The excuse that this regime is better than it was, or might otherwise have been, only lasts so long.

Every transition government in history has deployed that trope. Think the Girondins in France, Kerensky in Russia, Weimar in Germany, the Second Spanish Republic, Chiang Kai-shek in China, and so on. In order, they were replaced by Robespierre then Napoleon, Lenin then Stalin, Hitler, Franco, and Mao.

In each of these cases, the transitional government was caught between and ultimately smashed by pressures from both sides: industrial and intellectual partisans of the old regime with legacy control, on one side, and the radicalism of the populist movements that brought new people to power on the other.

Threading this needle is not easy in revolutionary moments. Of such times, history teaches one lesson more than any other. The new regime must be brutally honest about the criminality of the old one and work with focus to dismantle it as fast as possible. Anything short of that leads to its own discrediting and eventual replacement.

In every area of government today under the Trump administration, now entering its second phase, we witness these very historical forces at work. The grassroots movement that beat all odds to put the new people in power had high and even revolutionary expectations following the five most horrid years of our lives.

Some of these hopes are being partially met in good ways but blocked and neglected in too many other ways that are unbearably conspicuous. This dynamic affects the budget disaster, the demand for transparency, and in the realm of public health.

As a result, the wild optimism that greeted the inauguration of Trump has turned to something different, a mixture of incredulity from the grassroots combined with outrage and disgust from the legacy media and establishment that fought this revolution at every turn. …

That said, the release of yet another shot, implausibly called NexSpike, especially in light of all evidence and promises, is a tremendous shock for which no one was prepared. If they were in the works and the appointees could not stop them, we should be told that and the full explanation should be given to all. If President Trump himself is still attached to the foul spawn of Operation Warp Speed, and has forced them back onto the market despite vast public opposition, we should know that too.

Above all else, what we really need is the blunt truth about the last five years. We need to know that the people in office, whether elected or appointed, still share the deep outrage that fueled the movement that put them in power. We need to hear frank talk about the harms, the mandates, the suffering, the deceptions, the payoffs, the graft, the abuses, the illegal vanquishing of freedom, science, and human rights.

It is not enough to proclaim a new Golden Age and be done with it. This pertains to every aspect of public life. Press conferences by the new officeholders, with smiles and promises of better behavior in the future, don’t cut it given the mass loss of trust, rampant cynicism, and grassroots fury. There must be more straight talk, more decisive action that goes to the heart of what happened, and some degree of accountability.

We hear daily rumors that all of this is coming. Great. In which case, the new leaders need to make that clear. The masses are not inherently unreasonable. But they are the people within whom the leadership must reason – not “message,” not presented with flim-flam, not entertained with digital Punch and Judy shows, and not sniffily dismissed as ignorant extremists and conspiracy theorists.

Every new leadership in government that inherits that kind of disaster of the last five years is necessarily going to be squeezed between the legacy regime – including its vast bureaucracies and industrial interests – and the populist movements that put them in power. In these cases, the status quo usually proves irresistible but with disastrous consequences later.

Now is the time to stop that unfolding disaster, one which can only compound the errors of the past.