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Trump and his planners and enablers are enjoying victory after victory in implementing their primary agenda items: damage their enemies, invade and terrorize blue neighborhoods, co-opt every mechanism of government, enrich the already rich at everyone else's expense. If it sounds as though I am describing a virus attacking the vital organ systems of the United States, that's an apt metaphor.

A sample from my various media feeds over the past couple of weeks reveals just a sliver of the badness we have come to accept as the new normal.

The White House celebrates its concentration camp, populated mostly by law-abiding undocumented immigrants.

Medicaid cuts will disproportionately affect healthcare in rural areas. It's expected that hospitals will be forced to close.

The executive branch openly prioritizes mass incarceration and deportation of immigrants over helping the American people.

A Democratic politician is shot dead; Republican politicians revel in the right-wing violence.

Trump extorts money from law firms he does not like, and brags about it.

There's a vague sense in among Republicans in Congress that Trump's agenda is toxic, but they pass all of it.

The budget for ICE, in essence Trump's personal police force, eclipses that of all other law enforcement agencies of the federal government.

Law enforcement officials in red states feel empowered to talk and act like thugs.

Criminal behavior by law enforcement officers is excused if not encouraged.

Trump's outrageous quotas for immigrant arrests force ICE to detain productive residents who have been here for decades.

Extraordinary rendition of US residents without due process becomes sanctioned practice; layoffs harm the ability of government to manage domestic and international crises.

Increasingly, the courts simply rubber-stamp Trump's agenda without public legal analysis, the exception (so far) being resistance to the cancellation of birthright citizenship.

Republicans know damning evidence of Trump's involvement with sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein exists; Trump rails against Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom he appointed, though he claims Biden did.

While some Republicans and all Democrats demand further inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein's list of clients, Speaker Johnson dismisses Congress early.

Terror attacks are horrible. Open-air concentration camps in which people slowly starve to death are horrible. Everything about the Gaza war is horrible, with no end in sight. Trump promised to fix it in a day.

Trump has been getting away with deranged behavior, slander and lies for decades. He'll double down until he is stopped.

Our country would be so much better off were we to provide law-abiding residents with a path to citizenship—and were we to merely respect the rights of those here legally seeking asylum. Instead, the Trump administration is engaging in extrajudicial and un-American cruelties.

"Disparaging content" includes references to founders owning slaves, the US government imprisoning, relocating, and slaughtering Native Americans, the impact of climate change, and racist views espoused by famous Americans. American history is being white-washed in places where the full story must be told.

To summarize...

DOGE cuts that didn't save money but cripple vital public services. Masked, unmarked government thugs abducting people from parking lots. A concentration camp, more to come. Escalating, crazy conspiracy theories. Extortion of law firms, universities and broadcast networks. No oversight of local law enforcement. Political violence excused and even cheered on. War raging in Ukraine, ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Former elected officials baselessly accused of treason. Pliant federal courts endorsing or ignoring it all.

Another 18 cells could document more. Trump's tweets, always deranged and mendacious, have gotten worse. Peter Thiel is amassing a database on all Americans which will place us in grave risk of becoming a technocratic authoritarian state; we are likely closer to that now than most Americans realize. Attacks on human rights are broad and deep, with most Americans disengaged or struggling to keep up. As we commit human rights abuses, we stop documenting those committed by other countries. And on and on.

As of this writing, there is little hope of slowing Trump's momentum in dismantling the guardrails protecting our human rights and democratic processes. Democrats are powerless and clueless as to how to proceed (more on that later). At most, Democrats might take the House in 2026. Winning the Senate is a much, much steeper hill to climb. Dems could grind Congress to a halt. But so many of Trump's actions are unilateral, one wonders how much a divided Congress will do to stop him. Republicans members of Congress are cowed, and will do nothing. Even in the minority, they will create inertia difficult to overcome. Meantime, the private economy churns on, with enthusiastic investors driving markets to new highs, oblivious to the human costs of government malfeasance. The era of social movements driving corporate messaging and actions is over.

We are dropping into a big, autocratic, regressive hole. It will take decades to extract ourselves, if we ever do.