Bob Schwartz

Concerned Americans are at different places on the emergency of the current governmental and constitutional crisis.

A number of Americans in public life, in the media and elsewhere, are either playing along, hoping for the best, or maintaining neutrality, afraid that anything that looks critical will subject them to punishment.

A number of Americans privately believe we are, as historian Timothy Snyder has called this historic process, on “the road to unfreedom.”

All those concerned have a growing and justified sense that they don’t know what to do about it.

Aside from “what to do about it”, I offer a concept that is often used as crisis situations develop. It is the so-called doomsday clock. In this case, how far along are we to the full subversion of the American republic?

If asked to place this moment on a clock, I would never go so far as to say it is a minute before midnight or anything that extreme. If pushed, I might say we are at 6 o’clock, which, depending on how you look at it, still offers plenty of opportunity for a different outcome. But it also recognizes that we are well along on the road to unfreedom.

How we get back on the road to freedom is the big and still unresolved dilemma. The clock is ticking.