We may be losing track at this point during the first 100 days of the Trump administration, overwhelmed by the litany of reported illegal and anti-constitutional acts that he and his band of pirates are carrying out. However, we knew everything we needed to know about Trump’s poisonous nature before he initiated what now seems to be an authentic political coup in America.

The scenario from Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 satirical novel on creeping fascism, “It Can’t Happen Here,” is beginning to look clearly visionary as we stand awe-struck in our naivete hoping for the best of a bad situation.

Trump’s promise, clearly evident to rational people for years, is now unfolding before us as a manifest dictatorship. Trump’s fascist leanings, his dangerous rhetoric, his worship of authoritarian demagogues and dictators ruling other countries and his psycho-get-even personality should not surprise us. Still, he appealed to millions, right?

Millions who, in the face of all reason, voted for him and left the rest of us, mostly Democrats, scratching our heads and stunned by a new reality. Now we are coming awake from our slumber, under a boot heel and a furious grab for power by an autocrat and his retinue of incompetent suck-up political appointees and opportunist oligarchs. Now we have Trump enabling his billionaire buddy Elon Musk to creep about like a fox in the henhouse (in our henhouse, by the way) and to toy around with our government like a box of Legos.

And the unelected visitor, Musk, has a kind of gang he runs — a young high-handed Geek Squad SWAT team of apostle righties who are loving to stick their intrusive little noses into the adult world of loyal federal employees. Musk clearly is an agent of thoughtless fear-mongering, eliciting real fear for the future of America under the aegis of a spoiler who is steeped in the spirit of retribution against all who have dissed him.

Am I overly sensitive in considering this Musk, a creepy fascist genius, to be an intruder who bought his way into our government (into our house) and is going through our stuff to find dollars to offset the big tax break that Trump plans to bestow upon his billionaire pals — all this while we are sleeping? As Musk says, he is just untangling the “ball of worms” that he and Trump and his lackeys think is the “Deep State.” Can we imagine who is gullible enough to believe such claptrap?

Is this man really our president, like real American presidents generally are, or is this just a really bad guy with a gang of suck-up loyalists and MAGA proselytes who, despise the rest of us, have been brainwashed by lies?

I hope we are awake enough to respond with energy and intelligent action. Why wouldn’t any thinking person react in alarm over the recent chain of events where we have lost the White House by a whisker and might soon lose the country?

William Lederer, in 1962, wrote “A Nation of Sheep,” the best-seller depicting a benign citizenry in the face of big government. One can sum up the theme of this book by Lederer’s most famous quote: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” Let us hope that in facing Trump’s pirates we instead become a nation of lions.