This is an adapted excerpt from Wednesday’s MSNBC special coverage.

If it was a election It was not simply a choice between two candidates, but a choice between retaining the American system of government or trading it for an authoritarian strongman system, so Tuesday’s decisive result gives us a long to-do list.

If you are an American who does not want to burn the American system of government to the ground, who does not want a system in which all government is one man and everything else exists just to serve him, if it’s not the country you want, that means you have more to do for your country now than you ever did before. It’s not enough to push a button for American democracy to disappear. It doesn’t work like that.

First of all, let’s be realistic: we are now just another one of those countries that have decided to try the strongman thing and see how it goes. Many other countries around the world are governed by this type of system than those who are governed by ours. We are the world’s only 248-year-old multiracial pluralist democracy. So, shall we keep it? Many of our fellow Americans say we shouldn’t do it. But many Americans, tens of millions, say we should do it. Which means it’s time to fight for it.

Yes, the Americans I fought for this while working on this election, trying to get the candidate who was both a Democrat and a small-D Democrat across the finish line. She couldn’t do it and the strongman candidate won instead.

We have the advantage of knowing how this happened in all the other countries that have experienced an authoritarian transition. We know that the more ground they take, the harder it is to get it back. You must therefore prevent them from taking uncontested ground from the start.

We know from the experiences of other countries that they will soon test how far we will let them go without resistance, without protest. Part of the reason is that it’s psychologically beneficial for them to do it now. They’re counting on the half of the country that doesn’t want to give up on our system of government to get discouraged, feel helpless, check out and let them do what they want.

What they really don’t want is for the half of the country who voted against them to wake up tomorrow with a feeling of desolation. Of course, we regret the outcome of the elections, but also, frankly, we free ourselves from having to spend all our time working on the elections. We can now work full time to be a thorn in the side of anyone who intends to turn this country into a phony tyranny.

The story didn’t end on Tuesday. Time didn’t just stand still. We have just received marching orders from the universe and the Electoral College so that American citizens who want to preserve democracy know exactly what we are going to spend the next few days, weeks and years doing.

The work that remains to be done now applies to all aspects of our society.

The United States military must give the people of this country firm assurance that it will not do this. deploy military force against the civilian population.

The free press must provide assurance that it will not become state television – that it will stand together and fight together when these guys, inevitably, start to by selecting individual journalists, individual editors and individual news agencies.

If Democrats win the House, expect Article 1 of the Constitution be attacked, efforts to weaken the power of Congress and turn it into a just-for-show institution whose powers have been taken over by the executive branch are to be expected.

Depending on whether or not the courts can exercise control over the administration, one should expect Article III of the Constitution also be attacked. It’s already a fetish on the right to boast that court decisions mean nothing and that physical force and violence are what ultimately decides what is allowed.

We will need plans and some steel backbone among Washington’s elected officials and members of the judiciary to prevent them. We’re going to need the entire country to recognize these risks in advance, call them out for what they are, and actively resist them.

Civil society is one of the things I consider soft food for authoritarians: often they don’t even need to bite that hard to crush it. Everything in organized life and culture that is not a matter of business and government is a matter of civil society. Authoritarians need to crush this because it doesn’t concern them. Strongman leaders tend to become not only dictators but also totalitarians because they cannot do anything in the country that does not concern or concern them.

A strong civil society gives people the opportunity to think for themselves, organize in their own interests, and express themselves with the power of more than just one person.

We need assurance from civil society leaders that they will not go anywhere and will also fight for our democracy. We all need to participate more in civil society today than before. Join something, no matter what it is, but you have to if you want to be connected to other Americans and not isolate yourself.

Do you have any burned bridges in your past? Unburn them. Reconnect with people. Your family. Your block. Your city. Your old friends from school. This book club. Log in again or log in for the first time.

If this election was about one candidate in favor of the American form of government and another in favor of eliminating it… because “only I can fix it” just give me all the power and I will do it – the consequences of this election will be an effort on his part to put this into practice and an effort on the other side to let him know that it won’t be easy.

Over the coming days and weeks, if they actually try to dismantle the U.S. government, they will test what they can do without resistance. This is where the American people come in. We not only work for our country and for our democracy during elections. We work for our country and our democracy against anyone, anywhere and at any time, who seeks to harm it.

On Wednesday morning, millions of Americans realized that even if you worked as hard as you could to try to achieve the electoral outcome you wanted, you didn’t get it. And now there’s a whole new set of things to do. It’s time to save the country.

Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow is the host of the Emmy Award-winning “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on MSNBC. “The Rachel Maddow Show” features Maddow’s take on the biggest news of the day, political and otherwise, including in-depth analysis and stories no other cable news show will cover.

Allison Detzel contributed.