If you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s real and it’s happening today in America.

Your worst fears are coming true!

Donald J. Trump is making moves as you read this to establish total control and dictatorial powers over the American government and its defenseless population. His first step on the path to absolute control will be to invalidate the election in which he was voted out of power. 

To accomplish this, he will gradually erode any resistance he encounters by lodging endless interminable lawsuits and slowly allowing his Attorney General—and his captive Justice Department—to discredit election results across as many states as it takes to claim there must be some merit in Trump’s baseless claims of fraud.

We’ve become so inured to the lies Trump feeds us day after day, that we are no longer able to view them in light of their potential consequences. If he says something troubling, like he won’t abide by the results of the election, or he won’t commit to the peaceful transfer of power, we’ve been schooled by this ultimate liar to tell ourselves, “That’s just Donald being Donald.” Well it’s not just Donald being Donald, it’s the power of the Big Lie tearing down our resistance to whatever crimes and villainies Trump wants to commit. The same Big Lie that Hitler and Goebbels employed to such stunning effect, and the very same Big Lie used by Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn to spread fear and distrust of one another throughout America in the 1950’s.

And that’s the same Roy Cohn who tutored Donald so skillfully in his formative years, as we can now see and judge for ourselves. 

Since when has the loser of an election been allowed to declare the election invalid based solely on his assumption that the only way he could lose was if the other party cheated? Since when have the levers of power that guarantee a smooth transition been allowed to be shut down by the losing party to a presidential election?

Actions we believed were confined to tinpot dictators are now being committed and sanctioned by Trump and his growing chorus of co-conspirators: the leaders of the Republican Party. Trump’s greatest weapons in this unprecedented grab for power are repetition of his lies and the gradual acceptance—if not of his lies, then—of his actions to prove what he says is true. 

Why is the Attorney General allowing federal prosecutors to pursue claims of fraud where no claims were made? Why is the GSA refusing to release funds that would allow the accepted winner of the 2020 presidential election to transition to power, as winners of the presidential contest have been so allowed for 244 years?

Today in America, if we allow Donald Trump to get his way and play out this dangerous farce, we will also be unwitting agents of his daring and malfeasant schemes. No small coincidence that he fired his Secretary of Defense, the man who disavowed the use of American troops to quell domestic protests and disturbances. No small matter that his fellow Republican partisans have not required a show of evidence to prove claims that are clearly baseless. And those claims are nowhere near the scale of irregularities they would need to show to invalidate Joe Biden’s win and Donald Trump’s defeat. 

Only Donald Trump knows if this was Putin’s plan or not. Whatever the back story, we are witnessing a COUP D’ETAT. It’s happening here in our democracy, and it’s happening now.

God help America if we don’t wake up to it in time.