By now there should be no doubt that the American house of democracy is on fire. It is not fully ablaze – yet – but now there is more than smoke and the flames are impossible to ignore.

As is the case with many house fires, the occupants are not fully aware of the conflagration until it is close to out of control. That is because many times the fire is not out in the open, the embers begin to blaze in a closet, a basement, a garage or a seldom used room.

While some aspects of this conflagration are seemingly obvious, much of it is out of sight. We are aware of the inflammatory rhetoric spewing from Trump and his MAGA nation sycophants, but is still hard to believe that all of this amounts to more than a few harmless sparks that will dissipate when realization of all of this nonsensical madness douses any real potential danger.

We are aware of the fact that the United States has the most well-armed civilian population in the world. We are aware that there are 330 million Americans and there are over 300 million guns, rifles and assault weapons in this country. We are aware that 35 per cent of Americans actually own guns. And we are aware that most of these well-armed Americans are members of MAGA nation.

We know that the protoconservative supermajority in the Supreme Court is intent on dismantling an array of rights and expectations that were assumed to now be a part of the America Way. The articulation and protection of civil rights and voting rights will soon be on life support. The protection of the abortion rights of women may just be a part of past history within a year of this writing. Environmental protection, the rights of workers and immigrants can soon become fading memories.

And for the last three decades the right wing of the right wing has assiduously pursued a strategy of disenfranchising and dispossessing all who do not kneel at the altar of white right-wing supremacy by seizing control the apparatus of local and state governments. While progressives and liberals have focused on the bright shiny objects like the White House and the Senate, the right wing of the right wing actually read the Constitution and realized that the real political power in this nation flows from the states to the federal government and not the other way around.

And now the right wing of the right wing is close to getting a stranglehold on democracy and extinguishing current rights and expectations and demolishing the expectation of things getting any better any time soon. Which means that progressives, liberals and those who care about any of this will need to focus on the crisis at hand.

Internecine battles between so-called moderates and so-called progressives will one day seem to be absurd when viewed by historians in the future (if historians in the future are able to write and publish true history and not the imaginary history that is being advocated today).

Certainly, there are enough men and women of good will in this country to douse the fires that currently threaten American democracy.

But it will require putting aside petty battles that do not lead to real strategies that address this existential threat.

After all, it is never too late until it is too late.