Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause, of America’s spiritual unraveling. Make no mistake: he is no ordinary symptom. He could prove fatal to our 250-year experiment in multicultural democracy. But our nation would make a grave error if we believed we could repair what is broken within us simply by defeating Trump—or his successor—at the ballot box. No, a deeper rot festers in the American soul: a callousness toward our neighbors, a me-first selfishness, a relentless focus on “getting mine” even if it leaves others behind. Today, we worship false cults—profit at any cost, consumerism instead of citizenship, a blind faith in technology, a winner-takes-all politics—that leave us feeling empty and devoid of purpose.

Excerpt from Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, USA, 2026, pp. 7-8.