What we’re watching isn’t complicated. The people we elected to protect the Constitution have decided not to. Republicans sold out completely. No surprise there. They went from constitutional conservatives to authoritarian bootlickers the second it became politically convenient. But the Democrats? They’re almost worse because they’re still pretending to care while doing jack shit about it.

You can count the Democrats actually fighting on your fingers (maybe a few toes). The rest are hiding. They issue statements nobody reads, show up on MSNOW to say they’re “concerned,” and apparently think the system will save itself if they just keep filing the right paperwork. It won’t. The system is people, and most of those people have already checked out.

Maybe they’re scared of losing their seats. Maybe they like their committee positions too much. Maybe their donors told them to shut up. Whatever the reason, they’re failing at the one job that actually matters. They swore an oath to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic, and when a domestic enemy showed up, they ran the numbers on their reelection chances and decided to sit this one out.

The silence from both parties is going to define this era. Not Trump’s crimes. Everyone knows about those. The silence. The calculated decision by hundreds of people in power to let it happen because stopping it might cost them something.

History’s going to savage them for this. We should too. Because if we lose what’s left of our democracy, it won’t be because fascism was unstoppable. It’ll be because the people who could have stopped it chose not to.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ They’re going to pretend they didn’t have a choice. They did. They chose themselves.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​