Recently, 27 qualified psychiatrists warned that Donald Trump is mentally ill, and another 60,000-plus mental health professionals also signed a petition to that effect.

At this point, it cannot be denied: Trump’s conduct as president (including his endless Twitter screeds and his voluminous use of lies to bolster his demagogic rhetoric) is dangerously destabilizing and brings shame to our country. His taunting of Kim Jong-Un over Twitter and his cavalier invocations of the power he has to annihilate hundreds of thousands of people on the Korean peninsula with the push of a “button” would by itself disqualify him for the presidency — if these were normal times. But these are not normal times.

In normal times, the Republican Party would have been strong enough to resist a take-over by a vulgar, morally bankrupt and profoundly ignorant man like Donald Trump. In better times Republicans would have been willing to stand up to a president (even from their own party) who sought to use the presidency as a way to enrich himself and, through the Department of Justice, to settle personal and political scores.

But in the face of mounting evidence of corruption and the abuse of presidential powers, in the face of undeniable evidence that the president of the United States is mentally unstable and manifestly unfit to be the commander in chief of the mightiest military in the history of the world, Republicans remain largely silent. Instead, they vote to take away people’s health care and give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while the people who voted them into office continue to live with stagnant wages and crumbling infrastructure — but might, as consolation, content themselves with the dream of a border wall and the hope that Planned Parenthood won’t be able to perform abortions anymore.

If the world survives Trump’s presidency, he is sure to be reviled by historians as the president who brought us closer to dictatorship and political ruin than any of his predecessors — but not without the help of Republicans who had the power to intervene but did not. Our children and our grandchildren (whom we must now depend upon to usher in more hopeful, sane, and productive days) will wonder how one of our political parties became so narrow-minded and myopic that it allowed itself to be commandeered by a “hollow man,” a preening, vapid authoritarian, easily manipulated by the likes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and a young, relatively inexperienced, dictator ruling over one of the most oppressed and isolated countries in the world.

Legitimate arguments can already be made for impeachment. Regardless of whether or not these arguments persuade you, reader, you cannot deny that Trump now menaces the American people and the world at large with his fantasy of bullying an emerging nuclear power into submission over social media. None of us can ignore the relief we felt last week when it turned out the president of the United States was otherwise occupied with his golf game, leaving Hawaiian officials to sort out for themselves whether or not they were actually under nuclear attack.

This is the hard truth: Donald Trump poses an ongoing existential threat to the world — and that is not likely to change. We can continue our disagreements and battles over public policy after Trump is gone. But for now we must come together as a people to protect our planet and our posterity.

Jon Scheffres