Good morning. It is Sunday, August the 24th. I'm Ali Velshi. We begin this morning

with a reality check, a crucial one. The collapse of democracy is a strange and almost surreal

thing. It can be abstract. It can be hard to recognize in the moment.

At first, it just feels like politics.

It's messy. It's noisy.

It's frustrating and sometimes a bit removed from one's day-to-day life.

But then the guardrails that we've been taking for granted

begin to topple one after another.

A National Guard unit deployed to a city that never asked for it.

Key parts of the nation's electoral process attacked as illegitimate.

Rules of federal judges shrugged off as optional.

Neighbors disappeared into ice vans.

Critics and political opponents suddenly faced with criminal probes.

The media behaving in ways designed not to trigger the ire of the ruling party.

Each new abuse is justified as temporary, necessary, even an emergency, until one day it's just

not temporary at all. One day the justifications stop altogether, because once power is

absolute, it no longer feels the need to explain itself.

At best, each assault may seem like an outlier until the day you wake up and realize the system

itself has become unrecognizable. And that's where we are right now. It is not where we're

headed. It's where we are. The tragedy of what's unfolding and the

danger of what's ahead will be compounded if American citizens en masse, all of us do not recognize

this moment for what it is. Understandably, unless it touches you directly, it is sometimes

...