The future of America is at stake in 2024 as a depraved sociopath looks to win the GOP nomination

The holiday intermission between Christmas and New Year’s has traditionally been an excuse to exhale. A brief interlude to unplug and immerse in blissful distractions. But this time seems different. No amount of escapism can keep a palpable foreboding at bay. An epic storm is coming. We are not prepared.

But how can we be? We’re living through unprecedented, unimaginable history-making in America. Wrap your head around a former president twice impeached for extorting a foreign ally (Ukraine) for political gain and for inciting a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. We watched the latter happen in real time on TV in stunned disbelief.

So did the Oval Office Instigator. But he viewed the savage degradation of our iconic citadel of democracy in stony indifference. For hours. The surreal madness that has descended on our country is frightening and exhausting. But beneath the oppressive crazy lurks a projected lunacy far more terrifying than anything we could imagine.

A depraved sociopath who knowingly lied about an election he lost, conspired to corruptly overturn it and lit the fuse of an insurrection against his own government, could be the president-elect a year from now. Next December we could be shellshocked, collectively dazed, as though we’ve fallen through the looking glass with triumphant fanatics singing Auld Land Syne.

Unbelievable but not inconceivable. Picture it. Believe it. A modern-day fuhrer with a bad comb-over — who openly campaigned on being a dictator on Day One — could be awaiting his inauguration for life with a ready-made American Reich of diehard loyalists. Donald Trump has made no secret of his fever dream to grab raw power for himself, like his authoritarian crushes around the world.

He’s increasingly using the dehumanizing language of Nazi Germany, gleefully weaving the words of Hitler into his rally punch lines, calling people “vermin” with the ominous unspoken message that vermin needs to be eradicated. Nazi propaganda is replete with references to Jews as vermin. The fascist rhetoric comes before. It aways comes before.

Trump has embraced it. He is loud and proud of his vile anti-American, anti-democratic spiel. He quotes Putin disinformation as validation and extols the virtues of freedom-killing despots. It’s not a shtick. Take him seriously. Trump is a miscreant on an unholy mission who’s desperate to stay out of jail.

He can only escape accountability for his many alleged crimes in and out of office if he assumes power and aborts pending prosecution. He is cornered (like a rat) by criminal indictments in four jurisdictions. He is charged with 91 felony counts. The evidence against him for defrauding the American government and its people by scheming to change the legitimate outcome of the 2020 election is overwhelming.

Proof of his culpability was reaffirmed by the Colorado Supreme Court in its explosive decision to disqualify Trump from holding the presidency under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause. The court found his engagement in the Jan 6 insurrection indisputable. No dissent on its independent assessment of the facts.

Trump had “the specific intent to incite imminent unlawful action,” the court said about a former president of the United States. Whatever the U.S. Supreme Court decides on appeal, the surrealness of another shameful historic first in America is difficult to shake off. Yet Trump is cruising to the presidential nomination of the MAGA Republican Party, which wholly sings his praise and welcomes his endorsements like manna from heaven.

Even after his attempted coup to stay in power no matter what law or constitutional oath he broke. Even after Trump lied repeatedly about a stolen election that wasn’t and exhorted an angry and armed mob of supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Even after hunted lawmakers and his own vice president huddled for their lives while he fiddled.

Even after he pilfered boxes of highly classified documents to Mar-a-Lago to impress regardless of the acute national security threat he invited. Even after his orchestrated subterfuge to evade and obstruct the efforts of federal investigators to retrieve the top-secret government reports. Even after a (not insignificant) verdict by a jury of his peers that he sexually assaulted a woman and then defamed her.

Even after all the carnage Trump has left in his wake and the upheaval he forecasts by flirting with fascism, the MAGA Party can’t say a bad thing about him. That defies reason and reality for political expediency. Those who put their careers above country enable and elevate a clear and present danger to those of us still reasonably sane in December, 2023.

We shudder at the thought of our Constitution being suspended or terminated under Trump — as he proposed in December 2022, so he could return to the presidency. His vow to wield revenge against political enemies, silence the media and put down protestors in the street with troops is nightmarish. He and his think tank devotees intend to sic the Justice Department on foes with trumped up charges, deploying the Kremlin playbook, and populate the federal bureaucracy with yes-men who pledge allegiance to Trump, not the Constitution.

It’s coming. This storm. Time to face it head on. All is not calm this holiday intermission. But resolve to save the republic is strong. It better be.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.