David Axelrod is far better known these days for occasionally wagging his finger at his fellow Democrats than for breathing partisan fire, so it caught my eye when he posted this on X Wednesday: "So far, the ICE gang has shot & killed an unarmed man & lied about the circumstances; shot a woman 5 times for obstructing their vehicle; roughed up elderly women and zip-tied small children; shot a clergyman in the face with a pepper ball; marched through downtown Chicago, masked and armed. And they’re not going after the ‘worst of the worse,’ [sic] as promised. Most of the people they’re snagging have clean records. Some are citizens. To be clear: This is NOT making Chicago safer. It’s state-sponsored mayhem; dangerous political theater calculated to provoke."

Historians sometimes say that when societies are descending into fascism, it can be hard for the people to notice it in real time. Well, historians of the future, I’m here to tell you: We are noticing. Millions of us are noticing. And we are horrified and enraged. We are well aware: We once lived in a country that, for all its frequent imperfections, was a place where the rule of law was a broadly shared value and where leaders acted with democratic restraint. We now live in a country where there is no rule of law; where leaders, especially the president but also others who support him, spit on the idea not only of democratic restraint but of democracy itself; and where the timorous first reflex of nearly every member of one of our two political parties is, at virtually all times, to do precisely what the leader wants.

That’s fascism. It may be—for now—a comparatively mild form of fascism. Political opponents aren’t being jailed or shot, opposition media outlets aren’t being shuttered, and books aren’t being burned. But a lot of things are happening that are terrifying. And last year, we lived in a country where the three scenarios I just listed were barely conceivable. Today, we live in a country where they are more likely only a matter of time.

Following up on our last conversation around our September issue, join The New Republic and David Blight, Yale University’s Sterling Professor of History, for a discussion with fellow academics on how they must fight to preserve our history and democracy.

Let’s go back to Axelrod, and specifically, his use of the phrase "state-sponsored mayhem." That is exactly what President Trump is imposing upon Chicago. To take just one of the incidents Axelrod cites: Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church was with a small gaggle of protesters outside a Chicago ICE facility. Three agents stood on the roof of the two-story building as Black and the others stood on the sidewalk maybe 15 feet away from the building. Black raised his arms to the sky, as if in prayer. Someone who appears to be a fellow protester approached Black to confer with him. Next thing you see in this video is a considerable puff of smoke explode from Black’s forehead as he falls to the ground. That’s a clergyman. Exercising his First Amendment right (he’s fine, and he’s suing). Black later told CNN: "We could hear them laughing."

Shooting an unarmed and peacefully protesting pastor is by definition an act of state-sponsored mayhem. State-sponsored mayhem starts at the top, with the president’s thuggish, lawless threat to imprison the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago (by the way—Greg Sargent speaks to said governor, JB Pritzker, on his Daily Blast podcast today). From there, the people with the uniforms and the badges and the guns get the message, and they go out and do the things Axelrod listed above.

Administration officials pile lie upon lie upon lie. With respect to Portland, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refers preposterously to "the radical left’s reign of terror" there. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declares antifa to be "just as dangerous" as ISIS, which was killing perceived apostates by the thousands at its peak and raping little girls. Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, rants nightly about armed confrontations that either don’t exist or exist solely because the administration creates them so it can have the footage that will air over and over on its propaganda network, Fox News. It’s all toward the purpose of erasing dissent, erasing democracy. As Zeteo’s Kim Wehle put it last week, reporting on two Trump-issued "national security" directives: "The president is taking steps to criminalize being anti-Trump in America."

When a president and his aides are doing that, it’s no longer America.

When masked government thugs take potshots at a priest, it’s no longer America.

When a handpicked hack prosecutor with no prosecutorial experience indicts two honorable American citizens within a month of the president ordering their prosecutions, and when two real prosecutors quit rather than pursue these obscenely political prosecutions, it’s no longer America.

When the third-ranking official in the country, the speaker of the House of Representatives, delays the swearing-in of a duly elected member of that body because he knows she will vote to release files that potentially may shed light on unsavory behavior by the president, it’s no longer America.

When the presidential administration announces that it’s going after nonprofit charitable groups that have operated unmolested in this country for decades under Democratic and Republican administrations because they donate to causes the president disfavors, it’s no longer America.

When naturalized citizens are canceling overseas trips because they can’t be certain they’ll be welcomed back to their own country upon return, it’s no longer America.

When the Department of Education is bullying universities into agreeing to a "compact" under which they’ll promise not to "belittle" conservative ideas, it’s no longer America.

When the president and his family have used his office to enrich themselves to the tune of $3.5 billion in nine months, and when the Congress, controlled by the president’s party, refuses to do a thing about this rancid, dictator-level corruption, it’s no longer America.

When the Supreme Court of the United States has sold its soul to all this barbarity, it’s no longer America.

And when this thuggish dictator-wannabe is also a buffoonish man-child who sits there in his breathtakingly tacky Oval Office with his fake face and fake hair next to another head of state (the president of Finland) as he boasts yet again about passing a simple dementia test that a 10-year-old could ace, and we realize that this man-child is the sitting president, it’s no longer America, at least for anyone who cares about how we look to the rest of the world.

Historians of the future: Rest assured, millions of us know all this in real time. We are horrified, shocked, enraged, and ashamed. We are acting, in a thousand ways, to oppose it. This cannot, and will not, be how the United States ends.

Join a special group of readers and supporters on a lovingly designed, all-inclusive tour of one of the most spellbinding places in the world. Drawing on The New Republic’s special contacts among local historians, artists, and chefs, we’ve created a first-class experience that will immerse you in Cuba’s colorful and unique history, politics, and culture.

Last week’s quiz: "To live is to suffer …" More high-minded falderal—a quiz on philosophy!

1. What ancient Greek philosopher came up with the allegory of the cave?

A. Socrates
B. Aristotle
C. Diogenes
D. Plato

Answer: D, Plato. I remember that reading The Allegory of the Cave in graduate school is where I learned the word "parapet," which is not a word that comes in handy very often but is good to have in the quiver when you need to unsheathe it and is just kinda fun to say besides.  

2. Niccolò Machiavelli came from which Italian school of philosophy?

A. Roman
B. Florentine
C. Ligurian
D. La scuola di San Giovanni in Fiore

Answer: B, Florentine. The school of San Giovanni in Fiore, Calabria, was led in the early twentieth century by my grandmother, who in her youth dispensed the occasional wise aphorism to the people of the village until her departure for America in 1928.

3. Who was the seminal early modern philosopher who coined the famous phrase, "I think, therefore I am"?

A. Francis Bacon

B. René Descartes

C. Baruch Spinoza

D. Thomas Hobbes

Answer: B, Descartes. Pretty obvious. More fully, he was arguing that the ability to doubt his existence was proof of his existence.

4. Match the school of philosophy to the person who was a leading adherent of same.

Answer: Positivism = Comte, Pragmatism = James, Existentialism = Kierkegaard, Nihilism = Jacobi. If you took and sort of remember Philosophy 101, James, Comte, and Kierkegaard shouldn’t have been too hard.

5. Where did Hegel famously encounter Napoleon in the flesh in 1805, leading him to declare the emperor to be the "world-soul on horseback"?

A. Bremen

B. Leipzig

C. Jena

D. Cologne

Answer: C, Jena. Here’s a good-seeming explanation of why Hegel had such a man crush on the Little Corsican.

6. Match the modern French philosopher to the idea or area of study with which he is associated.

Answer: Baudrillard = media criticism, Foucault = power, Debord = spectacle, Derrida = deconstruction. The one among these who strikes me as most relevant today is Debord, as we are certainly living through an age of spectacle in this country.

This week’s quiz: "Th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks!" Back to the lowbrow, although it’s still art if you ask me: a quiz on Warner Brothers cartoons and characters.

1. What year did Bugs Bunny make his debut?

A. 1932

B. 1937

C. 1940

D. 1945

2. Who appeared more often as Bugs’s foil, Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam?

3. Who starred in more W-B cartoons, Porky Pig or Daffy Duck?

4. Which W-B character tried in some of his cartoons to woo the coquettish but difficult Miss Prissy?

A. Sylvester the Cat

B. Pepé Le Pew

C. Marvin the Martian

D. Foghorn Leghorn

5. What was the name of the company that manufactured all the gizmos Wile E. Coyote employed to try to kill the Roadrunner?

A. Global

B. Acme

C. Omni

D. XYZ Enterprises

6. Who among the following was not a noted Warner Brothers cartoon director in the golden age?

A. Edward Dymytryk

B. Tex Avery

C. Friz Freleng

D. Chuck Jones

Man, I loved those cartoons. Especially the Bugs Bunny opera ones, like this one. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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