TL;DR: This country is facing an approaching, probably imminent nationwide insurrection of white nationalists. It will be beat back after an initial assault and will retreat to a long-term terrorist insurgency. The people of the United States don’t seem to realize the gravity and are not ready to face it. Face it we will, I fear sooner rather than later.
I’ve never wanted to be wrong about anything more than now.
For at least thirty years the entire world has seen the steady ominous rise of an underground movement of reactionary authoritarianism. Experts know about this and have been warning us (many books have been published about it) but it's never gotten the attention of the public for many reasons that we can discuss at another time.
Authoritarianism is part of the human condition. For reasons fairly well understood by social scientists a certain percentage of the population are authoritarian-minded. They believe in social, racial, and religious hierarchies and divide the world into good and evil, with the in-group as good and everyone else as evil. They worship strength and loathe weakness. They only pay lip service to egalitarian ideas and democracy. Most of them have nothing but contempt for those forms of weakness. They long for a strongman to lead them.
In the United States in 2014 the emergence of Donald Trump into the political arena was love at first sight for the seething, fearful, enraged authoritarians of America. After years in the wilderness here at last was The One. The Man. The hero who had the strength, the power, the ruthlessness to sweep aside the simpering weaklings and impose their collective will on this country; keeping the external trappings of a constitutional republic that would disguise a nation ruled by a unchallenged strongman as a white Christian homeland.
For four years he has ruled, but not been able to force that transition to strongman rule. Because "The One" is actually a narcissistic sociopath pretending to be a true strongman. His act was good enough to fool our white nationalist authoritarians because what he pretended to be was what they so desperately longed for.
As it turned out the traditions and institutions of the United States proved too strong for his feckless, inconsistent efforts to undermine them, although much damage has been done.
Now we are at the end. An unhinged narcissist is at the end of his rope. In a last desperate bid to "win" he called on his faithful cult to save him, and some of the very worst of them answered that call. The result was January 6th, 2021, a day that will live in infamy.
I've seen many posts, thoughts, articles and podcasts about the aftermath, the cleanup once the sociopath is gone.
I'm here to tell you now that the attack on the Capitol was not the end of this crisis. It was likely the beginning.
The millions - millions - of authoritarians who gave their souls to Donald J. Trump are not going to stand down. They are not going to calm down. They are desperate and enraged. All you have to do to realize this fact is watch the chilling video of the assaults that took place outside and inside the Capitol on the 6th. Roaming bands of purposeful thugs searching for the Vice President to literally kill him, hang him, because he had betrayed their leader and their cause. They would have likely killed any prominent politician they found. They had the means and the will to do so.
Plans are drawn already to assault the Capitol again on January 20th, but this time fully armed and with deadly intent. These plans also include assaults on all state capitals. Whether this will happen is an open question --but the serious intent is there. I for one will never take these threats lightly ever again. They mean what they say.
We face in this country right now a long-term, vicious, and ruthless insurgency that will inflict all the terror they can on this nation in order to destabilize it to the point where in the chaos they can take permanent power. I am not making this up. It is a well-worn page in the authoritarian handbook. This has happened more times than I have fingers to count in the 20th century alone.
It will happen regardless of the status of Donald Trump. It will happen even if he calls them off. If he does at this point they will simply turn on him, and there are already signs this might be happening after his "surrender" video repudiating the attack and condemning the attackers -- them, his cult.
This authoritarian insurgency doesn't have the brains or the physical power to actually succeed in overthrowing the United States of America. But they do have the power and will to cause some measure of death and destruction for an indefinite and unpredictable period of time.
This is no joke. This is not a time to let partisan politics divide the decent people in this country of both parties. These fascists (there is no other word for them) are not R or D. They are equal-opportunity terrorists. They will kill you regardless of your party if you get in their way.
In the end this will pass. These thugs will be killed or jailed and their movement suppressed. But it will never be destroyed. They will always be a threat. We must always remain vigilant.