I know many of you already feel it, especially those of us with historical perspective—but we are living through something we’ve never seen before.

A president and his administration openly attacking judges, threatening retired military leaders with court-martial, directing the Attorney General and federal law enforcement like a small-town mayor ordering a sheriff.

You can’t make this up.

I don’t know how history will remember this era. My hope is that it becomes a short, ugly 10–15 year blip—a time when ignorance, corruption, and mean-spiritedness were allowed to grow unchecked.

Allowed by who?

By everyday Americans—people who claim to be patriotic—who either don’t see it, don’t care, or are fine with it.

Fine with lawlessness.

Fine with authoritarianism.

Fine with shrinking America’s place in the world.

Fine with turning every institution—courts, Congress, and law enforcement—into political weapons.

So I have to ask my middle and upper-middle-class white friends in Alabama, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia:

What exactly are you looking at?

Is this what you want?

A dictator? An oligarchy? A Kleptocracy?

If not, you need to do something about it and you don’t have any time to waste.