These military/intelligence purges are worrying

Feels like people are way too complacent and keep-calm-and-carry-on mode

It is tempting to think GOP only wants to milk the uncertainty for Georgia runoffs and will rein him in after certified results. But I don’t think they’re as in charge as they think, and many are not really particularly committed to democracy anymore.

The point of FUD is that it opens up new options for the FUD-creator. It’s not that he has a specific plan here. But he’s not wrong in hoping more moving parts equals more options for him.

Keep going back to the thought that given a choice between sacrificing conservatism or democracy, the GOP will sacrifice democracy. Demographics is against them. The electoral system, senate structure, all just buy time. The choice is inevitable. A question of when, not if.

So some in the GOP will no doubt be thinking: why not force it now while we still have power. I’m guessing there’s enough room in the electoral vote process for endless procedural fuckery by willing collaborators.

If I had to guess, a third of GOP is behind him and will lie, cheat and break laws for him. Another third would do everything except break laws. Norms and conventions will be zero protection from them. The final third has some sort of idealistic faith but no spine and will cave.

There is an unexamined assumption that the US state is not capturable this way, but then nobody has really tried to capture it. The conceit that the constitution is divinely perfect makes me suspect the thing is just a pile of exploits just waiting to be hacked.

Another holy cow assumption is that the US military is somehow incorruptible in this department. Again, I don’t share the faith. Nixon tried to court them for a coup and failed but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. He’s managed to corrupt pockets of domestic forces already.

The entire narrative that this is just a childish tantrum that will resolve itself if we just patiently wait it out is built on a house of cards. I’m sure Biden has a much stronger legal team, but the other side has all the levers of incumbency.

It’s depressing that the *best* case explanation here is simply buying more time to steal stuff, run grifts for a few weeks longer, etc. The worst case is an unintentional unraveling. It doesn’t have to be intended and cunningly schemed to go badly. Improv under chaos is enough.

This sort of faith assumes clean fights. The way it would actually work is: he does something sketchy, crowd gathers that one side calls peaceful protests and the other labels terrorism. Cops give way to NG, and then regular military. Ends with tanks on the streets. https://twitter.com/adamdelcano/status/1326366856257687552

The BLM protests over the summer provided a nice dry run for a whole class of unraveling excuses. Throw in a few false flags and the situation gets much more programmable than people think.

Note that a peaceful legitimate transfer of power is *already* no longer an option. They’ve already undermined faith in the process with a third of the population, for a lifetime. Legitimacy isn’t an objective feature of a set of institutions but a high-inertia perception.

We still talk of Florida 2000, and FDR’s shenanigans in the 30s. The living system is not even the nerdy, poorly play-tested tabletop game of 1787. It’s that plus a history of sketchy hacks and patches and service packs. We’re at Windows 95 stage of evolution, headed to Vista.

The highest likelihood outcome is still just a bumpy and frayed but otherwise non-crisis transition. Which people will jump to see as validation that the system just “works” and all thus agonizing was needless worry. Exactly the wrong conclusion to draw.

When near misses increase in frequency gradually, fragility is increasing. The adjacent possible is turning into a dangerous abyss. Just because you walked a tightrope successfully doesn’t mean it’s the same as an ordinary path.

Also don’t forget: near misses aren’t harmless. They just hurt people and things at the margins. If you’re one of the sanguine, secure ones, you won’t be hurt.

Murder is impossible because it is illegal

The United States cannot unravel or slide into autocracy because the constitution forbids it