What the likes of Steve Schmidt never acknowledge is their own complicity.

[Garrett78]

14. In fact, they've been actively working for ages to undermine democracy.

As I wrote somewhat recently:

The AG actively trying to undermine the FBI and intelligence agencies is surreal. But it follows a pattern. The Republican Party (including Never Trumpers) has been trying for decades, with quite a bit of success, to undermine trust in government. Run up debt so as to cut entitlements, have corporations write legislation, deregulate industry, install heads of departments whose mission it is to erode those very departments, deny the stark reality of racial injustice, etc.

Since the likes of Putin also wish to undermine democratic institutions for the purpose of self-enrichment, Putin and Republicans make for interesting bedfellows.

This is a war of ideologies: we vs. me. "It takes a village" vs. "every person for themselves" (cheating permitted...nay, encouraged). The likes of Barr, Bannon, Mulvaney, Pompeo et al. are especially dangerous--they're white nationalists, isolationists and despise secularization.

They've seen the writing on the wall (social progression, increased secularism, changing demographics, etc.), so their tactics have become increasingly extreme in recent years (intense voter suppression and gerrymandering, full-throated attacks on science and public education, persistent attacks on the "liberal media" to help shift the Overton Window, stealing a Supreme Court seat and packing the judiciary with right wing ideologues, aligning with dictators who share the goal of undermining democracy for personal enrichment, replacing the dog whistle with a bullhorn, and so on). They take comfort, though, in a tyranny of the minority system which, paradoxically, makes major structural reform nearly impossible to bring about for the very reasons why such reform is so desperately needed.

If this current cast of characters is still in power after 1/20/21, the damage wrought may be irreparable.

I wonder how many people (not on DU but nationally) view Trump as an anomaly or someone who just happened in a vacuum and how many people recognize that Trump is a symptom of a much larger problem (to which the GOP as a whole has long been contributing). I certainly come down on the side of the latter, and at the same time recognize how crucial it is that we remove Trump from office as soon as possible, as he's an especially diseased carrier pigeon for the ideologues who are taking advantage of his narcissistic appeal to the tens of millions of racists, sexists and xenophobes. I also wonder if seeing the big picture (or being helped to see it) would dissuade even a fraction of Trump's soft support (the portion that approves of him but not strongly) from continuing to support him. Are 100% of his supporters really okay with the world Republicans are seeking to realize? If so, they'll regret it.