From World Can't Wait | Original Article

"My administration has brought profound change to Washington," said the President of his first 100 days in office. Dismantling the U.S. Constitution's separation of powers is his end game, using the institutional mechanisms designed to preserve democracy to undermine constitutional order.

In Trump's first weeks in office, "he has restructured the National Security Council to sideline knowledgeable participants in policy debates who might challenge his impulses and those of his inner circle," wrote Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff at New Republic. "He has ignored the interagency process in writing executive orders, leading to political firestorm and bureaucratic chaos. He has attacked the administrative independence of civil servants." In the rush to centralize power and mute dissent, Trump employs the pretense of fabricated crisis to undermine the bold leadership required to address the very real threats of global warming and endless war.

"During his thundering and violently divisive approach to the White House, Trump already created the sort of racist, misogynist, anti-migrant, anti-anything that is not full-blooded American sentiment," posted the editorial staff of africanglobe.net upon conclusion of the 2016 election campaign. "The second coming of increased militarization of international life and domestic instruments - notably the US police - give me a cold sweat," added Liepollo Lebohang Pheko.

Asserting supremacy over the courts and an "archaic" (his word) Congress, Trump proposes elimination of the filibuster. It's difficult to overstate how significant this would be, writes Aaron Blake for The Washington Post. "The 60-vote threshold for passing legislation in the Senate - which still exists for everything except presidential nominations - is the last vestige of Democratic power in Washington and really the only thing standing in the way of the majority party doing whatever it wants. Getting rid of it completely would change the face of American politics for good."

"Even as the Trump/Pence Regime is moving fast, they have not yet fully consolidated their regime, or, as yet, been able to implement their full program," reads an excerpt from Refuse Fascism's Call to Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime! "But, this is their objective and it is very possible. It might only take a single serious crisis - international or domestic - for this regime to drop the hammer. We do not have much time."

"People just haven't got a grip on" the dystopian future they face, warns Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, a story about the United States after a coup has established a theocratic and patriarchal dictatorship. The Hulu miniseries based on her 1985 book proves shockingly relevant in the age of Trump. Atwood does not presume to predict the future (that isn't really possible), but proffers what she coins an "antiprediction: If this future can be described in detail, maybe it won't happen." She also acknowledges that such wishful thinking cannot be depended on. We must force a political situation in which the Trump-Pence regime is denied the legitimacy to rule.

History is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.