Let’s separate republicans into those who would help Trump steal an election and those who would choose to instead protect the rules, norms, institutions, and rules of our shared democratic republic.

Then let’s only put those who would help him steal the election in his next administration.

And let’s get together a group of thinkers dedicated to figuring out how to manipulate the constitution to force their will on everyone else, and they can be the think tanks guiding Trump’s next administration.

And let’s rally the billionaires behind Trump so his coffers overflow.

And let’s have Biden’s mind slip and the democrats turn on him but not actually change our ticket, or maybe let’s change our ticket when it is too late to gather momentum behind a candidate.

And let’s graze Trump’s ear with a would-be assassin’s bullet, have him fist bump the sky, and so be both a hero and victim. How can you criticize a victim of and hero within the democratic process for trying to harm democracy? And not enough people believed you before. Why? Are you chicken little? Is the atmosphere too much he-said, she-said? Is the hate of the other side so clear and present that people can’t tell the difference between well-intentioned and essentially-honest and politicians and a man who lives for power and glory, who has no interest in or sympathy for democracy and the universal rule of law, who is interested in getting maintaining and exploiting power much more than he is interested in finding what’s best for everyone, and who doesn’t think the words “true” and “false” are anything except weapons?
Let’s do everything wrong.

And then see if we become Russia.
Another place where the only way to survive is through cynicism and/or silence, where everyone “knows” that politics is just always corrupt and that only fools speak out too loudly against the leadership.
A fun game, this Russian roulette.

How evil will it get?
Will innocent people lose their jobs for disagreeing publicly with Trump-or-MAGA?
Will innocent people lose their savings for speaking out against him?
Their standing in society?
Their access to good schools? To good food? Safe drinking water?
Will dissenters disappear like they do in Russia?
What will really happen if we give this fool the government in these terms?
Why do it to yourself?
Why does a nation shoot itself in the head?
Out of hatred for itself?
Like a mind at war with itself descends into vice, addiction, crime, violence?
Have we learned to hate ourselves so much that we would rather submit to the tyranny of a fool and his lackeys than to accept the imperfection of a workable democracy?
How bad will it get?
Surely best case scenario is real and lasting damage done to the structure of our government.
Why do we fall in line for that?
But it feels like we’ve become a mesmerized little mouse, waiting for the cobra to strike — certain that we can’t win and thus hoping against hope that cobras biting and swallowing you isn’t so bad after all, isn’t at all like we’ve always thought it was.
But no, that’s not it; the truth is we don’t know how much we’re risking by electing Trump.
Certainly, it seems that we are at least signing up to be in a desperate fight to try to get back to some normal baseline of democratic normalcy. How could it be different for a nation that has watched a man try to steal an election and then continue to double-down on the lie that the election was in fact stolen from him, and then not just elect that man, but also elect him now with the people who refused to help him steal the last election replaced by those who fall over themselves parroting his lies about a stolen (or at least somehow “suspect”) election, and with a plan to fill bureaucratic posts with political appointees motivated primarily by a desire to stay on the king’s good side, and … ???
Who is to blame?
How bad will it be?
Is there anything we could do now?