One of the most disorienting things about this election is that American democracy is at stake & it really seems like the bulk of the population -- even the bulk of the politically engaged population -- does not understand the stakes.

A second Trump term would not just be more chaos & bad tweets. Much of the first term has been grinding against institutional barriers that are barely holding; in a second term, they would crumble. The damage would be far greater, far faster, than the first term.

It's not exaggerating to say a second term would put future elections -- I mean having them at all -- in question. Law enforcement would become more explicitly a tool of Trump & his party, at all levels. The few remaining competent/knowledgeable professionals would leave.

Whatever restraints law & precedent put on Trump's deregulatory push would crumble in the face of stacked courts; the modern regulatory state would be completely dismantled. What remains of our relationships w/ other democracies would crumble as we edge closer to fascism.

This is all to say nothing of what Covid will look like completely unrestrained, w/ no federal efforts to slow it. The right-wing violence Trump has been steadily encouraging would increase; political opponents would face real physical danger.

I could go on & on. I realize this thread is pointless -- clueful people already know; those who don't know are beyond clues at this point -- but I've got a lot of nervous energy to burn off.

The cops are *on Trump's side*. It's increasingly explicit. Just imagine four more years of this being encouraged & legally defended. https://twitter.com/DrRJKavanagh/status/1323052645033086977