Had a convo over Thanksgiving with some friends, wherein they were worried about Trump winning the election and spelling “the end of democracy.” I asked them why they were so afraid of Trump after nothing really happened the first time he was president.

They said he’s the kind of leader who could get fanatics to keep him in power and do all kinds of dangerous things. I said that was possible but hypothetical. Right now the current regime (whoever’s running it) is doing dangerous things, and we’re lucky Russia won the war so it didn’t get desperate. They didn’t really have an answer for why things are worse and more dangerous now than when Trump was president or for why (other than his style) he was more likely to do something crazy.

Even so, they’re in the position of wanting to stop Trump from getting voted in because of the hypothetical risk it poses to democracy.

Put differently, they want to actually and concretely subvert the will of the people, i.e., the democratic process, to avert a hypothetical situation wherein the democratically elected president decides to subvert the democratic process. Let’s kill the democracy ahead of time on the off chance Trump decides to kill it after being democratically elected. It’s very strange.