I have no idea how this is going to turn out. I don’t think anybody does yet. But I believe that in the first week of this month, barely a hundred days into the Trump presidency, the nation suffered what chemists call a fundamental change of state. What we are witnessing now is a gradual coup d’etat in progress. Perhaps it wasn’t planned that way from the start, but that is how it has evolved, and that is the situation we now face. It may not even be a conscious, deliberate process. But I have no doubt it is real. Whether it succeeds or not will depend on how well the Constitution, the government and other public institutions of the United States respond to the events now unfolding in Washington.

The nation is equally but deeply divided ideologically and one side has control of all three branches of government, at the local, state and federal levels. The success of this coup will therefore depend primarily on the ability of the Republican Party to recognize this threat for what it is and to respond appropriately. The opposition Democrats will fight, of course, but they are in the minority.
They will not determine the outcome.

Some in the GOP are in solidarity with them. Many others may be so, but are now torn between party and national loyalties, and how they perceive their constituencies feel. Whatever happens will depend primarily on how the Republicans react. It is on their shoulders that the survival of the Republic depends.

We tend to visualize the fall of a government in dramatic terms, fighting in the streets, martial law, arrests and riots, civil strife, perhaps even military conflict. It may not come to that. History has shown us that the change is sometimes gradual, and those living through it are not aware of it until much later. But I think it will eventually become clear what happened this week. And I fear it may be a new nation, one that none of us has ever lived in before,

I lived through Watergate, and I was old enough to understand what was happening. But I never feared the country, as I knew it, was going to be fundamentally different
after it was all over. I was convinced we would come out the other side OK. I don’t feel that way now. I am really scared.

That’s how I see it.