Jean Stimmell is a retired stone mason and psychotherapist living in Northwood. He blogs at jeanstimmell.blogspot.com and jstim.substack.com.

I write on many topics, including the lyrical essay I wrote last week about growing up in the Green Forest.

But do not be mistaken. My attention is riveted on Washington, where the biggest catastrophe of my long life is unfolding. President Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk are rapidly neutering our country, bringing our democracy and open way of life to a tragic end.

Their actions have momentous consequences beyond what ordinary language can convey. They have a mythical dimension, something only a poet can grasp. I am reminded of “The Second Coming,” a well-known poem by W.B. Yeats, written in very unsettled times, soon after the end of World War I. It describes a mysterious and powerful alternative to the Christian idea of the second coming of Jesus. Here is a summary of his poem:

Flying around in a widening spiral, the falcon can no longer hear its owner’s call. Things are breaking down, and their foundation is giving way. Pure destruction and lawlessness have spread across the world, and so has a tidal wave darkened by blood. This tide has swallowed all the rituals of innocence. The best people aren’t motivated to act, but the worst people are impassioned and eager.

The poem ends, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” We now know the identity of that rough beast, his “gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.” It is Donald Trump.

The poem spells out our situation today: Two feuding sides without a center. Trump is the reason why, spurning Democrats’ attempts to find common ground.

A good example is the bipartisan immigration bill that Congress worked on for four months, representing the first significant overhaul in decades that genuinely addresses the root issues at the border.

But Trump opposed the legislation and used his influence over Republicans to kill it. He didn’t want the border problem solved because he wanted to continue to play on people’s fear and anger about the immigration crisis to help him get elected.

That’s Trump’s master strategy: fabricating a foil to fight against. He can only win by dividing us because he has no policies to unite us. He needs someone to blame, like baselessly calling Joe Biden a corrupt criminal or defaming all Democrats as evil, godless communists.

He has no interest in uniting his fellow Americans. What he wants is absolute power, and that’s why he looks up to Vladimir Putin, who has what he craves: unlimited dictatorial authority.

Rather than promoting policies to help working Americans, Trump chooses to inflame cultural differences to animate his base: fear-mongering immigrants as blood-thirsty killers and vilifying trans people, who comprise less than one percent of our population, as if they were the worst existential crisis we face.

Meanwhile, Trump ignores truly existential dangers like man-made climate change, which is already wreaking havoc all over the globe. Worse than merely ignoring it, Trump calls it a hoax despite indisputable evidence to the contrary. A good example is the recent Carbon Majors report showing that the 36 biggest fossil fuel companies create fully one-half of all the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change.

Why does Trump choose to deny irrefutable reality? A recent news story in the Washington Post illuminates this question, pointing out what matters most to Trump.

At a meeting of the top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental policies while stopping new ones from being enacted. He had only one condition: “You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House.”

Like everything else, President Trump’s position on climate change is purely transactional. Nothing is based on substance or fact. His only goal — as the narcissist he is — is to be the Grand Poobah of the world.

His takeover is happening as we speak, out in the open, right in front of our eyes.

Merely mouthing the words that we are a democracy is empty rhetoric. What makes democracy real is our government institutions, which are grounded in our Constitution’s system of checks and balances and staffed by dedicated public servants not beholden to either party.

It is true that Trump can’t abolish these institutions outright — only Congress can do that. Instead, he is incapacitating them by directing Musk to gut them so profoundly that they become superfluous, no longer serving any useful purpose.

Don’t be fooled: We are in the middle of a coup. By wantonly destroying our hallowed institutions. Trump — like Yeats’s rough beast — is hell-bent on destroying our way of life.