I remember stories from Trump’s first term about how his handlers had to babysit him and do things like hide his rough drafts of orders planning to go to war (he’d calm down and forget about them by the next day). It reminds me of the (hopefully apocryphal) story of how Nixon had to be lead to bed when he got roaring drunk and started threatening to nuke North Korea.

The staffers also preserved the documents he (illegally) shredded as a matter of habit, so scholars will hopefully be able to piece together what was going on in that hot mess someday.

None of those handlers are there this term. Trump spent the four years since his first term campaigning and gathering a crew of sycophantic parasites to do his bidding, and we have no view into what’s going on behind closed doors. The “checks and balances” every American was taught about as a child seem to be doing nothing, with him flagrantly ignoring them without reprisal.

I hope the US gets out of this as an intact democracy and without alienating every single ally in existence. People here don’t seem to realize how bad an antagonistic America would be - they have the military and logistics to take on half the world without nukes, and Trump has been very open (almost giddy) about his willingness to use those.

And a civil war would be worse since the government is wholly controlled by what most would should consider the bad guys and the military is trained to follow the chain of command, and Trump is openly purging top officials and replacing them with loyalists.

Ugh, sorry for the rant. The last decade has been exhausting.