What if Trump Takes Over the Government?

I have now finished reading the latest two latest books in which liberal politicians and journalists continue to push the idea that thanks to Trump and the Big Lie, we are just steps away from the collapse of democracy and its replacement by an autocrat backed up by his MAGA hordes. The liberal politician is Jamie Raskin, Unthinkable — Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy, and the liberal journalists are Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, This Will Not Pass — Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.

Raskin is the member of the Democratic House caucus who helped manage the second Trump impeachment trial and serves on the House Select Committee; Martin and Burns are both reporters for The Failing New York Times.

How close did we come to losing the basic underpinnings of American democracy on January 6th? Damn close — according to both books.

And we are hardly out of the woods, because if the POS/GOP controls the Congress after this November’s vote, or even if they don’t, Trump and his minions are loading up to force another showdown between autocracy and democracy in 2024.

To quote Martin and Burns: “Far from a singularly durable democratic power, the United States looked in some ways more like other countries around the world that had battled strongman-style populism —…