For the last half of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st, we Americans coasted.

From history lessons in school and from movies and television, we “boomers” grew up believing that the United States was – and would always be – an exemplar of democracy. Even with the upheavals of the 1960s, including the struggles for civil rights and the deep divisions over the Vietnam War, we believed that our nation’s core principles were not only noble, but rock solid. We assumed that our system operated automatically without requiring much, if any, input from us as individuals.

And, because we had not been paying attention, most of us were oblivious to the dry rot that has been undermining our nation’s very foundations for decades. It’s hard to say when this hollowing-out of basic American values began, although President Eisenhower did warn – in his farewell address in 1961 – against the potential threat to our democracy posed by “the military-industrial complex.”

If he was with us today, Ike might expand that warning to include: the oligarchs of the petroleum-petrochemical industries, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Federalist Society and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The major multinational petroleum and petrochemical corporations may have been founded in the U.S., but they owe no allegiance to any set of principles intended for the citizens of this country. They are rigidly devoted to maximizing profits and to taking whatever measures they deem necessary to maintain them. If this means causing a life-ending global climate catastrophe in the process, c’est la vie.

And the American Legislative Exchange Council? For more than 50 years, heavy corporate funding has enabled ALEC to engineer and pass much legislation in state houses across the nation to the benefit of corporations and to the detriment of the health of anyone impacted by resultant environmental degradation. While working to free polluters from the fetters of government regulations, ALEC has also been busy with other legislation that affects everyone, including: opposing gun-safety legislation, restricting voting rights, blocking efforts that seek to protect LGBTQ rights and fight climate change.

Meanwhile, the ultra-conservative (and secretive) Federalist Society has been growing a pervasive infrastructure within the federal judicial system by grooming candidates for federal benches with the goal of shaping U.S. policies in ways that favor corporations, the ultra-wealthy and right-wing agendas.

And, lastly, our Supreme Court. Of the nine justices on this Supreme Court, six were members of (or promoted by) the Federalist Society. This may explain the cascade of rulings by this once-revered institution that – polls show – are not favored by most American citizens. In major cases, they have upended long-standing precedent on abortion rights, voting rights and environmental protection.

Now, with the final ruling of this term, the right-wing majority of this court essentially declared that former President Donald Trump cannot be prosecuted for his extreme efforts to overturn the election he lost in 2020. This stunning decision places us all at a dire crossroads.

If this convicted criminal manages to win the presidency again in November, he has already been given permission by the Supreme Court to lay waste to what is left of our democracy. The question is: Are we going to let this happen?

By December 1776, George Washington’s army had suffered several humiliating defeats and was on the verge of collapse. It was then that Thomas Paine wrote his essay, “The American Crisis,” the first words of which certainly resonate today.

“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”