The funniest thing to me is how people try to discredit folks who warn people about a threat bc the worst predictions offered up don't come true. That's kind of the goal.

In terms of Trump stealing the election, a wide spectrum of people, often people well-versed in politics and history, who frequently had little else in common, all named the threat. Huge swaths of people, in varying ways, rallied people and resources accordingly.

An analysis of the threat was generated in many places over the course of four yrs. Academics & journalists examined it. Activists examined it. Electoral organizers who believed in the threat examined it, and on and on. People strategized. To factor all of that out is dishonest.

It's like comparing weather predictions to disease modeling. If people know about a possible series of events where their own choices will have an immediate, significant impact, that can *impact* the very course of events predicted in a potentially course-shifting way.

Predictions about right-wing overthrow, unless they come from right-wingers, are not "yay we were right, look how accurate we are at predicting things" oriented. The point is to affect the outcome, because you can. A lot of people did a lot of things toward that end.

Trump also sucker-punched himself in the end in ways that would have been silly for any of us to assume in advance. Like, him getting COVID was always possible, given his recklessness, but how many of us guessed it would happen for sure & in that proximity to the election?

The pandemic was a major strike against him, but it also created new opportunities for subversion of the process. The executive branch was sabotaging USPS to hold up votes and encouraging people to go to the polls and intimidate voters. That could have ended in a variety of ways.

I ran through scenarios with people who know their shit a lot better than I do. There were a number of ways this could have gone. There are reasons some of those things didn't happen. Some were attempted. Not all. A lot of things could have cut the other way.

And those things could all happen next time. Some political frameworks rely on your belief in and romanticization of U.S. institutions. They will try to stoke those feelings right now. They know many people long to feel those things. It's a trap. Those institutions got us here.

They want you to believe a system that was hanging by a thread was unbreakable. They need you to believe that, because without your belief, they would be in trouble.

Systems have to believably insist upon themselves. Bc when public belief in the validity and effectiveness of authority falters, people start asking a lot of questions. So elites kind of have to sustain our faith in a plane that's always gonna crash, in order to hold onto power.

Late capitalism is kind of like the car chase in The Undoing, except that the police are on Hugh Grant's side, and he also has bipartisan congressional support.