Rebecca Solnit summarizes the danger:

The crisis isn’t just that we had a coup attempt almost a year ago, but that the Republican party has itself become so venal, so corrupt, so ruthless in its quest for power, that it seems assured that we will see further attempts to overrule any election outcomes they don’t like. Already the kind of election laws they’ve pushed across the country seem aimed at such goals, and voter suppression has long been one of their anti-democratic tactics (it played a substantial role in Trump’s 2016 win, and the genuine illegitimacies of that election – foreign interference, anomalies the recount might have uncovered had the Republicans not stopped it – were appropriated as false claims for 2020).

The Republicans made a devil’s bargain decades ago, when they decided that they would not change course to win the votes of an increasingly nonwhite, increasingly progressive people, but would try to suppress those who would vote against them. That is, they pitted themselves against democracy as participatory government and free and fair elections. The rhetoric of the far right makes it clear they are fearful and know their power will ebb if they cannot command and subvert the laws and elections of this nation, and they are aiming at some form of minority rule.

They have to rig the system in order to win, so they are rigging the system. They are hell bent on arranging things so that a conservative minority gets to rule a less conservative majority.

The crisis isn’t just that we had a coup attempt and have a political party that has gone rogue, but that much of the rest of the nation seems to be normalizing or forgetting or sleepwalking through the crisis. The warnings are getting more urgent.

“They’ve decided to burn it all down with us inside,” said NBC anchor Brian Williams on Thursday, in his parting words as an NBC anchor. Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii stated Sunday: “The road to autocracy is paved with overly chill responses from people who would see this all with great clarity if only it were happening in a faraway place.” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy declared, “This is nation-ending stuff we’re dealing with here and folks better wake up soon. I’ll do my part. Think about what yours is.”

We don’t have much time left.