In 2016, when Trump was first elected, I told many friends that I was concerned about some echoes in history. They pooh-poohed my concerns. I was being hyperbolic. Trump was just a benign clown. I listened recently to a conversation with British historian Tim Ryback, and I was struck by what he said. Without giving away the punchline, here is what Dr Ryback explained.

Long ago a diminished power elected a vulgarian, because his message of grievance resonated. He claimed he would restore the country to greatness. He came to power by using the electoral process and then exploited every aspect of the legal processes to his own ends. This man and his followers had no morals. There was no ethical standard of conduct. He promised everything to everyone all of the time, but never kept those promises. He lied constantly, even inconsistently. He surrounded himself with men who helped him exploit this system and in the process destroy the democracy that elected him. Through purely legal democratic means, he bit the hand that fed him. He wooed industrialists and senior military officers to his cause and then used that money and power to put a stranglehold on the country, eventually bringing the nation to ruin that had not been seen since the fall of Carthage.

What were some of the obsessions this man had? He believed absolutely in tariffs. He was convinced that he knew more that the central banker. He was obsessed with Greenland. He was convinced that previous governments had placed international interests above national ones. He was completely fixated on monuments and large buildings filled with marble and gold. Within days of taking power, he withdrew from practically all international treaty obligations and began evicting foreigners who were “poisoning” the purity of the nation. He believed that the leader should have absolute power, without any checks on that power. He wanted to use the military to control the people, including shooting them in the street. Initially his Defence Minister stopped him, so he removed him. He fired or forced senior military officers who defied him; He bribed the rest into staying. In his early days he was concerned that he could not get enough popular support through elections so he began to say aloud that he might not recognize election results if they went against him. Whenever he bumped up against constitutional guardrails, he found a way to use the constitution to dismantle those guardrails, explaining that there were crises and that democracy doesn’t work in a crisis.

Slowly, almost inexorably, he co-opted the powerful men in the country. Those who would not bend to his will either left to go abroad or were simply never heard from again.

By now, I’m sure you’ve guessed who that leader was. Adolf Hitler, the ultimate vulgarian, found a way into government and then slowly at first and then with breathtaking speed, destroyed the Weimar Republic and turned it into the Third Reich.

Hitler had a “edifice complex”.

Hitler comes into office on a Monday by Friday he’s suppressing the press because a free press was fundamental to a democracy. He hands that job to the infamous Josef Goebbels. He looks at the Chancellery, the seat of government since Bismarck and says it isn’t big enough. It’s under monument protection so, to build an annex four times the size of the of the chancellery filled with marble and of gold decoration. Then he announces that Berlin needs a triumphal arch and that it needs to be twice the size of the one in Paris. Next, he begins purging the civil servants.

Meanwhile some people began to sue Hitler, who loses repeatedly in court. He ignores the judgements and continues his demolition of Germany’s democracy. With a dismantled civil service, there is no way to enforce the judgements.

The parallels and echoes are astounding. What can save the Great Republic is that Americans have begun to awaken from their sleepwalk through history. Some have stared into the abyss and have stepped back. Others continue to waver, but the Blue Wave has given the House AND the Senate to the Democrats.

Now they need to act.