<THREAD> So many Americans feel vulnerable. Whether they feel they're being victimized based on their religious views...or that their jobs are at risk due to undocumented (or even legal) immigrants...or their belief that their world is unraveling based on the supposed...(1/10)

"Deep State" that Fox News/OANN/Newsmax harp about...or their view that the forces of "immorality" (LGBTQ people, "abortionists," feminists, "socialists," "communists") are out to eviscerate their white heteropatriarchal traditions...

These people are raw...(2/10)

They are a malleable group ripe for the taking. Ripe for manipulation. Ripe for controlling.

When you're a wannabe despot (e.g., Trump, Hawley, Cruz, Pompeo), you see this group of aggrieved people and think to yourself, I may not have the military at my disposal,...(3/10)

...but there are enough people in my camp who are angry and malleable and impressionable...and I know their tribal hearts. I look like them...I can relate to them...I can stoke them...I can empower them and they can, in turn, empower me...(4/10)

THIS is where the danger lies. THIS is where the guardrails don't exist. THIS is where the law offers scant solution. Trump knows this. He may be off his rocker but he knows how to manipulate. His political minions are awed by his ability to do it and they seek to...(5/10)

...emulate it...for their own nascent power-grabbing purposes.

What possible guardrails can we put in place? We have impeachment/removal and the 25th Amendment, but these checks only work if those who are under the spell (the Trump voters and their...(6/10)

...congressional representatives and, even more unlikely, his cabinet) allow it.

Why don't sufficient guardrails exist? Because, for too long, we have prided ourselves on being "exceptional." That, somehow, we Americans "rise above" the base instincts of...(7/10)

...power-hungry, selfish, greedy citizens. That we are somehow "one" patriotic people. We are unlike "those" dictatorships across the world. No...it can't happen to us.

But it turns out we are not exceptional. Our arrogance has allowed this to happen...(8/10)

Our arrogance has kept us from enacting official institutional constraints and laws to protect us from our fellow, aggrieved citizens. We simply can't rely on the goodwill and patriotism of our people to preserve the integrity of our nation anymore...(9/10)

The grievance of so many who fear the loss of power is simply too real. We are human after all. In all of our mundane, unexceptional banality. (10/10)