Our government has three separate branches (executive, legislative, judicial) for a reason — to make sure we don’t ever have another dictatorial leader like King George. Each branch is to be a check and balance on the others.

Trump (who openly admires strong-arm authoritarians like Putin, el-Sisi, Assad and Erdogan) evidently believes he and his administration should operate in similar fashion by using executive orders, misinformation, intimidation and by promoting fear of “the other”—you know, those brown and black-skinned folks.

To that end, Trump and Attorney General Sessions have stated repeatedly that our country is crime-ridden and in total chaos and carnage. They even accused NYPD of being “soft on crime,” resulting in a drastic increase in “gang violence.” This is totally false! Crime is actually down quite significantly.

They’ve also made accusations that we’re being overrun by “illegal” Mexican criminals and rapists and that un-vetted Muslims are pouring into our country to commit terrorist acts. None of this is true but has been hyped to sell the need for a border wall, profiling immigration laws, and even more restrictive, tough-on-crime policies. Spreading “alternative facts” is an effort to ratchet up fear and thus a perceived need for “protection,” a familiar Mafia tactic.

And fiscal conservatives should be especially irate regarding the border wall. Experts say it will be ineffective, exorbitantly expensive to build and maintain, and the worst possible use of our security resources.

The bottom line is that we need that “balance of power” to step up to and stop Trump from dividing and manipulating us.

We’re already a great country and mustn’t let him change us to an authoritarian nation living in fear of each other and the world. And we especially need to prevent his reactionary, inconsistent, immature “Tweeting” foreign policy from accidentally starting WWIII.