Slight correction, the majority of voting age, registered, and willing to vote Americans
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It may become apparent, very quickly, that his only real motivation was to receive a
after which governing will become an annoyance he won’t want to deal with.
What this does to the effectiveness of 
foreign policy is probably exactly what the Kremlin ordered.
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But most fundamentally, the American population has something Hungarians didn’t: advanced warning.
While the form of subtle authoritarianism pioneered in Hungary was novel in 2010, it’s well understood today. Orbán managed to come across as a “normal” democratic leader until it was too late to undo what he had done; Trump is taking office with roughly half the voting public primed to see him as a threat to democracy and resist as such. He can expect major opposition to his most authoritarian plans not only from the elected opposition, but from the federal bureaucracy, lower levels of government, civil society, and the people themselves.
This is the case against despair.
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I’m sure the smarter folks behind his latest rise to power are aware that their base loves tearing their idols down more building them up. 
I have no idea how they expect to keep him out of state prison, but Vance and crew would probably prefer serving a steaming cup of Russian Sleepytime Tea than having him hanging around in an orange jumpsuit.
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This reads like wishful thinking to me.
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Yeah. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now other than take my talent to a better country.
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Do you mean Tromp?
Because I have no idea now how he could possibly go to state prison.
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Musk made a lot of noise, but the Koch network carried on as usual.
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Um, wow, where to start? I don’t think he’ll face much opposition at all from the first three. As for the fourth and fifth (aside from whether civil society actually differs from “the people”), I hope there are massive protests. But on a day like today, I can’t help but remember how massive ones were easy for Shrub to ignore as he geared up to decimate Iraq, and I also can’t help but fear that Tromp will, instead, deploy forces to brutalize protesters who aren’t Proud Boys and so on. Hell, he’ll probably hire white supremacist gangs to beat up protesters.
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People definitely need to be smart about protests. There are a lot of “actions” which are just “look at me, I’m taking a stand!” that aren’t actually effective, and will be increasingly dangerous as the iron grip tightens. I was in a couple of those, saw a cop draw his sidearm in my general direction on some kid who ran by and knocked off his hat, and then fumbled it and it slid across the pavement. Also witnessed a trio of cops beating up a trans woman who weighed about 95 pounds because she was yelling something they didn’t like. I decided I had enough of that. And that was without the Proud Boys or other fash counterprotestors getting involved directly.
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Yeah I feel like a lot of people have this idea that our institutions are more durable than they really are just because they’ve endured two and a half centuries so far. But just because something has endured a long time doesn’t mean it isn’t fragile.
A glass goblet can survive in pristine condition for centuries as long as it’s carefully protected through the generations, but it only takes one careless or malicious act to shatter it forever.
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It’s better and worse than that. America’s institutions did not really survive that long, they basically shattered in the 1860s and had to be rebuilt from there…and it was awful, but then they were rebuilt. History doesn’t end on a win or a loss, the fight gets easier or harder.
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He doesn’t have to hire them, he just has to point and say ‘go.’
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I can see the city or state of NY putting up some kind of administrative obstacles. But I can also see Trump sending in the army to overcome these obstacles.
I can imagine fighting and destruction in the streets of places like NY and LA, and people in Montana will be laughing their asses off at it.
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He doesn’t even have to say go, they’re going to assume.
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Yeah, true enough. He did after all tell them to “stand back and stand by.”
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Something to think about:
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Where the armed forces come down on a political decision is, IMHO, usually the key factor for the outcome of a coup. I always think back to 
and Tiananmin Square in 1989 when it looked, if just for a moment, like the army was going to hesitate to attack its own people.
I’ve only known a couple of colonels in the military, and I doubt they would carry out that order.
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