Quote for the day

In their [QAnon] insane mythology Trump is the god, supposedly battling against a vast “deep state” conspiracy of Satan worshippers, engaged in child sex trafficking and even baby eating. His election defeat, accompanied by his flagrant incitements, will send these already deranged people way over the edge. With a very different sort of March on Washington.

This is our coming Armageddon. Ever since the Civil War the idea of an American political settlement through violence would have seemed inconceivable. No longer. What would this do to our democratic way of life? A democratic culture is one in which issues are decided by debate, with acceptance of pluralism, respecting the legitimate role of people who are different and have divergent opinions. Even accepting political defeat. With rule of law — not guns.

That is something worth fighting for. If attacked by people with guns, it must be defended. One might expect law enforcement and the military to do so. I doubt the military would be party to any sort of coup. But the traitor-in-chief being commander-in-chief is a wild card. We’ve already had a foretaste with his deployment of goon squads in Portland. And Trump is the kind of person who, if he can’t get his way, will try to burn the place down.

Rational Optimist

Since I speculated soon after Trump assumed office that he would never leave office gracefully, and it’s easy to imagine his yahoo cultists rallying to an attempted putsch, it gladdens me to know that others are alert to the danger.

Famously, in the final days of the Nixon administration, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger acted to undermine Nixon’s ability to mobilize troops to defend his increasing-tenuous grip on office. Are there similarly-courageous actors in contemporary D.C.? Not on the civilian side; there’s nobody there but Trump lackeys. We can probably count on the professional military yet, but it’s a national disgrace that our defenses are so thin.

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