I grew up in an era when we paid attention to the so-called Doomsday Clock. This virtual timepiece purportedly represented how close the world was to nuclear annihilation … an apocalypse in which innocent victims like myself would be incinerated in a flash of atomic insanity. The timepiece was managed by a group of concerned scientists who monitored world events to determine how near to global Armageddon we were at that moment. It struck us as real back in the day. After all, who among us ancient farts can yet recall the school exercises where we scrambled under our desks … not to escape mad gunmen with AR-15s but rather to futily protect our fannies from Soviet ballistic missiles.

That persistent dread receded with time. Though miscalculation remained a threat, it increasingly became clear that rational minds, or perhaps the reality of mutual annihilation, would restrain the worst impulses of global leaders. The collapse of the Soviet Union around 1990 seemed to end the presumed utility, or at least relevance, of the Doomsday Clock. The minute hand had always hovered near midnight, the moment of truth, but thankfully never touched it. With the Soviet walls crumbling, that eschatological threat now seemed quite remote.

Perhaps, however, we were premature in our optimism. After all, nuclear annihilation has never been the only substantial threat to what we considered the freedoms of Western Democratic traditions. While the ominous shadow of Communist totalitarianism seemed to recede with the collapse of Moscow’s empire, another threat, once considered ended in the aftermath of a Second World War, emerged to replace the tyranny of the left. Right-wing authoritarianism had seemed relegated to the ash heap of history given that 60 million or so had perished to destroy it once and for all. Unfortunately, neither wars nor wishful thinking bury pernicious ideas deeply enough. Like a bad horror movie, they have a way of coming back to life.

Ironically, this new authoritarian threat from the hard-right does not reside outside our borders. It will not be imposed upon us by some nefarious foreign power. Its seeds were nourished within the frailties of America’s own birth and evolution. Slavery was tacitly supported within our foundational documents … including the Constitution. That signaled a malignancy within the DNA of what purportedly was an exciting experiment (at the time) … what might be termed a democratic republic. This was to be a government of law for the people, by the people, and of the people. Alas, with a wink by our founding fathers, the concept of ‘people,’ it turned out, meant only some of the people.

In his Gettysburg address, Lincoln dated the birth of the American experiment to the Declaration of Independence, not the enactment of the Constitution. Using that date, it took about 190 years to fulfill the promises embedded in the so-called American experiment, that all men are created equal. The civil rights bills of the mid-1960s represented a high water mark in the long, tortuous, and nonlinear path toward social justice and full civic participation by all. Since then, the pushback has been relentless and growing. Today, the unfulfilled American promise totters on the brink of extinction.

The reelection of Donald Trump, especially the full-on charge to enact the provisions of Project 2025, constitutes the most serious threat to our Republic’s integrity in my lifetime, perhaps in our history. (Project 2025, lest you have forgotten, is a detailed plan to replace our democracy with an authoritarian alternative.) As I’ve said before, no external threat in my lifetime realistically seemed likely to replace our democracy with a totalitarian regime (no matter what the John Birch Society claimed). That is not to say that outside forces might well have unleashed horrific military harm and destruction in the attempt to do so. They simply were unlikely to succeed, as reflected in the ‘domino theory’ employed by war hawks to justify our national embarrassment in Vietnam.

No, the only legitimate threat to our democracy is found internally, in that DNA flaw that has been with us throughout our history. It is located in the pernicious belief of a racial and ethnic hierarchy in which some people are deemed superior based on accidental attributes … for example, skin color and ancestral origins. It is that very premise that first rationalized slavery, the rejection of Irish famine immigrants, Oriental exclusion policies, the near genocide of Native Americans, and the building of walls at our southern border. It is the premise that led to the southern ante-bellum mudsill theory where some people are destined and ordained to lead and others to labor quietly in subservient subjugation. It is a perspective that facilitates and sustains the creation of the KKK, neo-nazis skinheads, and a host of other hate groups throughout the country. It is a world view that prepares us for an ordained hierarchy where a plutocracy (an elite aristocracy) rules without limits and with few or no constraints. It is a governing philosophy where the people evolve into bleating sheep, having sacrificed freedom and responsibility for the illusion of security touched with more than a hint of tribal superiority.

And therein lies the fertile ground in which American Fascism has thrived. There lies the fascination of so many Americans with the cult like adoration of a man without any redeeming qualities … Donald Trump. He offers a promise that almost half of the country finds seductive…the promise of permanent group superiority … namely in their insular tribe of native-born, white Christians. That utopia is guaranteed, though, only if one provides the cult leader with unyielding loyalty and unstinting devotion. It is, in the end, a patently false promise driven by fear and irrational hate, our two most deeply embedded tribal emotions.

The plan for this new utopia has been laid out for us in Project 2025, a document developed by right-wing think tanks in preparation for Donald’s 2nd administration. Each day, since inauguration, we see giant steps toward its full execution. In reality, the foundations for this final push toward revolution have been long in the making. Slowly, over several decades, control over the courts, the media, local political apparati, some educational organizations, and other key institutions has been carried out with laser focus and incremental precision. Now, with control of Congress and the White House in hand, the final push for a unitary executive has arrived. All power is to reside in the hands of the sitting president.

But is the minute hand of our contemporary Doomsday Clock really about to strike midnight? Are we on the precipice of a full-blown authoritarian regime … a dictatorship on steroids. While that seems like a hyperbolic claim, is this fear justified in reality? Perhaps, in actual fact, we are only facing a clownish Bavarian beer hall putsch in which Hitler failed to secure even local control. Or, to the contrary, perhaps we are confronting the Fuehrer’s successful assumption of total control with passage of the Enabling Acts after the staged Reichstag fire almost a decade later (1933). I fear we must take this threat seriously. Let us review several ominous signs:

1. The MAGA movement is becoming more brazen in ignoring or repudiated judicial decisions they do not like. Refusing to bring back wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a brazen disregard of a high court decision. Our independent judiciary is on its last legs.

2. Top military brass deemed insuffiently loyal to the MAGA regime continue to be purged. Now, the military may be assigned to the Mexican border to perform domestic duties. This also is an ominous sign. While the military take an oath to defend the Constitution, will they do so when the crunch comes? Or, will they merely follow the illegal whims and dictates of one man?

3. Trump continues to threaten law firms and legal representatives he deems to be disloyal. His threats to an increasing list of firms (and individuals) include being banned from public buildings unless they perform pro-bono work for his causes and fall in line with his wishes. Non-compliance would seriously damage their bottom lines.

4. Trump now routinely threatens media outlets when he finds them too independent. A 60 minutes segment raised his most recent ire. Threats of retaliation are increasing. The days of an independent media may soon be history. All dissenting views are under threat of attack and revenge.

5. Trump threatens more and more individuals whom he has designated as enemies. When the Governor of Pennsylvania’s home was firebombed by a MAGA devotee in an attempt to kill the Governor and his family, Trump remained silent. Some believe this was a tacit endorsement of right-wing terror.

6. Trump is extorting our top universities to fall in line with his right-wing agenda. Billions are at stake for each schoolp. Harvard, which stands to lose more than $2 billion, finally took a brave stand. But will they be alone?

7. Trump and his minions are rewriting history, redesigning official bureaucratic websites and, in other ways, banning all thought not consistent with his regime. This is an updated version of the book burning carried out by the Nazis in the 1930s.

8. Trump met with the President of El Salvador in the White House. He asked that this central American country erect five more prisons to house domestic Americans deemed criminals or perhaps undesirable. Given the erosion of due-process protections, will these not be today’s version of Germany’s initial concentration camps? The first inmates of Nazi camps were not Jews but rather the 95 members of the Reischtag that did not fall in line with the 3rd Reich, along with many other political prisoners.

9. The MAGA crowd is seeking access to social media accounts of students, public servants, and private citizens. The intent is clear. Foreign students deemed disloyal will be arrested and/or deported. Public servants will be fired at the least. Private citizens will be harrassed and, if important enough, may find themselves in an El Salvador prison.

10. The administration has fully enacted the fundamental step essential to any totalitarian regime … defining and vilifying the outgroup (or groups) to generate emotional allegiance to the ruling clique (and leader). For this regime, hordes of the criminal element on our southern border will serve that purpose (much like my desperate Irish ancestors were vilified when they long ago washed ashore in Boston and New York).

The next mass demonstrations against the MAGA movement are scheduled for April 19. The first of these drew some 5.2 million people into the streets across America. How will the notoriously thin-skinned Donald respond to such continued expressions of opposition? Then again, he doesn’t need much provocation.

Like the false flag used by Hitler to justify his invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, any excuse will do. Some imaginary crisis could be employed to invoke the Insurrection Act, constitutional provisions usually only considered in times of war or a legitimate crisis. Under a pretext that exists only in the feverish minds of the MAGA gang, our democracy could be summarily strangled. It is already half dead.

I cannot forget the moment in the campaign when Trump promised his evangelical base that, if they vote for him one more time, they will not have to worry about voting again. Why? He knew, or at least presumed, that we would no longer have a democracy going forward. After all, this was the man who encouraged a full-scale insurrection of our nation’s Capitol, a mob that wanted to hang his own vice president and subvert the peaceful transfer of power established in our Constitution.

Is the minute hand about to strike midnight? I hope not. BUT I CAN NOT COUNT IT OUT 😕! All the signs are there. In the darkness of my soul, I hear the hourly chimes of this virtual clock approaching the midnight hour. It is an ominous sound.