From the black rural South we get this nugget of wisdom, most often expressed in song: “Don’t let the devil ride. Don’t let the devil ride. If you let him ride, he gon’ wanna drive; don’t let him ride.” Subsequent verses provide additional warnings. If you let him flag you down, he’ll turn you around. If you let him be your boss, he’ll make your soul be lost. But they all make the same point: There’s no power-sharing agreement with the dark side. Once you welcome it, you become its subject, and it becomes your ruler.

When Donald Trump was running for president, there were quite a number of Republicans who correctly called out his unfitness for the office. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called the candidate a “loser,” a “nut job” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who “doesn’t represent my party.” When Trump, who was being sued for fraud, claimed that he couldn’t possibly get a fair hearing from federal judge of Mexican descent, Paul Ryan, then speaker of the House, called the comment a “textbook case of a racist comment.” These are the words and phrases Sen. Ted Cruz used to describe Trump: “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen” and “a serial philanderer.” Cruz also called Trump a bully.

All those Republican critics of Trump were spot-on. He is what they said he is. But all of those critics gave him their political support and cover. They all seemed to believe that if he were elected then they would be able to effectively restrain him and rein him in when necessary.

There were right-leaning pundits and columnist making similar arguments. Don’t worry, they said to those of us horrified at the 2016 election results, the Republican establishment is merely tolerating this guy; they’ll keep him in check.

But all we’ve seen are Republicans falling down before him like supplicants around a throne. All the senators present answered affirmatively when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts asked them, “Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you god?" But most of them were lying. There was never any plan for the Republican members of the Senate to do anything other than acquit the president.

If you argue that it was always the plan for most Democrats to convict Trump, then you’re right. The difference, though, is that an honest evaluation of the evidence supports Trump’s conviction and removal from office. Entering the impeachment proceedings with a mind fixed on acquittal means deciding in advance that no evidence would matter.

Republican senators seem to be most concerned about what might happen to them at the polls if they were to oppose the president. But they ought to be most concerned about what will happen to this country if the person some of them have previously described as an amoral, lying, narcissistic nut job is rewarded and not punished for the lying, amorality and narcissism that led to his impeachment. Obviously, he’s already emboldened, but the Senate endorsing his view that he did nothing wrong will only embolden him more.

On July 4, 2017, the first year of Trump’s term, NPR published the Declaration of Independence line-by-line on Twitter. They’d been broadcasting a reading of the document on air every year for 29 years, but when they also turned to social media to promote America’s founding document, Trump supporters accused the news outlet of Trump-bashing. Because who else could NPR have been referring to when it tweeted, “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people?”

How does this country go from rejecting the monarchy and establishing a system to keep its chief executive in check to essentially establishing a monarchy by signaling a willingness to deny, look the other way or brazenly lie about the available evidence?

When we look back at it, we’ll see that the first fatal step was believing that Trump’s awfulness could co-exist with and be made subservient to the greater needs of the country. In short, that he would just climb aboard and be content to let other, less obnoxious leaders do the driving.

Instead, he’s taken over everything. All the people in the White House who were supposed to be his minders are gone, and the two other branches that are supposed to check and balance his powers have all but waved the white flag of surrender.

The Trump-won’t-be-that-bad crowd is awfully silent right now. One senses that they are shocked and disappointed at Republicans they believed would provide resistance.

But some of us aren’t shocked at all. We took the old folks’ warning to heart.

Jarvis DeBerry is a columnist at Cleveland.com and a member of the editorial board. Reach him at jdeberry@cleveland.com or on Twitter at @jarvisdeberry.