I think it’s past time for every reasonable person remaining in our expanding fascist regime to ask himself or herself, “What can I do?” Republicans* have complete control over the federal government and an increasing swath of the media. Now that they can pretend that their diabolical and hypocritical plans are backed by some sort of overwhelming popular mandate, we will see over the next four years their attempts to consolidate power for the next several generations, rather as the New Deal did for the Democrats in the middle of the last century.

In the past several months, I donated thousands of dollars to progressive causes, signed every Internet petition there was, read national and international news and political blogs religiously, and pretended I was doing everything I could to stem the tides of the fundamentalist nationalism that’s literally destroying our land. In actuality, I spent a maximum of five minutes per week actually doing something. Tragically, except for one heroic friend, I was the most politically active person I know.

In the nineteen twenties and thirties, those difficult years after World War One, reasonable citizens of Germany went to amazing lengths to convince themselves, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that Nazism and other right-wing ideologies were either not a problem or someone else’s problem. Any efforts to counter their ascendancy were obviously ineffective: the National Socialist Party made advances in every election until they were the clear majority, then suspended civil liberties and personal freedoms and began eradicating groups who questioned their policies.

Today, as we watch the Republicans follow the template perfected by Hitler—of mindless propaganda, of scapegoating, of exploiting the fears of ignorant people and manipulating the religious affiliations of the well-meaning, of rationalizing expanding and never-ending war, of putting the profits of corporations above the well-being of the masses—it’s tempting to succumb to what seems inevitable. “There’s nothing I can do,” we tell ourselves.

“Little old me? I’m swamped with work, and my kids are sick, and I’m too tired at the end of the day.”

Well, yes, of course you are. For forty years, Republicans have ensured that very result by supporting the rights of corporations to keep wages low and benefits and vacation time scarce. For all of the Republican harping about how all children need a mother and a father, they’re perfectly happy to have both parents working three jobs apiece just to make ends meet, and for all of their whining about Hollywood morals, the entertainment industry has become the right wing’s best friend by providing the mental anesthesia of prime-time programming to the overworked masses. Now that we’re all so overwhelmed with the pace of life their policies have created and distracted by who’s going to be the next American Idol, the Republicans in power are free to do whatever they want. As long as they can look sternly at the cameras and lie about the moral crusades they’re on, they’re home free.

You know all of this already. Of course you do. Anyone with half a brain can read a book about how Hitler came to power and see the eerie parallels with the Bush regime. It’s only the Fox News pundits and those in their hypnotic sway who pooh-pooh the very idea. So what can you do about it? What will you do about it? So are you ready to fight? To flee?**

I don’t have any answers, and neither do the current crop of Democrats, but things are bad, and they’re getting worse.

In the meantime, starting tomorrow, I’ll be discussing Frankenstein.

* It has come to the point that “reasonable person” and “Republican” are mutually exclusive terms. If you voted for a Republican since the year two thousand, especially if you did so last month, you are at the very least extraordinarily ignorant or extraordinarily suggestible—and it’s more likely you’re an obstinate fool, monumentally selfish, or Just Plain Evil.

** I have calculated a nearly seventy percent chance that I will have to save my own life by becoming a political refugee within the next twenty years if current trends continue to escalate.