The election was not stolen. He won. And it has become clear—in the days since the inauguration—that we still don’t know how to deal with a democratically elected president who has no commitment to honoring and protecting the mechanisms of democracy.

      It is also clear that this time he came prepared.

      Might the courts rein him in? Perhaps they might have if the legal proceedings against him had started earlier in the interregnum between his terms. But it seems too late for that.

      And, yes, he and his minions and advisors will overreach, press their luck, screw up. But there now is a reasonable chance that our much vaunted, if a bit sluggish, system of government will be altered—in the direction of a more powerful executive, in a less deliberative, less democratic direction.

      For now, in its early stages, this seems one of the greatest threats American democracy has faced since the Civil War, larger even than that represented by Joe McCarthy (from whom Donald Trump, significantly enough, had only “one degree of separation”: McCarthy’s counsel, become Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn).

      Might it even lead to a second secession?

      Could this country, without civil war, become two countries—as occasionally proposed during the election—with its edges seceding from its middle?  Would Gavin Newson be our Jefferson Davis—or our George Washington?

      In the meantime, yes, we likely will be called upon to resist. We can and should organize and contribute to whatever legal defense funds are necessary. We must help immigrants. We must help, when necessary, each other. But the small things we will and must do remain small. And the threats are large, existential, and they seem to be coming from many directions at once.

      Will what must happen involve a million angry champions of democracy gathering on the Washington Mall? Might it involve sit-ins? Something even more energetic?

      Or are we just reduced to rooting against the United States for the next four years—to hoping for something for which we don’t want to be hoping: that the American economy crashes under the weight of vengeance tariffs and xenophobia, perhaps bringing the world economy down with it? 

      If the incompetence of the Trumpists becomes undeniable, will we then be able—two years from now—to get rid of some of them? Is it possible—four years from now—that he will, if he lives, go quietly?

      And, if they were to get lucky and the Biden prosperity were to continue for four more years, would it then be President JD Vance? Or President Stephen Miller? How will they—he, if he lives—handle the succession? Will it be by election or decree?

      Or am I—by nature an optimist—just being thrown by their surprisingly somewhat well-prepared first-two-weeks blitzkrieg.