Once upon a time a sports reporter named Howard Cosell got good mileage out of the slogan : “Tell it like it is.” Now Donald Trump has appropriated it, with a slight change : “Tell it like it isn’t.” Cosell’s message was about telling truth to power: standing up for Mohammed Ali against the establishment. Trump’s message would seem to be more like the opposite : annihilating truth with power. Other than the future trivia question engendered by their respective hairdos, there would seem to be no place where the two men could agree except that they both seem to be recommending confrontation as a strategy for dealing with what each perceived as a social problem. Cosell was crusading on behalf of his friend who was being persecuted for his anti-war beliefs. Trump seems just to be crusading on behalf of himself: Donald Trump, whose “gigantic brain” and “genius” apparently need daily if not hourly reinforcement by generous doses of sycophancy, hyperbole, exaggeration, and falsehood. Cosell was eventually vindicated by the realization of the American public that depriving Ali of a title he had won fair and square in the ring was unfair. (To use one of Mr.Trump’s favorite debating points : “WRONG WRONG WRONG”.) Mr. Trump seems to believe that his vindication will come when America is made over into a fusion of Putin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany, where the winner will be the person with the loudest voice and who identifies the most “other” groups to blame his problems on, and who can assemble the most ignorant oligarchy to be his henchmen and who can most effectively stifle the press.

Ali’s reputation was eventually revived by the public’s realization that his “I ain’t got nothing against them Congs” was more honest than what our military-industrial complex was telling us. What hope do we have for the Trump problem? The gradually dawning revelation of his mental instability will come more quickly now that he has acquired a signing pen. (Have you taken note of the “yuge” nib? It’s as big as his opinion of his whatever.) The problem, as it was in Nam, is that the realization will come slowly. The injustices to Muslims and Syrian refugees don’t immediately affect the average American voter. It will take 20% increase in Walmart’s and Honda’s prices, and a painstaking education campaign about why they went up, to awaken us. By that time he will have been able to inflict all sorts of damage to the fights against carbon emissions, global warming, deforestation, mountain top removal, the public education system, the laws protecting LGBTQ rights, the makeup of the Supreme Court, voter registration laws, affordable health care, Social Security and the billionaire-favoring tax code. Among other things. Unless we choose to intervene.

“At long last, sir, have you no decency?” Joseph Welch finally asked Joe McCarthy three-quarters of a century ago, and the country finally recognized that plain outright lying was not acceptable in politics. We kicked out McCarthy and his buddy Roy Cohn in time and the nation survived. McCarthy’s “others” — Communist Fifth Column plants behind every desk in Washington — were as phony as Trump’s terrorists swelling the ranks of incoming refugees and his Mexican rapists driving up the crime statistics in Chicago. But it was, as those of us who were here in 1954 remember, a near thing. It almost tore the country apart. That “almost” is the key. That it didn’t was due to the strength of our belief in a free press, democratic government, and the moral importance of justice. That belief is now faced with a new test in the person of someone who is a certifiable sufferer from Narcissistic Personality Disease whom we have unaccountably elevated to the Presidency.

How that happened, or how broadly the cloak of collective responsibility should spread, is no longer material except as a lesson for future political strategists and historians. The immediate problem has now become one of (a) recognition of our mistake, and (b) finding effective tactics to atone for it and remove its threat to the stability of our government. (And very possibly not only ours. We are the exemplars to the world. At this moment a laughing stock.)

The first step — recognition of the problem — is under way. As the reckless and unhinged reactions of the patient are codified and assembled under the boldly aggressive signature so eagerly displayed by its author to any camera in the vicinity, citizens are already reacting. They march in support of the persecuted, chant in support of the rule of law, write and call their congresspeople to plead for a return to sanity. Those congresspeople, some torn between what they perceive as a chance for personal career enhancement through sycophancy and the dawning realization that this will in the end destroy their personal estimation of themselves, are struggling with the problem.

My hope is that the more they see of the America Donald Trump has in mind for them the more their eyes will be opened, and the sooner they will support his eventual impeachment.

For impeachment, I believe, is inevitable. Somewhere there is a Joseph Welch who will ask the right question at the right time and wake us all up. After that it will become just a matter of working out the details — who will take the lead in calling the would-be Emperor’s bluff, who will start with the actual steps of defining an indictment (probably based on the best word the Constitution offers us for salvation : “misdemeanors”), and organizing the Senate trial.

Trump’s exile will not end the divisions between the establishment haves and the self-perceived disrespected have-nots in our country, but the experience will have warned us against the dangers posed by quick-fix con men. How seriously Messrs Pence, McConnell, Ryan, et al. will take this lesson to heart will be the next critical issue. We and they will have to discuss it and take whatever steps we feel are necessary to avoid a repeat performance. It will not be a fun time, but I have faith that Americans, red or blue, brown or white, vengeful or thoughtful, will get more satisfaction from trying to solve the problem than from trying to exact satisfaction for past wrongs. As human beings we tend to believe in forgiveness. We are usually happier to save a soul than to condemn one to eternal torment. We are not against wealth; we just would like to see it spread more equitably. We don’t hate individual Syrians or Muslims or Mexicans or Jews; we can only hate them collectively, as “the other”, seen as responsible for our unemployment, poverty, helplessness and frustration in the face of terrorism, and (we may think) actually eradicable so that Heaven on earth can be realized under the auspices of the smart, white, high-school educated, religious, past-worshippers who today seem to be forgetting that this country was founded as a haven for dissenters, not as a haven for tax-evaders.

This vision is perhaps as hard to believe in as Donald Trump’s illusions of crowd sizes or the zillions of his worldwide adoring admirers, but it is not to be dismissed as crazy. It is to be accepted, even by those who don’t subscribe to it, as an inevitable reaction to disappointment and alienation, which can only be dealt with by education and love. Yes, love. If you don’t love your fellow man whom then will you love? The high radiation-tolerant rats ready to take over the next experiment in running the planet?

So what’s my advice? Dig in for the long haul. It’s a battle that can be won. Trump can be defeated. Washington can be reshaped from a political cut-throat career cauldron back to a representative deliberative body. The table can be made round again so we can all sit at it together — nobody below the salt. The UN is salvageable. The story of the Donald may be the reinforcing lesson we all need to remind us that the price of democratic government is constant vigilance.