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Afraid of my country – or just of my government?
By Rosemary Haskell

Former American slave Harriet Jacobs, in her 1861 book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” remarks: “It is a sad feeling to be afraid of one’s native country.” Jacobs is, with Frederick Douglass, one of the 19th century’s great voices of slave autobiography.

This powerfully shocking statement from a once-owned human being at least makes historical sense. Jacobs had good reason to fear her country and its violent hostility. But surely, in 2025, I myself shouldn’t have that “sad feeling”?

Yet only weeks into the second Trump administration, I wonder: am I, in fact, now afraid of my country? Are others in this great country also afraid?

I think many of us do now live in fear – if not of our country, then of our own elected government. We ask: What will President Trump’s administration do tomorrow? What swathe of American life will next fall to Grim Reaper Musk’s scythe?

Let’s start with the home front. We have reason to be afraid because the Trump administration is:

• Arbitrarily firing employees of federal agencies
• Ransacking or closing federal agencies, with consequent damage to their services
• Arresting and deporting non-citizens without due process
• Defying court rulings
• Damaging economic prosperity with a raft of tariffs
• Threatening millions with Medicaid cuts; cutting USDA food-and-farm aid to schools and the poor
• Annexing Columbia University’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies to monitor and correct its curriculum
• Denying the legitimacy of transgender people’s identities
• Rejecting the notion that we should aim for a society that includes all on an equal footing

In foreign affairs too we have reason to fear what our country is doing. The Trump administration is:

• Carelessly sharing war plans with a surprisingly-invited journalist
• Insulting and humiliating allies, such as Ukraine’s President Zelensky and Canada and its leaders
• Casually scorning European nations
• Parroting the Kremlin’s world view and lying about who started the war in Ukraine
• Continuing Joe Biden’s policy of arming and supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s murderous regime
• Gossiping foolishly about annexing Greenland

The United States’s valuable “soft” global power is also waning, with the evisceration of the USAID agency and the closing of Voice of America. Worldwide suffering – physical and mental – has increased since January 20, 2025.

Overall, I would say that President Trump’s policies have destabilized not only the material conditions of the electorate, but also its collective peace of mind.

As a naturalized American citizen, I sympathize with the anxiety provoked in the minds of all migrants, legal and illegal. If the Columbia University student with a permanent resident’s Green Card can be scooped up for participating in a campus demonstration and detained in a distant jail without the protections the law provides for him, then “migrant fear” must be widespread indeed. When masked government agents snatch a woman with a student visa from a city street and sweep – without due process – alleged Venezuelan gang members into an El Salvador dungeon when the court had declared a stop, civil liberties are indeed threatened. Freedom of speech is at risk, too, when joining an anti-war protest is grounds for arrest.

So, yes, I fear my government. And, like Harriet Jacobs, I know what a sad thing that is.

I am sad to realize that the people who should be looking out for the welfare and wellbeing of those they were elected to serve are instead – at least on the surface – enjoying a destructive campaign that will damage the confidence of millions and practically affect the prosperity and social harmony of millions more. Many wait for the unemployment axe to fall: all of us probably know someone – or two – whose livelihoods have succumbed, directly or indirectly, to Doge Musk’s passion for dramatic reductions in federal wage bills.

The actual dollar value of those reductions, and their cost, in services desperately needed by so many here and abroad, have yet to be calculated. The butcher’s bill hasn’t arrived yet.

These fears accumulate on the debit side of the ledger. But I don’t fear the country as a whole. I have faith in the humanity, kindness and practical good sense of Americans and believe that all of us will realize, sooner or later, that President Trump’s blizzard of executive orders and ear-twitching foreign policy statements, and unelected Musk’s passion for power, can only mean trouble for most of the population – and for our friends around the world.

In November 2026, voters will render a mid-term judgement. By that time, I hope that President Trump and his administration will themselves have realized that a hostile government, at war with its own people, cannot stand.

Rosemary Haskell is a professor of English at ���ϲ�����. She can be reached at haskell@elon.edu.