It’s too late, America. Indeed, it’s been too late for some time. Once we lost our collective reason to a demagogue peddling lies, we also lost our republic. Now we have a dictator successfully playing upon our fears, anger, prejudices, and hatred to undermine our Constitution and the rule of law.

Our widening belief in conspiracy theories, misinformation, blatant lies, and propaganda amounts to a regression to The Puritan Age when colonialists burned innocent victims as “witches,” based on “spectral evidence.”  It was our Founding Fathers’ intent to leave such nonsense behind and to establish a new nation on the foundation of reason, fact, science, law, and truth.  But it’s clear that a majority of Americans either do not know, or do not care about the difference between reality and propaganda, between truth and lies.  And now it’s too late.

How can reasonable people accept without any credible evidence that the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump?  Who believes that Ukraine “should’ve never “started the war with Russia?”  Who cannot distinguish peaceful protest from violent insurrection?  Evidently, American reality these days is whatever the President dictates even when he makes decisions, not with his reason but with his self-inflated “gut.”

Perhaps it was already too late for the American Republic when Trump stacked a conservative Supreme Court, filched Congress’ power of the purse, and issued illegal Executive Orders to send mask-wearing ICE agents to arrest and deport illegal immigrants (our present day “witches,”) without due process under the law.

And it was too late when Trump appointed an administration of yes men and women based not on “merit” but on blatant political patronage and personal sycophancy.

It was  too late when people voted for him to be the people’s “retribution,” because once elected, he weaponized the Department of Justice to prosecute his political “enemies; used the FCC to stifle the free speech of comedians that ruffled his orange feathers, and claimed that negative media coverage of him is “illegal” and not free speech.

Maybe it was even too late before January 6 when President Trump committed an act of treason by falsely proclaiming without any evidence that a fair and legal election had been rigged; by inciting an angry mob to attack the Capitol, threaten the life of the Vice-President, and prevent the peaceful transfer of legitimate power; and then got away with it.

All politics aside, we have collectively accepted or tolerated the reality Trump has dictated to us, despite all facts, reason, laws and science to the contrary.  In a dictatorship reality is whatever the ruler says it is.  And dictating reality precedes dictating everything else.

If he says media coverage critical of him is illegal, then free speech will be stifled. If he lies that Portland, Oregon is “war ravaged,” then sending federal troops to restore order is justified.  If the dictator says James Comey is “a bad man” then the Justice Department may illegally prosecute him, just like in Puritan, Salem.  And if the President’s charlatan Director of Human Health Services says vaccines are dangerous, then we place our children’s health in his incompetent hands.

It’s evident the American public suffers either from a grand delusion or an angry defiance of reason.  What but a witch hunt can explain how so many Americans accept without any credible evidence that illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs by working in the fields or in restaurant kitchens where Americans refuse to work?

And what but a witch hunt can explain how Americans believe without any evidence that Mexican migrants were released from “insane asylums” or are “rapists,” or that Haitian immigrants are eating dogs in Ohio?  Remember the crowds chanting for then presidential candidate Donald Trump to “Build a Wall” to prevent the tired, poor, “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” from accepting America’s promised refuge from tyranny?  Make America Hate Again would be a more appropriate slogan.

So, along with our lost reason, we have also lost both our principles and our moral compass.  Indeed, after Trump cut USAID falsely claiming its funding “has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” the Lancet medical journal estimates the agency had saved over 90 million lives during the last two decades, and that if the cuts stand, an estimated it 14 million may needlessly die by 2030.  And rather than defending our democratic Ukraine ally, Trump waits for his friend, Russian dictator Putin, to bring another democracy to its knees.

Presently, I’m wondering how many Americans will believe Trump’s false claim that the government was shut down because he wouldn’t agree to let Democrats “give massive amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, to illegal aliens for their health care”?

Yes, it’s too late for American democracy.  The political right uses it power to support him, and the political left has no power to stop him.  Of course, the American masses might come to their senses and take to the streets in protest.  But that will only invite Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law, the final nail in our republic’s coffin.

In his cautionary novel, “It Can’t Happen Here,” Sinclair Lewis warned America about the signs of fascism in the world and at home.  Sadly, it not only can happen here; it already has happened.  Worse: we, the people, have let it happen.

Thomas Cangelosi is a retired teacher from Avon.