Accidental and Inevitable

A prediction I feel confident about is that when Trump crosses the line in some horrible way, everyone will recognize that the die was cast long before, and that our failure to nip it in the bud will seem very obvious in retrospect. For instance, if the DOJ were to bring charges against Clinton or her associates, after Trump publicly called for her to be jailed, we will see that there is no way to stop the train. We will be like the sleepwalkers who started World War One. (I have no view on whether that's a useful way to think about WWI, but the idea is clear enough for purposes of the analogy.)

Suddenly we will realize that we are living in a banana republic, and it will be because every time we passed an exit ramp, enough stakeholders found it more advantageous to keep going. There were always higher priorities. There were always practical considerations. The danger of Trump is precisely that his authoritarianism has been fitful and sloppy, so that when it finally, unambiguously rears its head, most people will be taken by surprise. It is all out in the open, but few take it seriously or follow its shambolic twists and turns.

A factor here is that Trump has few powerful enemies. His victims tend to be powerless (e.g. the ~200,000 Salvadorans he is expelling) or odious (Steve Bannon). More on that later.