I heartily endorse Rachel Kleinfeld’s article in the Washington Post. I think she describes well the developments in American society that are contributing to my recent despondency. Based on the polls and the prospect of seeing President Trump defeated within sixty days, I should be feeling a cautious kind of elation, but I don’t feel anything but unceasing trepidation. The damage Trump has done is so deep and extensive, that beating him is only the beginning of a very long an unwelcoming road. And there’s also the real prospect that he won’t go quietly or at all.

What’s perhaps most depressing is the no-win choice between holding Trump and the Republicans accountable for their actions, and the consequences of not doing so. Based on Kleinfeld’s scholarly take, we should anticipate a period of political violence in this country unlike anything we’ve seen since the 1960’s and perhaps worse that that. She urges reconciliation and fighting the urge to point fingers in the interest of putting the country back on the path of consensus. I can’t ignore the solidity of her reasoning but it goes against my every instinct and moral value. This is a fight for our future, and it seems like something that must be won rather than a war that needs to be settled now for the sake of peace and security.

If the Democrats win the presidency and control Congress, I believe they should move aggressively to bolster voting rights, create universal vote-by-mail, enact strong campaign finance reform, add Washington DC and Puerto Rico as states, kill the legislative filibuster, and perhaps even add seats to the Supreme Court. They should also put people in jail who have betrayed our country and its laws. The power and resources of Congress should be enhanced so that it can legislate for itself and effectively oversee the federal bureaucracy. The power of the executive should be curtailed so that inspectors general cannot be fired at will and cabinet officers cannot serve for long without Senate confirmation. These things are defensible as ways to protect the voice of the people and restore accountability to government, but they’ll all appear to be hostile acts to the modern Republican Party. They are not well-designed to create consensus or promote political reconciliation.

Why would we reconcile with fascists, and why would fascists reconcile with us?

That’s how I see things, not that I can ignore the implications of what I am saying.

Political violence in democracies often seems spontaneous: an angry mob launching a pogrom, a lone shooter assassinating a president. But in fact, the crisis has usually been building for years, and the risk factors are well known. The United States is now walking the last steps on that path.

Partisans who would never commit violence themselves are transforming from bystanders to apologists, making excuses for the “excesses” of their side while pointing fingers across the aisle.

I have no doubt that if Trump is reelected, the left in this country will not accept it. If there’s a slightest question of the legitimacy of the outcome, this will be triply true. As for the right, they’re already on a violent spree, with “more than 50 drivers hav[ing] plowed into peaceful protesters” in the last 16 weeks. The country is about to combust, and Kleinfeld is issuing a warning:

A 1968 Gallup poll found that 81 percent of the country agreed that “law and order has broken down.” A University of Michigan researcher found in 1971 that nearly one-third of men thought that “police beating students” wasn’t violence at all — and even more felt the same about “police shooting looters.” Throughout the 1970s, America faced nearly 1,500 terrorist attacks, nearly all domestic in origin. The murder rate crept up steadily, nearly doubling from the early 1960s through the late 1970s.

To avoid this fate again, we must stop casting blame. Finger-pointing is seductive; it feels morally necessary and even essential to identifying the “real” cause of the problem. But at this point, partisans can’t agree on the real cause. The only way out is to sidestep worn arguments and begin rebuilding from points of agreement — as Colombia did when millions voted in favor of constitutional change in 1990, even if they couldn’t find common ground on whether left-wing rebels or right-wing paramilitaries were more to blame for the crisis.

I don’t want Americans at each other’s throats committing acts of violence, but I have no points of agreement with Donald Trump or his supporters or his political party. Maybe Joe Biden is the right person for the times. I hope so, because I now I’d be merciless in my approach if I had the responsibility for putting things back on a solid footing.  It could be that Biden can find a middle road that works well enough without insisting on total unconditional surrender.  I hope so, even if I can’t quite picture it in my mind.