As we observe President Trump’s ongoing challenges to the rule of law, constitutional rights, and democracy itself, a memory from 1964 resonates with me, the year I completed high school.

During the early hours of March 13, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese faced a horrifying fate as she was raped and fatally stabbed outside her Queens apartment building. The New York Times later reported that nearly 40 witnesses either saw or heard the attack, yet none intervened. This revelation shocked the nation, highlighting a collective failure to act, which psychologists have since termed the “bystander effect.”

While debates continue over the accuracy of this narrative, it serves as a powerful metaphor for our current situation. Today, we witness a criminal president and his allies attacking the foundations of our republic, while those entrusted with its defense—our elected leaders and institutions—stand by seemingly powerless to halt the abuses.

For those of us with military experience, especially those who have faced combat, the sight of leaders and citizens paralyzed in the face of aggression is particularly poignant. We entrust our warriors with the defense of freedom, expecting them to face foreign dangers bravely.

Yet, these warriors depend on the citizens at home to confront domestic threats—those who would undermine democracy, strip away freedoms, dismantle institutions, and tarnish the values that have defined our nation for over two centuries. Whether at home or abroad, cowardice is a betrayal of America.

The bystander effect is evident in Congress and the Supreme Court, whose jobs are to prevent the rise of dictators, oligarchs, theocrats, authoritarians and wanna-be kings. Our lawmakers and black-robed justices appear to fear retribution, and losing the jobs they aren’t doing in the first place.

It has been our custom that each generation of Americans should leave its children better and more secure lives than the one they inherited. However, we also have an obligation to the past, including those who rebelled against the world’s most powerful monarch generations ago, the 70,000 men who died in that rebellion, and the more than 1 million men and women who have died in America’s wars since.  

Yet, with Trump and the radical right rapidly advancing the destruction of the Republic, our most powerful institutions aren’t lifting a finger. Elections are meant to be the remedy for such inexcusable cowardice, but the Trump machine is moving to permanently destroy representative government and the electoral system before voters can save them.

What is equally disturbing is that 77 million Americans allowed themselves to be duped into handing the presidency to a convicted felon who tried to steal an earlier election. Those who voted for him cannot claim ignorance of his conduct, as they knew Trump’s victory would allow him to escape trials on the dozens of additional charges against him.

Trump regained the presidency with many promises to America’s “forgotten middle class.” He is not keeping them. As I write this, more than 41 million Americans suffering from food insecurity have been made pawns in the federal government shutdown while the president spends hundreds of millions of dollars on a cavernous, gilded ballroom no one else wanted. The money would be better spent on food banks.  

Our Constitution begins with the promise of justice, tranquility and a more perfect union. Now, retribution and bullying have replaced justice, saccharine sycophancy has replaced public service, and there has not been a tranquil day in American politics since Trump entered the arena in 2015. 

So, here we are. Now we understand Benjamin Franklin’s wry comment that the founders gave us a republic if we could keep it. The men who created the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution, who stood up against a king’s abuses and who died for our liberties, and the generations that sustained the American dream through a civil war, two world wars, and the Great Depression, all counted on us to “keep it.”

Perhaps they made a mistake. They assumed or hoped that succeeding generations would appreciate how blessed they were and would be principled enough and courageous enough to keep the U.S. safe from despots, degenerates and bigots. The founders created the tools for us to defend democracy. We must look deep within ourselves and our country and ask why those who have these tools are not using them. 

William S. Becker is a former official at the U.S. Energy Department and founder of its Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development during the Clinton administration. He is the author of “The Creeks Will Rise: People Coexisting with Floods,” which tells the story of a community that moved away from a floodplain and proposes several FEMA reforms.