Experts who warned of three great crises of our time -- climate change, covid-19, and authoritarianism -- emphasized that these crises must be tackled with urgency. We never had time.

Yet in every case, pols and media refused to acknowledge the crisis until the damage was done.

Everyone who covered these crises, or worked on them in government, had a choice. They could tell the truth. They could fight back assertively and with transparency. They chose instead mass death. Everyone who denied the threat of the Trump crime cult is an accomplice to murder.

The crises of covid-19, climate change, and authoritarianism are intertwined. Of the three, authoritarianism is the easiest to fight and reverse. Humanity isn't doomed to it. Avoiding consolidated autocracy makes it less likely people will die en masse from the other two crises.

But that's not what our officials and media elites chose. Trump was a public figure for 40 years. His worst enablers were also public figures. The criminal money trail was there. It could have been stopped.

They refused not only out of greed but out of total moral bankruptcy.