Charles Dickens also lived in an era when elite forces ruled, for us the corporate elite. Upheaval in France had brought excesses on both sides. First “Let them eat cake” is a familiar sentiment of the exploitive rich in late 1700 France, a quote usually attributed to an arrogant and clueless, Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, before the French Revolution in 1789. It seems appropriate for our times when millions of Americans are impoverished and billionaires buy yachts and ride their own rockets into space.

The Industrial Revolution in England gave Dickens cause to write fiction about the exploited poor in his time, when children were in “poor houses” and parents in “debtor prison,” with the setting of the French revolution some 70 years before. The following puts you in mind of our current divisive and exploitive times, mindful of such cycles in our history:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Is the devil at the helm again, setting the course for our experimental democratic ship of state? Over centuries we have been teetering back and forth, authoritarian storms whipping at our sails. Occasionally deadly gales threaten to rip us apart and chaotically crush us on the bordered rocks. To this point, the most deadly occurred sixteen decades ago when southern states seceded from the union.

Today, just as then, the country and families are divided and threatened by the excesses of autocracy in a more modern form. States like Florida are telling schools what to teach and lying to the public about the pandemic regarding death and disease; dispersing favor for the rich, engineering health care and making unemployment relief hard to get.

Our current ship of state is that threatened and unsettled. The Republican Party is actively seceding from democracy and expects even the majority who support democracy to salute their authoritarian flag.

The corrupt dictator they follow was unsuccessful in leading a violent takeover of our democratic government, though a majority of his tribe supported that attempt. Republicans want to assure that they, not the voters, and especially not non-white voters, will chose the next leaders; that it will be Republican leaders.

Capitol police were bloodied and battered by white supremacist mobs but Republicans, though a minority, own leadership in a majority of states where they can control and overturn the vote for a less bloody overthrow of our government..

Too many corporations, focused on profit not citizenship fail in a role to support our democracy. Due to dark money that corporate friends on SCOTUS allowed in Citizen’s United, it is hard to track corporate donors for insurrectionist Republicans.

The most obvious are Pfister, AT&T, Cigna Health, Boeing, Toyota, Koch Industries, Jet Blue, National Association of Realtors, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. One of their most rabid agent institutions is the Federalist Society which openly writes legislation for Republican states mandating voter suppression and helped to fashion the pro-corporate chief justice Roberts’ court.

Corporations began this slow coup in the 1970s. Their intention was to gain control of our economy and the government. Over the years, their intentions have remained the same but their agents, the Republican Party, are losing control of a growing diversity of voters. Now the Republicans plan to chose their voters, and if that doesn’t work chose the winners.

And they will, if enough money, enough judges, and enough ruthless followers will concede the next few elections, and if the American majority for democracy fail to perceive the GOP’s threat against it.

Given these circumstances, democracy will slip out of our hands like quicksilver.