The country then is forced to choose: either expand freedom and rights, or slip toward authoritarian rule. The guardrails then weaken, the warnings are forgotten, and people take leaps without remembering the lessons from the past. Eighty years after the American Revolution, armed enforcers again stalked the streets, this time in the Confederate South. Trump and his gang of lickspittles, toadies, and incompetent hangers-on are hell-bent on turning America into a Russia-like authoritarian state with single party rule. No one from Democratic leadership or from the DNC has meaningfully challenged the power or death-dealing of the Trump regime.