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…than any other person, trend, social movement, or historical event other than the Civil War and the Great Depression. (And I’m not even sure the Great Depression is ahead.)

He has irrevocably eviscerated our national standing, alliance network, and soft power, squandering the carefully hoarded influence and relationships of 80 years. And he has pursued this goal not as a trade off to achieve some other desirable outcome, but as an end in itself. There has been no compensating benefit to offset the staggering damage his administration has inflicted to national power.

Domestically, he has done grave and perhaps mortal damage to the basic democratic constitutional principles the government is founded on. He has run roughshod over the entire bill of rights and the separation of powers. He has done massive damage to the basic capacity of the federal government to function effectively and has largely eliminated the basic principle of the non-partisan civil service that serves the country rather than the whims of an autocrat. He has stoked division and dissent relentlessly, destroying the basic civic fabric of the nation.

None of this is likely reversible on a timeline shorter than decades. And there is still huge downside risk as he marshalls the authoritarian power the Carl Schmitt acolytes on the Supreme Court have gifted him, and the self-interested supine Republican Congress has ceded to him, to undermine and eliminate democracy itself to ensure his continued rule through his continuing decline into advanced senility and dementia.