In Peru we met eleven of the fourteen conditions. In the United States today, the rhetoric, actions, and expressed intent of the current administration arguably meet all of them. I have lived this story before and the march towards extreme authoritarianism is one that inexorably follows its own logic to terrible conclusions. This means that now is the time to address the early symptoms.

How do you grieve for something you’ve always known was there and is no longer.  For make no mistake.  In its place is something rank, rotten, and speaking with a seemingly forked, barely recognizable tongue.  It spews venom—the venom of divisiveness, homophobia, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia.  And, yes, ignorance.  It’s a voice that has forgotten or never learned the plain-spoken eloquence of what it means to be America the Beautiful, the land that we loved.

Trump, an unconventional candidate who was caught on tape boasting about accosting women, who advocated banning Muslims from the United States, who has championed mass deportations and building a wall (that Mexico would pay for) to keep out undocumented immigrants, is on the precipice of becoming the most powerful man in the world—backed by a Republican-controlled Congress. 

Then along came Donald J. Trump whose irrepressible spontaneity knocks much of this rosy vision about improv and democracy into a cocked hat. Presidential historian Jon Meachum calls Trump “unabashedly improvisational.” David Axelrod describes him as “an improvisational performer, long on chutzpah and borscht belt put-downs but short on facts.” We’ve all seen it. 

The time and hassle obstacles pretty much guarantee that the likely fill-in candidate would be GOP VP contender Mike Pence. Now the RNC voters don’t have to choose him just because he is the VP candidate, but the time factor, the fact that he got generally high marks for his one debate joust with Democratic VP contender Tim Kaine, and the fact that he’s a GOP party insider, make him a near shoo-in for the fill-in spot.

It is becoming clear as the election nears that the Clinton base is relatively narrow and getting narrower. The stubborn “Berniecrats” and distrustful independents are a problem with a neat solution in doubt as the election nears. Yet another problem is the early assumption of solid support from non-white Americans has shown to be weaker than expected. The vaunted Clinton ground game may have been limited in key markets by the distraction caused by a much stronger primary campaign that drained assets meant to be used in the massive run-up to the November election.

A surefire way to occupy our attention is to tell us a story. Stories require conflict; without conflict, there’s no change, no drama, no plot. Trump is a walking attention magnet. He’s the never-ending story, the prince of plot, the king of conflict, the drama queen of TV and Twitter. A Trump presidency guarantees change. “Even if it’s like a Nazi-type change,” in Vizcarra’s words, it will never, ever be boring.

The aim was to embarrass and discredit her not because of her alleged missteps as Secretary of State, but as a 2016 presidential candidate. Republicans got what they wanted when their phony accusations against her of cover-up and incompetence got tons of media chatter and focus and raised the first shadow of public doubt. The doubt quickly ballooned into the image of Clinton in the mind of many as a shifty-eyed and shifty-talking candidate who every time she opened her mouth grew a Pinocchio-length nose. 

Ted Cruz follows in his father’s footsteps. His idea—that the separation of Church and State has to be done away with—is consistent with the ideological worldview that characterizes dictatorships in the Hispanic world. Francisco Franco embodied the Catholic Church during his reign of intolerance; Fidel Castro replaced faith in God with faith in himself when Cuba became officially atheist.

Bernie Sanders has gone from a charming, engaging, provoking, and supremely principled Democratic presidential candidate to a scheming, conniving, devious, supremely unprincipled Democratic presidential contender. In quick succession, Sanders has been accused of being a tax cheat, a special-interest money-grabber, a foreign policy dimwit, a Nixonian dirty trickster, and a racial bigot.