but there seems to be no power to stop it.

The second the pot was placed on the stove.

Any self respecting frog will jump out of a pot if it gets too warm. Just shows that frogs may be smarter than people. We've been watching what little democracy we had fade away all my life.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

-- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free
interviews with German citizens, post-WWII
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
https://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928