Two things should give pause, even to his Republican enablers, as Donald Trump uses his presidential powers to violate the very meaning of democracy in the U.S.: His use of unidentifiable federal thugs in Portland, Oregon, to abuse protesters of late and his refusal to pledge he will accept the results of the November presidential election.

What would be the expected response to a question about abiding with the election results? When he was asked in a recent interview by Chris Wallace, a Fox News commentator, he hemmed and hawed and did not answer the question. Instead, he retreated to his stock assessment of everything that any real citizen would find appalling: He referred to “fake” polling, indicating that he would make the same assessment of the election...if he does not win. A real president would not have hesitated to answer, “I will abide by the will of the people.” He did not so answer.

For the first time, a guttersnipe occupies the White House, the house of the people and the center to which many in the world looked for guidance in equality, liberty, and opportunity. That is, other countries and their leaders looked to Washington, until the presidency of Donald Trump. While it is true that the U.S. was slipping badly in its position of global leadership before Trump, his election to the highest office put the cap on the slippage. In fact, over the past four years, the U.S. has become a laughing stock in many parts of the world, especially among its allies and other nations that purport to be democracies, or once wanted to shape their nations’ futures along the lines of the U.S.

The second Merriam-Webster definition of “guttersnipe” seems to fit Trump quite nicely: “A person of the lowest moral and economic station.” The “moral” part seems to be self-evident, but the “economic” part is an unknown, because no one seems to know how rich Trump is not, since he has refused to release his tax returns as many presidents have routinely done before him. He obviously has much to hide. Either he has committed enough fraud and theft to make his tax returns dangerous to one seeking a second term in office, or the returns show just how incompetent you can be and still claim to be a “successful businessman.”

Competent or not, he has done irreparable damage to the institutions of the U.S., public and private, and he has been especially criminal in nearly finishing off the nation’s free press. There probably isn’t a day that goes by that he doesn’t refer to “fake news,” so that millions of his cult only believe what comes out of his mouth or his flapping sycophants out on the right-wing fringes of politics. He will do more harm when he lets loose his barrage of “campaign” ads that already have been polluting the air waves. One purports to show what will happen with the “defunding” of the police, when callers are given a menu to choose from, with a number to press for each heinous felony. Using the background of a burning building, the 911 “operator” estimates the wait time for a cop is “five days.” Even though Biden has not called for defunding the police (Trump doesn’t even know what is meant by such defunding), President Guttersnipe will be using such commercials to strike fear into his followers and others. That the substance of his commercials will be lies, he can live with, because he pretty much never opens his mouth without lying about something.

About sending unidentifiable federal troops into American cities to quell the disturbances that have arisen from the demonstrations against police brutality, bias, and structural racism that have festered in the nation since the beginning of the slave trade, he is arguably in violation of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits the use of federal troops against their own people.

Such a violation against what is commonly understood as the meaning of posse comitatus, a law that was passed in 1878, which limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military or law enforcement personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. But the rule of law in the time of Trump and coronavirus has become much less meaningful, since the president apparently believes that he is above the law and what he says, in fact, becomes law. He’s wrong, of course, but the people are going to have to prove him wrong. He escaped with his hide, when he was impeached, but let off the hook by his Republican enablers in the U.S. Senate, led by his henchman, Sen. Mitch McConnell.

There is precedent, however, for what he has planned, to create chaos in the major cities of America, one of the lowest ploys that a presidential candidate could stoop to, in stirring up fear in everyone. He plans to send in his no-name troops (drawn from whatever agency of law enforcement that he has under the Executive Branch), literally to battle demonstrators exercising their rights under the First Amendment. And battle, it will be, against unarmed civilians, so it is clear that it won’t be much of a battle for the Star Wars-like-equipped troopers of the president who thinks like he’s already a king.

Similar things happened in Europe between World War I and World War II, when “leaders” promised the working people the world, but when they gained power, they revealed themselves to be vicious, cruel, hungry for more power, and murderous on a monumental scale. It started out when they just sent their bully-boys out in crowds in meetings to get rid of opponents or hecklers. At first, people were escorted out of the meetings, but that progressed to beatings, to the stamping out of opposition, and ultimately, to the imprisonment of opponents, then execution of opponents, then mass murder. It all can start so easily that the masses of people, good citizens, become like the frog in the pot of water that is heated slowly, so that the frog doesn’t even know he is being boiled. Trump is going to turn up the heat to boiling in the next four months and troops with no names and no agency and their unmarked vans will be doing his dirty business of causing chaos in city after city.

He will be doing that, unless the people rise up and vote, refusing to accept a king or a dictator. The people will have to do it, because the Republicans, with few exceptions, are unwilling or unable to stand up to the little man who would be king.

As the president’s niece said in the title of her book about the dysfunctional Trump family, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” Donald J. Trump is indeed the world’s most dangerous man, for he controls, without a second of thought, the world’s most powerful military and no one knows if, or how, he might use it. When he does use it, you can be sure that he will do so without a thought for the consequences of his actions. So it is with the use of nameless, faceless federal enforcers, who are sent out to overpower local elected officials and local law enforcement, such as in Portland. He intends to show the world that he is the “law and order” leader who will protect property at all costs. It’s his first thought: Protect property.

Black Lives Matter does not matter to him, because black lives do not matter to him. Over the past four years, he has made it very clear that they don’t and his white supremacist supporters have taken his signal and have done as much as they can to give him what they think he wants: An end to the public struggle for civil rights, for justice, for equality, for freedom, and an end to police brutality and killings of black and brown people and other minorities in America. Trump’s Brown Shirt raids on the cities of America must stop. He can’t be allowed to use his secretive enforcers as an election ploy. That kind of thing played out in World War II, in which fascists were defeated, but they can rise again. It can happen here. A big step to prevent that will be to send Trump packing from the White House in November.