The morning after Trump’s inauguration, I woke up crying. Thoughts about what this country was becoming—and what it surely now represented to the rest of the world—overwhelmed me. After all, days like Monday don’t occur very often; it’s not every day that an insurrectionist felon, a sexual abuser, a white nationalist enabler, a demagogue, a man described by his own aides as “fascist to his core” returns to the White House with broad immunity thanks to the US Supreme Court.

But sobbing doesn’t get us very far. As much as I would have liked to stay in bed grieving all that was about to transpire, I know that now more than ever it’s important not to look away. We must have a clear understanding of what is happening and how vast powers of the US federal government will be marshaled behind Trump’s appalling agenda. We must know first so that we can bear witness, and second so that we have a road map as to how to undo the damage once his regime ends, as, surely, it one day will. Remember, the premise of this column is “Hiding in Plain Sight.” It’s about exploring the stuff that Trump 1.0 did at least somewhat covertly, but now, in a regime freed up of any political or moral constraints, is doing right before our eyes. The fascist rituals. The corruption and grift. The nepotism. The ignoring of federal rules and regulations. The all-out assault on basic democratic norms.

What has the 47th president been up to in his first few days in office? Well, the most stunning act, arguably the greatest FU in American political history, was issuing pardons for upwards of 1,500 violent insurrectionists for their part in attempting to overthrow the constitutional system of government in 2021. All of those paramilitaries and hoodlums are now free again, with the commander in chief having redefined them as “hostages” and with the full force of the MAGAfied Justice Department now turned on investigating, and potentially prosecuting, career professionals who built cases against these thugs for trying to decapitate American democracy.

For most leaders, that would have been enough carnage for one week. Not for Trump. He signed an executive order on birthright citizenship, denying status to the US-born children of undocumented immigrants and of those living legally in the country on visas. In signing the order, Trump is claiming he has the authority to unilaterally override a constitutional amendment crafted in the wake of the Civil War to guarantee that America wouldn’t ever be able to return to the vile slavery principles that defined its early history. (Read Elie Mystal’s line-by-line breakdown of the order to learn just how unconstitutional it truly is.) I would be surprised except for the fact that Trump, and his white-nationalist advisers like Stephen Miller didn’t exactly hide their odious intentions should they return to power. In fact, they’ve been telegraphing this precise move for years, giving Democratic attorneys general, the ACLU, and myriad other civil rights groups plenty of time to prepare litigation.

No surprise, by Thursday a judge had temporarily blocked the executive order from going into effect—and had issued a scathing statement about its clear unconstitutionality. But Trump and his minions don’t care about the niceties of the law. They are itching to pick a fight on this, and it’s entirely possible that, whatever the courts rule, they’ll simply order workers in a MAGAfied government to continue denying Social Security numbers and passports to these children.

It’s hard to see any silver lining here, but I suppose if there is one it’s that what is good for the goose is, presumably, also good for the gander. In other words, if the GOP can now decide that some parts of the Constitution are sacred while others can be tossed aside on a political whim, well then, next time the Democrats are in control, I hope they take a goddamn sledgehammer to all the inane Second Amendment “rights” to bear slaughter-delivery machines that are so precious to Trump’s heavily armed fans.

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What else? The newly minted president immediately closed the southern border and sent thousands of active-duty troops to patrol the region, a jarring image redolent of the Third Reich, with heavily armed soldiers patrolling a barbed wire demarcation line to protect the purity of the homeland and its denizens from desperate migrants and their children. He accompanied that action with the closure of the American refugee resettlement program, leaving in limbo tens of thousands of war refugees who have been vetted and cleared to enter the US, who already had their travel plans lined up, and who are now stuck in refugee camps because the world’s most powerful, most wealthy country says it no longer has the “resources” to help them. Trump pulled this same trick during his first presidency; it was unconscionable then, and it’s every bit as unconscionable today.

If you’re exhausted already, you’re not alone. But we’re not even close to being through with this terrible week. Other executive orders that Trump signed just a few hours after taking office pull the United States out of the Paris climate accords (for the second time) and the World Health Organization. Given Trump’s antipathy to anything climate-related, and given his immense suspicion of public health organizations, these actions are about as unsurprising as an odiferous fart after a meal of beans. But just because they’re not surprising doesn’t mean they aren’t stunningly destructive. As the LA fires have shown, we are now caroming from one climate-change-magnified catastrophe to the next, and as the looming threat of bird flu shows, we are perched just a few viral mutations away from the next global pandemic. From now on, apparently, it’s official US policy to either put our collective heads in the sand regarding climate and public health disasters or, worse, to ensure that such disasters become more frequent and of a bigger magnitude. I doubt the US government has ever put its imprimatur on a more Looney Tunes package of ideas than those championed by Trump 47.

And then there are his ongoing threats to upend the global economic order by imposing huge tariffs on America’s closest trading partners, and to shatter supply chains carefully built up over the past century in an effort to “enrich” Americans at the cost of the rest of the world. Something tells me the rest of the world won’t take kindly to being viewed solely as American vassals from here to eternity. Something also tells me that, in the end, these policies will be about as destructive as the trade wars and tariff barriers the great powers embraced following the 1929 banking collapse.

The list of this week’s offensive political actions and gestures goes on and on. Trump enacted a federal government hiring freeze and an almost fetishistic assault on DEI programs, devitalized the CDC, moved to end protections for transgender Americans, and, as if his other pardons weren’t enough, issued a full pardon to the founder of the Silk Road dark-web market, a gift of stunning proportions to the world of organized crime. Oh, and then there’s the little matter of Elon Musk twice being inspired, by his frenzy of enthusiasm for America’s new Führer, to give the Nazi salute during Trump’s inauguration rally.

Now, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to give one Nazi salute is unfortunate, but to give two, well, that’s simply political carelessness. After all, surely even in its bastardized, postliterate, post-moral, pro-Trumpian state, America in the year 2025 has a residual memory of the fact that the Nazis were very, very, very bad people. Yet Musk’s itchy arm, so similar to that of Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s classic nuclear-apocalypse satire, apparently simply couldn’t resist the lure of the Sieg Heil gesture.

And that, I think, is an apt metaphor for this first week of Trump’s foul second presidency. Trump, the party that he has so thoroughly conquered, and his gangster henchmen who have ridden triumphantly into the citadel of power, none of them can resist that Sieg Heil, that public rite of the fascist hierarchy. None can resist the allure of the iron fist and the seductive cracking sound of jackboot kicking ribs.

It’s all in plain sight. With America on a newfangled colonial warpath and with every policy aimed at “enriching” this country at everyone else’s expense or remarginalizing already vulnerable and marginal Americans stateside, the country and the world is paying the price. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.