THREAD: Something I think is getting lost in all this is, our institutions (just barely) did hold back an authoritarian onslaught like this country hasn’t seen in the modern era. When one looks at authoritarians that come to power throughout history, usually they remain in power,

steadily tightening their grip on dissent, freedom of the press, as well as ever escalating violence against minorities indefinitely. For most, the thing that finally removes them, is something violently cataclysmic. That is usually the only thing that wakes a nation from

complacency. But what happened here is ONE branch of our government placed a check on Trump; the Judiciary. The Legislative rolled over. But to varying degrees, even with attempting to pack the court with loyalists, the judiciary held him back from being able to extend his grip.

An example, had the judiciary fallen under his control, Trump *could* have had judges overturn the election. But because even (most) loyalists (see Texas) put deference to the law and the constitution over deference to Trump, and refused to let him run roughshod over them, we

he failed to consolidate power. Without the judiciary surviving his onslaught, he may very well have become a modern dictator à la Putin. He may have been able to say, ‘we’re postponing the election’, and have it challenged in court, and have justices say ‘okay’. He may have been

able to say, ‘throw out 100,000 ballots in PA’ and have had justices say ‘okay’. One branch of government continued to do their duty. And that just may be what saved us from needing a cataclysm to remove this man from power.

And I thought COVID may have been cataclysmic enough to wake up the country. The loss of life, property, businesses, and opportunity is certainly cataclysmic. However, he managed to spin it so that the depth of loss never truly sunk in for a large part of this country.