I have always favored win-win solutions to problems. It’s more work, but the results are usually worth it if neither side feels like a loser. Unfortunately, America is in such a profoundly desperate moment right now that there is little room for politeness. Indeed, there is nothing polite about how President Trump conducts himself, and so the message of this letter will be equally blunt. I trust that his admirers will appreciate the lack of pussy-footing around that follows. I also expect most of his followers would agree that he is more of a win-lose kind of guy, and makes quite obvious his intention to be our dictator-in-chief, if not world emperor. If it walks like a duck …

The rest of us recognize the real danger this liberal democracy is in right now, and we need to take action. It doesn’t matter our income, our age, the number of kids we have or the color of our skin. If we believe that American democracy, as imperfect as it has always been and always will be, still provides the best tools for a complex society and world to get along, then we’d better stand up to defend it. The alternative is an equally dangerous delusion, pretending that an impotent Congress, a servile Supreme Court, or an obedient military will somehow come to the rescue. They won’t. They are complicit. Believing otherwise is just an excuse for inaction. At this point, we the people are the only ones who stand a chance to turn this around, but the rights we’ve always taken for granted in this country will not survive more dithering.

Much ado has been made about whether we are headed toward dictatorship, authoritarianism or fascism. As if we are all stuck in the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel about an elected president-turned-dictator (“It Can’t Happen Here”), we resist such warnings as implausible for two reasons: 1) our American grandparents fought a bloody World War to stop fascism in the 20th century, so it is simply incomprehensible that American politicians would allow such a perversion of our democracy; and 2) the factors that gave rise to genocidal German fascism are vastly different than 21st century America. Except that they’re not. Yes, time and place are all very different, but human nature is not. Genocide, slavery and racism is part and parcel of the American story. We like to think we’ve matured past those primitive impulses, but certainly women and people of color would have different opinions. There have always been parts of our population who want white Christian supremacy to come out of the shadows, who embrace hatred of foreigners, domination of other countries, and dictatorial power. We can shy away from the term, but that’s the definition of fascism, and that’s exactly the hateful stuff the leader of the free world spews every day. To be fair, many who voted for him did not have fascism in mind, but they made a deal with the devil and now this is our reality.

In 1955, an American journalist published a book entitled “They thought they were free: The Germans 1933-45.” He asked a handful of “average” German citizens the following question: how could a civilized German population allow a single charismatic orator, over the course of just a few years, lead them from a promising democracy to such utter devastation? The answer: “What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise … One had no time to think. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. You wait … thinking that others … will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act alone. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father … could not have imagined. Suddenly, it all comes down. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing.”

There are growing numbers of local groups who are not willing to do nothing. Find a way to take action, neighbors, while we still can.

— — —

John O’Neill is a resident of Cazenovia