The United States was designed from the ground up to prevent itself from becoming a dictatorship.  Checks and balances and a Bill of Rights were among the measures the Founders took great care to install in our Constitution.  For two centuries, those measures worked well.  America survived every nefarious attempt from within and without to centralize all power in or around one man.

Under such a system, we avoided the fate of many nations that awoke one morning to find that a strong man had seized total power overnight.  In those countries, resistance proved futile, because there was no infrastructure to provide any solid basis for insuring, or restoring, democratic rule.

We have such an infrastructure, but during the past few years we find that it has been severely weakened.  Much damage has been done, first by relentless attacks from the political left, but also by neglect of the average American.

The weakness of our system was made glaringly obvious in the last two years of the Bush presidency, when Bush opined publicly that in order to preserve the free market, one must violate free-market principles.  This ludicrous opinion opened the door to a policy (TARP) that, had John McCain vigorously opposed it, would almost surely have won McCain the presidency against an openly socialist Barack Obama (who promised that under his plan, energy costs would necessarily rise and that he would shut down the coal industry).

Obama proceeded to ram through his increasingly radical left-wing social policies for more than seven years, to which the compliant Republican Party timidly yielded nearly every step of the way.

The final step in the evolution of American dictatorship will be the inauguration of a presidential candidate who is so openly criminal that even when she is caught red-handed committing fraud – even when caught, she gets away with it.

With such a person in power, resistance will prove futile.  She has proved over and again that she will never be investigated in any meaningful way and that even when her crimes are discovered and made public, there is no adverse consequence to her.

The Justice Department is already solidly in her pocket, and very soon, so will be the Supreme Court.  It will thereafter be short work to corral the legislative branch, which has been our only and paltry defense against Obama.  This will complete the triad, putting all federal power in the hands of one "Peronista" woman.

We who hope for a Trump presidency probably hope in vain, because it is a valid truism that for Republicans to win any important election, they have to overcome the five-percentage-point "fraud vote" that always goes to the Democrats.  Worse yet, even if Trump jumps that hurdle, there is the very real possibility of a "national emergency," martial law included, that will negate even a landslide victory for the Republican.

Am I being alarmist?  Am I being unduly pessimistic and cynical?

I hope so.