America’s Moral Collapse: The New Face of Power and the Death of Conscience

By Nancy O’Brien Simpson

Photo: Generated by AI (DALL·E 3 by OpenAI) is licensed under Free for commercial use (OpenAI License)

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There was a time when America’s power, for all its flaws, at least pretended to wear a moral face. We spoke of liberty, of decency, of being a light to the nations. Today, that light has dimmed to a dull, cynical flicker. The United States under Donald Trump has once again become a machine for war and self-enrichment—a nation drunk on its own propaganda, unable or unwilling to see the human cost of its power.

Trump funds the genocide in Gaza and calls it “support for an ally.” He bombs Venezuelan fishing boats in international waters and calls it a “fight against drugs,” when in truth almost no fentanyl comes from Venezuela. He toys with “operations” in Nigeria, speaks of coups as casually as he used to talk about real estate deals, and still has the audacity to call himself a man of peace.

At home, the wreckage piles up. The Education Department has been gutted—teachers demoralized, students viewed as data points rather than kids that are holy and deserve schools that thrive. The social safety net, fragile to begin with, is under siege. Programs that feed the poor, house the unhoused, and protect the elderly are called “handouts,” while tax breaks for billionaires are rebranded as “growth.”

Then there is the breathtaking hypocrisy. Trump pardons a crypto criminal and later tells 60 Minutes he’s never heard of him. He plays the patriot while selling out American ideals to the highest bidder. He preaches peace while stockpiling weapons and whispering about nuclear “tests.” What he’s really detonating is truth itself.

We are told to be afraid of enemies abroad—China, Russia, Iran. But the greater threat is here at home: the corrosion of conscience, the normalization of deceit, the applause for cruelty. This is how democracies die—not with a coup in the streets, but with a slow surrender of truth and a shrug from a weary public.

I no longer trust our institutions. How can I? The government funds war crimes abroad and austerity at home. It prosecutes whistleblowers and rewards warmongers. It tells the people to tighten their belts while defense contractors feast on billions.

And yet, I still believe in the people. I see decency in the small, untelevised corners of American life: the teacher buying her own classroom supplies, the volunteer feeding strangers, the writer still telling the truth. We are not powerless, but we are perilously close to forgetting that power comes not from Washington, but from conscience.

If we lose that—if we stop feeling horror at injustice, if we stop naming lies when we see them—then no army, no election, no leader can save us. The real war is for the American soul. And right now, it’s losing.