Democracy, schemocracy. Unelected, anonymous bureaucrats decide that elections don’t matter.

My biggest fear for the Donald Trump era was that his opponents and critics would imitate the worst aspects of his character. So incensed that a man they consider an oaf and a fraud achieved the pinnacle of power while criticizing their cozy arrangements as corrupt, they would begin to break the rules.

And so it came to pass in #TheResistance, a group of various charlatans, self-important Twitter users, and some genuinely frightened Americans who give them attention and money. Even before Election Day, they accused him of questioning the validity of his anticipated electoral defeat. Then they turned around and looked for various ways of annulling or reversing his surprise victory. They accused him of spreading conspiracy theories, and then they filled our information streams with wild rumors predicting that the Republican party would be arrested en masse as a criminal organization, or that the non-existent marshall for the Supreme Court would haul away President Trump in manacles. This spectacle was a distraction from the real work liberals might have undertaken in political opposition. And it acted as a kind of prophylactic that kept them from learning any useful lessons from the 2016 election.