The Legendary Dragon Alephwyr, named Alephwyr, BA

The point of FUD is that it opens up new options for the FUD-creator. It’s not that he has a specific plan here. But he’s not wrong in hoping more moving parts equals more options for him.

Keep going back to the thought that given a choice between sacrificing conservatism or democracy, the GOP will sacrifice democracy. Demographics is against them. The electoral system, senate structure, all just buy time. The choice is inevitable. A question of when, not if.

So some in the GOP will no doubt be thinking: why not force it now while we still have power. I’m guessing there’s enough room in the electoral vote process for endless procedural fuckery by willing collaborators.

If I had to guess, a third of GOP is behind him and will lie, cheat and break laws for him. Another third would do everything except break laws. Norms and conventions will be zero protection from them. The final third has some sort of idealistic faith but no spine and will cave.

There is an unexamined assumption that the US state is not capturable this way, but then nobody has really tried to capture it. The conceit that the constitution is divinely perfect makes me suspect the thing is just a pile of exploits just waiting to be hacked.

Another holy cow assumption is that the US military is somehow incorruptible in this department. Again, I don’t share the faith. Nixon tried to court them for a coup and failed but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. He’s managed to corrupt pockets of domestic forces already.

The entire narrative that this is just a childish tantrum that will resolve itself if we just patiently wait it out is built on a house of cards. I’m sure Biden has a much stronger legal team, but the other side has all the levers of incumbency.

It’s depressing that the *best* case explanation here is simply buying more time to steal stuff, run grifts for a few weeks longer, etc. The worst case is an unintentional unraveling. It doesn’t have to be intended and cunningly schemed to go badly. Improv under chaos is enough.