The joke is over.

Donald Trump is supposed to be the president of the entire United States, not just of the radical fascist fringe. That’s not a controversial idea. A controversial idea is allowing the world’s only superpower to be run by an actual fascist.

Donald Trump is a white supremacist. He has made that clear. White Supremacists are fascists. If he is allowed to remain president of the United States, then the United States as it knows itself has ceased to exist. A man who cannot condemn Nazism without walking it back inside of 24 hours is not fit for the office of the presidency, and he should not remain in office for another month, another week, another day.

Everybody in power has some reason to let him keep performing. He is ratings gold for the news media. He is providing a smokescreen of chaos behind which the Republican Congress is attempting a lot of long-planned dirty business. He is a paragon for the hard-core Republican base. But at some point the media must take some kind of moral stand; there is no longer any neutral ground. At some point Republican representatives have to put country over party. At some point we have to acknowledge that the ignorant, authoritarian, hate-crazed 34% of Americans who support this president are not the only Americans worth listening to. In fact they’re the last people the government should be listening to.

I’d say Congress has very little time – days or weeks – to respond to this crisis by demanding Donald Trump leave office. After that, the damage to our republic will be irreversible. When Germans and Italians elected fascists, they became objects of historic scorn that is no less fresh today than it was during World War Two. Those scars will never fade. We now know Donald Trump is a fascist, at least in sympathy; he cannot condemn Nazism without conflating anti-Nazi protesters in the same breath. If the jackboot fits, wear it.

But we also stand on the far side of history. When Hitler rose to power, the extent of the atrocities he would wreak upon the world were not yet known. Today we know what the Nazis stand for, and what they did. Ignorance is no plea. There is responsibility in knowing better. For the United States to allow this grotesque villain to remain in office for any longer than it takes to eject him, given the lessons of recent history, is unconscionable.

We are at a turning point, America. Last year, enough of us were sick of the entrenched establishment figures who have been running the country for decades. Enough of us fell for Russian agitprop. Enough of us wanted a harsh authority figure who would throw out all the people of color. Enough just wanted to watch it all burn. So Donald Trump became president.

Now we know precisely what kind of man he is, what kind of leader. He’s the kind who marches nations into darkness. Now is our opportunity to throw him out and regain our standing with ourselves and the world. If we let this man remain president, we abandon what we were, and become what he wants.