Vitamin R: Purpose Is the Only Counter to Power—How the Common Good Can Defeat the Autocrats
- john raymond
- Jul 26
- 2 min read
There is power in the people.
That truth has not changed. What has changed is the system’s capacity to realize it.
Today, the power of the people lies dormant, misdirected, or deliberately suppressed—not because Americans are apathetic, but because the machinery designed to reflect their will has been corrupted. The clearest symptom of that sickness is not just Donald Trump the man, but Trumpism the system: a decadent, cynical, self-perpetuating engine of power without principle.
But Trump is not the disease—he is the symptom. The disease is a political order in collapse, sustained by a toxic alignment of cowardice, ambition, and elite nihilism.
What must come next, if democracy is to survive, is not just a change in leadership or another round of elections. It is a moral realignment—a shift from the pursuit of power for its own sake to the pursuit of purpose worth fighting for. That shift will not come from the top down. It must come from the people—through a renewed willingness to believe in something greater than self, and to organize in service of the common good.
In short: the only force capable of defeating authoritarianism is a coalition bound not by personality or partisanship, but by purpose. That purpose must be selfless, rooted in justice, and accessible to all. And it must be powerful enough to gather together those who have been isolated, fractured, or made cynical by the failures of the current order.
The question is not who will next grasp the reins of political power, as Heather Cox Richardson recently framed it. The real question—the one that will determine whether this country is lost or renewed—is this:
Can those who believe in more than power for themselves find each other, align around a shared purpose, and organize to confront a system that no longer serves the people it was built to protect?
That is the contest now. Purpose vs. Power.
And only one of them can win.
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