It’s a truism in political arguments that equating something to fascism puts you on a slippery slope. Let me go skating on ice, lest we think that fascism can never come to America.

Trump is a menace and a threat to democracy. The idea that he can be contained has eerie echoes of Germany on the eve of electing the greatest madman in the world. Hitler was elected in a coalition govt. and Von Papen too was somehow supposed to hold Hitler in check. So what happened?

Germany was not a proto-fascist state before Hitler rose to power. The Weimar was a Presidential Republic. It gave us art, expressionism, nudism, vegetarianism, socialism very liberal stuff. The problem is it had very little support. And this is where history becomes instructive to me. Our respect for the government, civil institutions and political processes are at the lowest they have ever been, and keep heading lower. There is so little respect because we have ratcheted party politics and fratricide to an unprecedented level. The system is under attack from all direction. Revolution is in the air, on both sides. Isn’t this good? Shouldn’t the system fall?

Call me a pessimist (I prefer realist) but I do not share this faith in the separation of powers to constrain our madman Donald Trump. And the reason I don’t have faith is because every day these wise constraints are coming undone. Political discourse has descended into bar fights. Congress members can’t even stand to be in the same room together. People are shut off to other points of view. We have built up a permanent echo chamber, reified, unthinking, founded on blind rage rather than principle. The courts are blatant and naked in their ideology. Tell me there are 2 democrats and 1 republican judge and I lay good money the decision is going to be 2-1. This cynicism is so ingrained so normal that exceptions like the Roberts decision on Obamacare are truly shocking. Presidents no longer feel constrained to bother with Congress when it comes to the conduct of War, and Congress green lights anything anyway, too weak to stand up and reassert their constitutional authority. Our nation, in short has lost respect for American Democracy.

So Trump will be held in check. And I ask, when is our Reichstag fire coming?