As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically do 7 things:

1. They exaggerate their mandate to govern.
2. They turn the public against journalists or media outlets that criticize them.
3. They repeatedly lie to the public.
4. They blame economic stresses on immigrants or racial or religious minorities,
5. They attack the motives of anyone who opposes them, including judges.
6. They appoint family members to high positions of authority.
7. They keep their personal finances secret, and draw no distinction between personal property and public property.
--Robert Reich

Americans create $20 billion dollars of new wealth every day. Of that amount $18 billion flows to the top 10 percent. Of the $92 trillion dollars of total wealth, the top 10 percent own $82 trillion. The inheritance laws, the tax code, and their easy access to most of the new money printed allows the wealthy to maintain that grossly skewed distribution and keep it locked in place. The notion that America is the land of opportunity in which everyone has a chance at the good life is pure fiction.

But if you think the status quo is bad, you had better think again. With conservatives in control of Congress, the White House, and soon the Supreme Court, plus having a majority in state governments across the land, a new confiscation of wealth and income is underway that will almost certainly spell the end of democracy as we have known it. The poor will become destitute, the middle class will downsize, while the wealthy will suck up more and more of the wealth that you and I create. These predictions arise from Donald Trump’s DNA: He must lie, cheat, steal, and run rough shod over everyone who dares to get in his way. He is unfit to be uncaged. Historical parallel: Adolf Hitler.

In addition, all the measures of poverty will worsen. You see them in most cities: drug use, prostitution, illiteracy, teen pregnancies, suicides, mental health issues, general crime rates, incarcerations, and social immobility. They are the certain outcomes on the back side of all those slogan banners that proclaim “Make America Great Again.” And the chief architect to all this is a hate monger named Steve Bannon. Historical parallel:  Heinrich Himmler.

The new conservative agenda is not a secret. It seeks the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. It detests individualism, open-mindedness, free thinking, intellectualism, progressivism, and freedom of expression in all their forms. Work is a four letter word to them that is heaped upon the poor with contempt. Historical parallel: You may recall the words over the gateway to one of Hitler’s death camps at Dachau, “Arbeit macht Frei,” or work makes you free.

The new conservatism seeks to restore the land of 1787 that favored masters over slaves, lords over vassals, land ownership over citizenship. It hates immigrants in spite of the fact that we are all immigrants, while ignoring the rights of Native Americans who have been corralled and exiled to the north central plains. Burn the books of science and replace them with the King James version of the Bible is the new education standard. Historical parallel: The Inquisitions.

And so it is. Elections have consequences, but a rigged election has the wrath of hell attached to it. Still, it cannot hide. You know it when you see it, hear it, touch it, or smell it. And if it really reeks, more likely than not you are in the presence of Steve Bannon who is about to name another person to run another agency with the sole purpose of dismantling it. .Historical parallel: Albert Speer.

I wish I could end this assessment with words of encouragement, or with an antidote to this cancer that has us in its grip. A recession looms large, health care for 30 millions is at risk, and a menagé à trois featuring Trump, Bannon, and Putin locked in an embrace is fomenting, while a nuclear war is possible and potential. Pay attention to foreign news sources. The rest of the world remembers the past a lot better than we do. Historical reminder: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” --George Santayana.