As the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump continues, those of conscience and those who remain cogent and conscious may well be left wondering what happened to the United States.

Does it even exist? Or are we a divisive nation of extremists married to our own ideas, ignoring others and ready to bully into submission anyone who disagrees with us?

We all know Donald Trump is a pathological liar who can’t keep his lies straight. There is little point in showing the hypocrisy of Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham who, during the Clinton impeachment, screamed for testimony, evidence, transparency and disclosure but block such moves today.

There’s even less of a desire to interview any of the president’s second-rate minions who couldn’t get a job at a fast food restaurant if they didn’t work for him. No one needs to hear Kellyanne Conway compare the president to Martin Luther King or press secretary Stephanie Grisham promote the president as “the most transparent” in history.

Listening to Trump attorney Pat Cipollone tell the senate that the president is an honest man may drive most literate Americans to vomit. Trump has told more than 16,000 documented lies since he took office. Listening to Cipollone lie before the Senate and claim no Republican had access to the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility meetings in the Congressional impeachment investigation drove at least one congressman to push back.

“I was in nearly every deposition and the GOP members were always present,” Congressman Jamie Raskin tweeted on Wednesday.

The president loves the reality show that his Senate show trial has become. Most on his side of the aisle claim to be unmoved by opening statements or by anything else the Democrats have done. To them and Trump the impeachment is a hoax. Meanwhile the U.S. Senate is holding a trial where there are no witnesses.

Welcome to the Banana Republic of America, 2020 edition. It is Trump’s reality show and, for anyone who believes in the rule of law, it is a nightmare.

The administration is banking on the shallow and dangerous idea that no one cares about anything but their own self-interest. Trump, practiced at the art of deception, can always get what he wants if he pushes his narrative strongly enough and with the power of the bully pulpit behind him. Are you upset about it?

“Everyone was in the loop,” we’ve been told.

“Get over it,” Mick Mulvaney reminded us.

The time has come to move beyond these considerations. Trump will either be removed from office or, more likely, retained, since a majority of Senators are from the president’s party and have no problem supporting him.

What the impeachment shows, more than anything else, is Trump hasn’t drained the swamp but filled it. The GOP is complicit, the Democrats are impotent and the United States has suffered. The path forward appears tenuous and frightening.

The entire impeachment process, if viewed historically, shows what a sham of a democracy we are, what a modern oligarchy looks like and how a lack of education and participation in a sound process can corrupt democracy and allow the fringe elements on both sides to control the national narrative. Future generations, should this country survive, will long study this time in history and try to figure out how it happened and why.

Was it television? Was it our own arrogance? A lack of education? What caused the United States to turn on itself and eat its own?

For all of our pretense at moral superiority, Trump’s impeachment shows just how absent morality is from most of our elected representatives. The Republicans only want to win. Not one of them so far in the Senate has had the maturity or common sense to see beyond their own nose even three to five years down the road. Not one of them appears to care their actions are emboldening those who embrace anarchy, hegemony and the rule of monarchs.

Again, all of this is known. It isn’t too far a stretch to imagine the Democrats using similar tactics should they come to presidential power. A Democrat with the lack of moral fortitude equal to Trump’s could easily say, “Trump did it. There’s no problem.” Meanwhile both sides could continue the cries of “Fake News” and “Enemy of the people” that are already spreading internationally.

Cyberattacks, hacks, disinformation and propaganda rule in this country, where facts previously held sway. Our national security is threatened. Our future is threatened. Our stature among nations is diminished. The light and torch of liberty is dim. And at the end of the day it will all boil down to a vote that will fall on party lines. 53-47. John F. Kennedy urged us forward to lead the world with our ideas. Our ideas today only include misdirection, lies, self-interest and winning at any cost.

All evidence shows that the United States we were taught about in history and government classes across this country does not exist today. We had best admit and embrace our new reality of cutthroat pirates who only care about ourselves. We do not want to help out those less fortunate. We do not support healthcare care for all. We do not care about the environment. We are small-minded, corrupt criminals who, like Senator McConnell, care only about winning.

We are that country—or at least that’s what this impeachment tells us.

Or we can take a different path. We need to register to vote and then exercise our right to do so. We can educate ourselves on the issues. We can take time out from our lives to vote our conscience. Then let the chips fall where they may. I for one have a firm belief that the electorate is neither as mean-spirited nor as shallow as some of those who represent us. But at the same time we’ve become so wrapped up in our lives, trying to pay bills, take care of children and frivolously spending time with lesser concerns, that we are unwilling or unable to exercise our rights as citizens participating in a democracy.

In the words of the administration, we all need to be “in the loop,” in order to make sure the democracy envisioned by our founding fathers survives this current aberration. At the moment it appears the president can abuse his office all he wants. You cannot indict him. You cannot impeach him. He is above us. He rules us.

The Government Accountability Office ruled Trump’s move withholding aid to Ukraine was illegal. Common sense would dictate action be taken against Trump, but the GOP, in lockstep, ignores the independent GAO and common sense. “Our framers had common sense and so must we,” Congressman Adam Schiff said to an indifferent GOP crowd during the second day of Trump’s Senate trial.

For many outside of the Beltway, the drama of the impeachment is nothing but cacophony—high wind in the trees. Trump has promoted the chaos and attacked the messengers bringing the message of his malfeasance with the simple desire to disrupt and discredit anyone speaking against him or bringing information forward detrimental to him.

This is typical Trump tactics, but all the lies, all the obfuscation and all the damage have reached a critical point.

One is left asking exactly what would it take to remove a president? The simplest answer and the most permanent answer is to vote him out. The impeachment of Donald Trump is a horrible thing. His actions were horrible. His defense is anathema to the founding principles of our country. And the GOP doesn’t care. If nothing else, this impeachment hammers home the need for everyone to be involved in the process. Voter turnout, education and participation are vital to the success of our noble experiment in government.

Today the United States is not the leader of the free world. It isn’t even representative of a free world. It is representative of corruption of the democratic process. It speaks to the lowest common denominator and stresses how all nations are the same—just rogues and thugs running riot across the countryside. The ideals our founding fathers espoused are still respected among those individuals on the planet who wish governments to be representative of the needs and wants of the majority and not the play toys of the aloof, elite and corrupt individuals who successfully buy or bully their way into power.

The House managers are trying to convince the Senate that Trump’s actions threaten democracy. The truth is they all know and don’t care. They were all in the loop.

I’m left wondering how much longer our republic will survive. The impeachment trial thus only sets the stage to see if we can keep the nation our founders fought and died for more than 250 years ago. Trump and his administration continue to bet on the idea that people are more concerned about their own narrow interests than our combined national interests. I’m betting they are wrong.