One of the most wearying factors of our current American nightmare is that the erosion of rights, the dipping economy and our cooling reception in the world have formed a sort of national cohesion — the kind you find in hostages.

But every once in a while, even the most clear-eyed and well-meaning of us will say something that betrays the truth that America, as a concept, was never a singular place with a reality that existed for all of us equally.

That notion was exemplifed in a Bluesky post I came across last week from Joyce White Vance. I have long followed the podcaster and former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama on several social media platforms for her clear-eyed, passionate defense of the law and the Constitution. But this particular observation struck me as less clear-eyed than blinkered.

“One hallmark of being an American is that you do not have to fear your government,“ she wrote. ”If Trump’s first 100 days in office have changed anything, it’s that. He has subverted one of the major accomplishments of the Founding Fathers.”

Vance is correct that we are at a frightening place in history, where American citizens and legal residents are being sent away without recourse or due process. Our government tells us we must endure economic pain, including the destruction of our savings and safety nets, to get some beautiful something or other in the future. That sounds like something an abusive partner would say. If your dating profile encourages me to hurt at the beginning of our relationship with a promise of some vague utopia, I am swiping left.

What she’s wrong about — so, so wrong — is that it is un-American to fear one’s government. I don’t know much about Vance’s life experiences, but I do know that only a person of incredible privilege would make a blanket statement that negates the historical experiences of so many of us. We should feel comforted by the system, but it’s been proven time and again that we can’t be.

What Vance seems to mean — and she didn’t respond to my request for comment, so I can only extrapolate from her post — is that she has never felt that way before now. Like a lot of people, she might be just catching up to that reality. Only now are they seeing the protections that have always surrounded them crumble. They are now the target.

Sucks, doesn’t it?

The Founding Fathers had a good idea of laws and protections that they never intended to include my ancestors in. They were pretty clear about that, and put into practice legal norms that were very much about teaching us to fear the powers that be. The same deliberately engineered powerlessness was specifically targeted to many marginalized groups, from Native Americans to Japanese and Chinese immigrants.

That disenfranchisement was aimed, and meant to be felt, by pretty much every group that was not white, male, Christian, straight and wealthy. I have never been any of those things, and have never existed in a world where I believed that most institutions and structures were created with me in mind.

Sure, laws have been reluctantly and clumsily retrofitted for us. But there was always the tacit unspoken understanding that we were to never mention those alterations for fear — yes, there’s that word again — that if we were too loud and ungrateful, the fragile ties and makeshift supports would be kicked out from under us as we came flailing, awkward and betrayed, to the ground. And we would be like disillusioned, gaslit children who didn’t clap for Tinker Bell loud enough, throwing our belief into a thing that did not exist for all of us. Not the way we were encouraged to.

I am terrified of what is happening and what is to come. I have no power over the way Congress votes, or how authorities choose to arrest people, or how my fellow citizens decide to deal with the world — and with me. I did spend a lot of money on frozen vegetables and canned beans at Lidl this week just in case it’s hard to get those things soon and I’ll have to make struggle chili for a long time. That’s something I can do, along with finding likeminded people to talk to, who can try to galvanize and organize and maybe send some cat memes to keep us laughing when it all gets too much and only a brief chuckle will keep us alive.

But before we can do this, we have to get on the same page. Those of us whose pasts bear witness to the official and very legal contempt of the structures that, on their surface, protect us, are very sad that this is happening. But we are not shocked that it has happened it all. There is precedent. For others, like Vance, there is a period of mourning for this ideal that you existed under, though it was never real for the rest of us.

It’s going to take some time for you to sit with this and be ready to fight. We get it. But don’t take too long, OK?

We have work to do.