wincingly asked the tipsy doctor, “How bad is it, Doc?” A pretty woman of sketchy repute, who worked in the saloon and who loved the sheriff, tore her petticoat into strips for bandages and nursed him bravely.

In some movies the sheriff’s wound was mortal—his death tragic, but he had liberated the town from its terrorizing menace. We shed tears of grief mixed with tears of relief.

I was thinking of those scenes when trying to assess the degree of serious wounding the United States now suffers from. Imagine that the handsome sheriff is Uncle Sam, but the duel is with himself. He plays the bad guy pretending to be the good guy. In an elaborate suicide pantomime, he argues with himself then shoots himself four times!

What? Are you kidding me? Uncle Sam shoots himself?

Yep. And not in the foot. This Uncle Sam seems determined to destroy the country, which is the real intent of the 2025 Project. The first shot is embracing fascism—in the head. The second is supporting genocide—in the heart. The third is ignoring climate chaos—in the lungs. And the fourth is gratuitous violence and cruelty—in his stomach. If he’s still standing, he’ll celebrate the end of democracy by shooting himself in the knees to blast the Bill of Rights. The audience is awed by Uncle Sam’s stupidity. He’s us and we’re doing it to ourselves. Our tears are tears of grief, disbelief, and rage. But why were we surprised? We elect a mendacious tyrant for president, we provide weapons and profit from genocide, we know climate science but refuse to curtail our use of fossil fuels, and we know cruelty rots a society and engenders bad karma. What did we expect?

“How bad is it, Doc?”

Bad. Very bad.

Just a few years ago, fascism seemed inconceivable in a country that claimed to be the world’s greatest democracy. Even during our years of the most intense and violent racism, the overall political system—no matter how hypocritically flawed— maintained the pretense of democracy and equality. There was a gulf between appearance and reality, but the government never questioned the importance of claiming democracy. And pretense was the rope we used to pull ourselves out of the ditch of our own hypocrisy—at least until now. Now the blunderers in chief are steering us purposely into the ditch. Pretense is gone. Democracy is an obstacle to the consolidation of wealth and power and entitlement. That’s how bad it is. Trump is a corrupt fascist and the people with him and behind him are frightening human beings—comfortable with obvious lies, comfortable with laying waste to people, environments, and all living species.

As partners with Israel in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinains in Gaza and the West Bank, we are burdening ourselves with the guilt of a moral atrocity we can never justify or be forgiven for—anymore than we can forgive slavery or indigenous genocide. These are the facts of moral culpability that define us. Declarations of exceptionalism to the contrary.

Nevertheless, people survive fascism. They can survive, too, however damaged morally, after committing atrocities. But they may not survive denying the science of climate change. How does one measure the stupidity of that? And what kind of brutish people relish cruelty? Trump falsely claims his cruel police state tactics are necessary to deport lawless immigrants and bring crime-ridden cities under control. There is a crisis of crime—in the White House.

The primary attributes, it seems to me, of a successful society are threefold. One is the ability to define a problem and devise a solution securing the most good for the most people. Another is the empathetic imagination—the ability of people to share the trials and tribulations of their neighbors—their struggles, dreams, joys and tragedies. That empathy allows people to appreciate that their consciousness is like the consciousness of everyone else, each aspiring to love and understanding, some measure of success, and self-actualization. This is a very old idea—walk a mile in another’s shoes before you make any judgments. When that attribute is lost or in scant supply, how does a society rejuvenate it? Without it, society will disintegrate into rancid and perpetual cruelty. Third, justice with dignity must be the common denominator of all interactions. These attributes must be the first and continuous lessons of schools.

How do we change the script? How do we get rid of the self-destroying Uncle Sam without losing ourselves? We must resist the injustices and model the rejuvenation of the common good. Rev. William Barber says, “We should ask are policies constitutionally consistent, morally defensible, and economically sane.” The Americans Who Tell the Truth portraits are composed of people who courageously answer that question in the affirmative. But when you have to ask if your own government is operating with legal, moral, and scientific sanity, you don’t really have to ask, “How bad is it , Doc?”