I've lately found myself wondering if this is all a dream, so surreal is it to fathom what the G.O.P. has wrought. And what this may mean for the future of our country, of our planet, of millions of species at risk. Our republic is facing a clear and present danger, with authoritarianism and strains of fascism looking to make it exceedingly difficult to wrest democracy back. I worry that this reality is already being normalized in the media, is being accepted by too many people as simply the new state of affairs. Euphemism is extremely dangerous at such times. It's not out of the question that children today will grow up in a country where, as in Russia, free and fair elections are a thing of the past, where we've effectively ceded our power as citizens, including our collective ability (which we'd finally begun to exert under Obama) to mitigate environmental catastrophe.