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9 min readNov 29, 2020

Mad kings do the most damage on the way out, too, for just that reason, just like abusers. Better to leave a nation a weakened, ruined thing, that nobody else can have — if you can’t hold onto it anymore yourself.

Trump’s pettiness knows no bounds because he knows that whatever level his coup succeeds on is still a success. If he can withhold funds from Biden, and thwart the transfer of power, he can eke out the illusion that Biden stole the election for a while longer. He can keep his Army of Idiots believers. He can keep the charade going, and that is what tyranny is, always a charade — because a handful of people can only control many, many more than them through the illusion of power.

Think of the post-Trump future. How do you govern a society where 70% of the other side believes the election was stolen from them — and that’s just the beginning? When they won’t take the Covid vaccine, so the nation will never have immunity? When they’ve stopped believing in science, because praying the gay away will save them? When they actively support racial supremacy and think of minorities as hated subhumans? When they turn a blind eye to mass death at the scale of a nuclear bomb, which is what 250,000 dead are?But have you ever given much thought to what you shouldn’t do? In today’s fast-paced dating world, it’s more important to recognize and eliminate undesirable traits than trying to add the desirable ones in your personality.So how is America to be governed, when Trump has legitimised the GOP being the anti-democracy party, not just the opposition of The Democrats? When he’s made it perfectly acceptable, at least within the GOP, to do everything from tampering with electoral college, to lying a thousand times a day, to declaring victory on election night, to refusing to concede and accept the President-Elect? How is America to be governed when the GOP and the Americans behind it, which is still about half the country, have had authoritarianism legitimised by Trump, right down to seizing power by whatever means are available?

How much damage is that? Trump has normalised burning democracy down, in an attempt to retain power. Think of the lunacy of the last few months. Trump declaring victory on election night. The sophisticated coup which went into action on election day. The endless lies, the refusal to concede, the constant inversions and suspensions of reality. The electoral college tampering, the judicial challenges, the intimidation, the calls to put “militias” on “stand by.” All that’s now probably what the GOP’s going to do, all over again, from now to eternity. It’s not a party that’s interested in democracy anymore — and what Trump has done on his way out is to solidify that into a governing approach. That’s not my opinion, by the way — the world’s leading scholars of authoritarian collapse are the ones who say the GOP’s now a party that’s more against democracy than for it.

How do you govern a nation like that — a place that’s been turned into a Land of Idiots? The short answer: not very well, and maybe not at all. That’s the point. Trump will happily take this consolation prize of the coup mostly succeeding. It’s pretty good, from his point of view — which is the abuser’s. Why do abusers beat their significant others — hardest when they finally try to leave — to the point that that’s when they face the greatest risk of the most harm? Because the logic is “if I can’t have you, then nobody will.”

If you don’t understand that, think about this. The entire rest of the world — all of it — is utterly spellbound, aghast, shocked, bewildered, staggered. That Americans are now people who seem to shrug and accept mass death. Whom authoritarians can inflict mass death on, and get away with it. That puts them among history’s most broken, defeated, weakest nations. 250,000 Americans have died. Another tsunami is to be piled atop that. Trump’s golfing. I don’t think the world is wrong.

Then let’s come to the transfer of power. The pundits say that Trump’s coup isn’t succeeding, but they’re wrong. A coup can succeed in three ways, absolutely, mostly, or partially. Absolutely means that power is transferred to the tyrant — Trump’s failed on this score, true. But that’s the lowest possible bar.Trump’s coup has been very, very successful on all these levels. It hasn’t been absolutely successful — as in another Trump term, despite the wishes of American democracy. But it has been successful in a darker way, perhaps a more dangerous one still in the long run. It’s corroded the norms, rules, codes that govern American democracy, especially in its most crucial moments, like the transfer of power. It’s hardened the Army of Idiots in Red States who want to live in something like a theocratic authoritarian supremacist apartheid state, not a democracy, like 1980s South Africa by way of 2000s Iran. It’s shattered whatever tiny remnant the GOP had left as a party of democracy, and made it a fully authoritarian party.Now let me come to what a coup “partially” succeeding means. There’s a certain government official whom by now you might have heard of — the head of the GSA — who’s single-handedly holding up the transfer of power.

All that’s a satisfying enough consolation prize for Trump for a good reason. It sets up next time. Maybe Trump runs again — or maybe one of the little Trumps do. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Trump has left American democracy a wounded animal. A desperate and wretched thing, bleeding from the limbs, in shock. And a wounded animal is all that much easier to kill, the next time around.

Abusers are willing to destroy what they pretend to love, so that he or she is forever their possession. So that their capacities for self-governance and agency and self-determination are ruined, forever, as much as possible. Sound familiar? It should. That’s exactly — exactly — what Trump’s doing to American democracy on his way out. He is trying to abuse it, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. He seems to be doing real violence, with negligence on Covid. He’s brainwashing his Army of Idiots with a cannonade of lies every day — so that they never believe in themselves as citizens of a democracy again. If I can’t have you, America, nobody will, he’s saying. And he might just be succeeding.

Think about how absurd that is — the President-Elect of the United States of America has to crowdfund money for transferring power, hiring people, vetting them, planning, even just moving expenses — because his predecessor won’t turn the funds over to him. Comical? Ludicrous? Surreal? All those and more. It’s like if Schitt’s Creek went to Washington DC.

A wounded animal is easier to kill. Remember that. Trump knows it. That’s what he — and his movement — are thinking. Even as the pundits say that the coup is failing. Sometimes, you lose a battle — but inflict enough damage to win the war.

When was the last time that you thought about that certain someone who has managed to woo you ? Was it a day ago? an hour ago? 5 minutes? 10 seconds? Well, you are not the first — nor the last one to do so.

“Mostly” means that a coup corrodes democracy enough to seriously delegitimise and weaken it. Almost 70% of Republicans believe that the election was stolen — from them. How do you square that with a democracy? Trump has been spreading disinformation and misinformation furiously, lying at light speed, to accomplish just this goal — if he can’t hang on to power, then at least he can corrode democracy enough to leave it a smoking wreck.

Meanwhile, the GOP is mostly going along with all this. It’s true in some limited way that GOP officials have resisted Trump’s electoral college tampering — so far. There is still plenty of time to go. And the media is giving them credit for winning the election — which is effectively giving old white dudes credit for doing something minorities did. So the wool is pulled over even the good Americans’ eyes. They don’t fully understand just how much damage Trump is doing to democracy on his way out.

To find the answers, They did small social research in which they enrolled four students women as in

Written by Deprivab