The folks now running our country believe the wrong side won the Second World War and are determined after all this time to right that perceived wrong.

Taken together after the first month of Trump 2.0, we can now see all sides of a full-blown coup in its infant stages that will not stop of its own accord regardless of what the courts or future elections dictate.

Trump has not wasted time turning Ukraine president Zelinskyy into an enemy, setting the stage for a “detente” between his administration and Russia’s Putin that will be nothing less than what many feared from the time Trump first ran in 2016: that he was, and is, effectively an agent acting on behalf of a hostile foreign power. That power has been bent for 80 years on a reset of World War II, to where the Russians sweep across and take control of all Europe, substituting with that success for the failure of the Nazi regime. 

Republicans and the billionaire class of American moguls are simply going to have to come to grips with this fact. You will be treated no less severely by this regime once they have done enough to aid and abet the execution of this coup. 

 The Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos figures of the world will soon find, if you haven’t already, that this is not the vision of the Koch brothers you have helped to bring into power, but something far more cruel and sinister. And, by the way, these people should not object to such things being said about them. They’re proud of it and care more that so few have figured them out yet.

Take the case of you, Mr. Bezos. This boy-man with his rocket ship and his delivery business and newspaper toy is actually probably not altogether bad. But when a child is brought up with no notion of having a soul, of compensating for what he may lack inside with a fixation on the collection of shiny things, and getting it all without ever really having to fight anything, then this one is totally bereft of any tools or means for standing up to a bully.

No wonder you are as pliant as you are, something that all the rest of us can see but that you hope such quivering will go unnoticed. Do you deny this, Mr. Bezos? Are you not being driven by irrational fear now, such that you believe if you cross Trump, he will crush you?

Well, perhaps Janis Joplin got it right when she sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose!” Don’t you wish you were free now?

Of course, freedom didn’t get the lovely Ms. Janis very far. She was hooked and it killed her by age 27. She was probably hooked by a reaction to fear, too, just like you, Jeff. But it was fear of a different type, evoked from a different stimulant, if you will. Hers was from the pressures bearing in on her. She was innocent, she was a child, she was a geek from Port Arthur, made fun of in high school before she went off to Austin and eventually became a huge star.

You know about geeks, Jeff. You are one, too, and no attempt to project an image of cool can rid you of that self-perception. When not being taunted or bullied, though, you can actually be quite creative. At the Post, former managing editor Marty Baron gave you credit in his book for inventing the powerful and haunting tag line on the paper’s front page masthead, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

But recently you’ve wanted to change it to something entirely innocuous. You’re simply not going to win at this game of life playing it like a simpering coward.

Courage is not the lack of fear. On the contrary, it is acting in spite of it. You cannot let this Trump that you know is very bad news destroy the things about America that have made it great and trampling you under foot at some point in the process, too. He simply has no respect for those who cower when he bullies.