For most of my adult life, I worked as a journalist in this country and credibly, factually, told the public thousands of stories at the Detroit News, New York Daily News and as head writer for a TV show on ESPN. None of the stories I have ever written is more important than the one I am writing now.

If you will indulge me a lack of brevity this one time, I will explain.

It begins with the three times I realized that the safety and security we so prize here in the United States of America is an illusion. It's not and never was true. It doesn't exist. We only believed it did.

The first time I realized it was in the aftermath of 9/11. After I witnessed the World Trade Center towers crumble before my eyes little more than a mile from my New York City apartment, authorities posted police with automatic weapons and huge American flags at the entrance to every bridge and tunnel in the city.

We felt safe seeing those images, but each time I ventured through those tunnels and over those bridges, I had a question:

"What's stopping that truck in front of me from being laden down with fertilizer and explosives? Who knows what's in the trunk of every car in front and back of me?"

We weren't safe at all. Terrorists just didn't decide to blow us all to hell.

The second time I realized there is no such thing as safety and security came when Donald Trump promised building a wall at the Southern border to keep illegals out.

I thought, "Mexicans are renowned for building tunnels from Mexico directly to homes on the U.S. side in Texas and California to smuggle in people and drugs. How can a wall prevent that?"

A wall could not make us safe at all. We only believed it could.

The third time I realized safety and security is an illusion was on January 6th, 2021, when Donald Trump's MAGA supporters overran the United States Capitol - the seat of power of the US government - injuring law enforcement officers and defacing the offices of cowering, terrified duly elected lawmakers.

The ease with which they penetrated our most sacred symbols of the rule of law and order in America showed me that if this could be done by only a few thousand mostly-unarmed citizens, there really is no such thing as safety and security in this country.

We only believed there was.

The final time I realized there is no safety and security in the United States of America has come in the last three weeks, or rather, since Donald Trump returned to The White House.

Under the guise of weeding out corruption and with South African-born Elon Musk as the tip of the spear, Donald Trump and his Republican confederates have turned every facet of American government upside down, installed inexperienced and unqualified loyalists in positions of power in every sector of government and thrown thousands of hard-working Americans - many of whom voted for him - out into the streets.

While stunned, outnumbered Democrats were frozen to inaction, Trump, through executive order, made laws, changed laws and ignored orders from courts to stop in his tracks.

While those of us who opposed him screamed that his actions and those of Elon Musk were tantamount to creating a fascist government and a dictatorship, we were only partially right.

See, people, Trump's dictatorship has already begun. It is HERE. It is NOW.

For those who don't believe this is true, what we all missed while focusing on the flood of executive orders and bizarre musings of taking over the Gaza Strip, annexing Canada as the 51st state against their will, purchasing Greenland to rename it Red, White and Blueland and taking over the Panama Canal is this:

Trump was merely testing the waters to see how much power and authority he truly had. The final step in his plan will be to ignore any and all court challenges aimed at stopping him.

What should be clear to you now is that there was really only one barrier to Donald Trump taking over this country and remaking it in his image:

The fact that the only thing that has kept our democracy in place since it was written in 1787 is a piece of paper called the U.S. constitution.

That constitution only works if our politicians RESPECT the power within, the rule of law.

Donald Trump clearly does not respect the constitution as have all other United States presidents before him.

Worse, without respect for the constitution and our laws, THERE IS NO AUTHORITY LEFT TO STOP HIM.

There is no police force who can rein Trump in.

There is no military to rein Trump in.

There are no lawmakers or judges to rein Trump in.

And soon, as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer declared recently during a speech at Miami Dade College, Donald Trump will refuse to comply with all orders of the court - and his takeover will be complete - for there is no authority remaining to police him.

Like Sotomayer, the American Bar Association just released a statement declaring that, “Trump is not following the rule of law.”

Now, the reason why the ABA sounds like a kid screaming, “Charlie hit me!” is because they’ve reached the conclusion that there is nothing they can do about Trump not following the rule of law. This has never happened before in the history of this country, but it IS happening now.

Hey, America, hey World, you can call it a monarchy, or fascism or a totalitarian government or a dictatorship, but whatever you call it, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the law of the land now.

Don't believe me?

The 1,500 January 6th rioters who were tried and convicted in federal courts?

Trump freed them. On Day 1.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was brought up on corruption charges after a decade-long investigation?

He cozied up to Trump, who ordered his Department of Justice to drop the charges.

If that's not enough, I think Donald Trump has one more trick up his sleeve, as I predict he is being lobbied at this very moment to grant clemency to an old friend who has been accused of pedophilia, drugging and raping male and female victims, physically assaulting others and possibly sanctioning numerous murders over the past 30 years.

So what, pray tell, will you say when Donald Trump pardons Sean Diddy Combs?

The lyrics to that song you sang in grade school has changed, folks:

This land is NOT your land.

This land is NOT my land.

NOT from California.

NOT to the New York Islands.

NOT from the Redwood Forest

NOR to the Gulf of America waters

This land belongs to Trump and E.

In less than a month back in office, all of the checks and balances have been removed. Republicans control the house and the senate. Every cabinet pick Trump proposes will be confirmed. No decision he makes, whether it's instructing the Treasury Department to stop making the penny or bringing back the plastic straw, is being denied.

While his supporters cheer his every move, they have yet to see the cost cuts Elon Musk and his team of hackers make under cover of darkness are hurting American farmers, American workers and those in the poorest red states in the country who voted for him.

For them, and us, it's already too late to realize it's too late.

If you saw Musk recently in the oval office with his young son holding court while Trump sat idly by, you should have realized the richest man in the world controls the supposed most powerful man in the world.

Only Elon Musk is holding Elon Musk accountable and Trump - who is likely paying Musk back for whatever he did to help him take the 2024 election - is allowing it to happen.

As you read these words, it is likely that Elon Musk has already had his hackers place back doors into every major computer system across the US government, which gives him the power to shut down any program he chooses at any time on an app while sitting in the driver's seat of his Tesla.

For those in the back or in the nosebleed section or under a rock, let me say it again:

Elon Musk and Donald Trump are the law of the land. Today. Right now.

The United States of America is no longer a democracy. We are now a dictatorship.

In closing, let me say that I don't believe in presenting problems without offering solutions. There IS something we can do to fight this takeover and resist this bloodless coup that has stripped away the sense of freedom we have known all of our lives - but it will require of us a resolve and action most of us have never known or shown.

It will require us to unite, fight, stand up, risk our lives and our liberty - because one thing dictators have never fully understood is that THE PEOPLE truly are the power.

Think of it this way: if we don't want the price of an automobile in America to be $50,000, well, if nobody buys those cars, there won't be a $50,000 car in America.

With that in mind, should Elon Musk and Donald Trump try to dump hundreds of thousands of federal employees out into the streets, simply refuse to leave. If forced from your offices, show up to work en masse the next day - and every day after - and make sure NOBODY goes into those offices.

If Trump's new Department of Defense head Pete Hegseth makes a demand of the 3.5 million workers he now oversees, what can he possibly do if they disobey in the name of American democracy?

The same goes for new national security director Tulsi Gabbard, who has never worked in security or run a department of ANY kind. The same goes for new secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, new Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. - or any other Trump appointee.

None of these figureheads - not even Trump himself - can do anything without our complicity.

Lastly, this battle is only just beginning. You must protect your physical and mental well-being.

You don't have the time or energy to fight meaningless squabbles on social media against Trump's MAGA sycophants who believe every narrative they sell.

No matter if they are friends or family or casual acquaintances on social media, SILENCE THEIR VOICES and influence. Block, snooze, delete or ignore them.

For me, the purge begins TODAY! I’d love to tell the people going away that it isn’t personal, but their blind belief system is a direct threat to me, my friends, family, neighbors, fellow Americans, Canadians, Palestinians, and, well, you get the picture.

Trust what your eyes and ears are telling you. Hope that they will catch up and join our fight against this power virus threatening our country and the world.

Lastly, remember the words of philosopher Bertrand Russell, who said roughly this of how fascism begins:

"First they fascinate the fools. Then they muzzle the intelligent."

If you've gotten this far, it's because you're not a fool.

We got here because all of our lives we believed in that concept devised by our founding fathers of "We The People."

Well, the only way out from under the megalomania of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their collaborators is to make every day January 6th.

If you feel so moved, please share my post. If not, please act in some way. We need all hands on deck.

If we want our democracy back, starting today, starting now, we must BE THE PEOPLE.

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