Trump’s most consistent and serious commitment is to the destruction of free expression. (Note that his response to the bombings in New York and New Jersey was to call for a rollback of the free press, on the grounds that “magazines” are somehow instructing the bombers.) In other areas, his program is torture, hostage taking, murder of innocent civilians, treaty repudiation, militarized borders, official embrace of Christianity, exclusion and surveillance of non-favored religious groups, an end to birthright citizenship, racial and religious profiling, violent and unrestrained law enforcement, and mass roundups and deportation.

No other serious political program in American history has been as openly contemptuous of the nation’s founding document, of its Bill of Rights, and of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection.

Can those values survive four years of Trump? ‏ There’s not much reason to think that this own party will oppose anything he wants—the GOP leaders have already surrendered without a whimper. I suspect that he will find supporters within the bureaucracy, the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, and the American military. And Stanley Milgram’s “obedience to authority” experiment suggests that others, who know better, will simply stand aside as the toadies take over.