If you haven't been paying attention — God, I envy you — then the past week has been a particularly grim news cycle. Publications such as the Economist and the New York Times outlined the meticulous efforts of Trump supporters to prepare for his second administration, a careful program of hobbling the government and concentrating power in Donald Trump's hands.
You can read the Economist piece, "The meticulous, ruthless preparations for a second Trump term," here. And the NYT here (and stop whining about paywalls. Go the 7-Eleven and try to walk out with a can of Coke. Pay for stuff).
The bad news is that the 2024 election is scarier than 2016 or 2020. Nobody expected Trump to win in 2016, least of all Trump, and he wasn't prepared to dismantle the institutional guardrails that kept him from going full-on totalitarian. Next time he will be. He had trouble attracting talent to help him, as many Republican operatives took a wait-and-see approach. Not this time — power not only corrupts, it attracts, and one of the most sickening aspects of the Trump experience is realizing just how many people are fine with him, if it means they get a slice of pie. They're busy preparing recipes to take full advantage of the next opportunity.
The good news is the situation is clear as day. Trump is a fascist. He is opposed to democracy because a majority of Americans are against him and the narrow religious bigotry he represents. So he must try to win by gaming the system — claiming a corrupt election, leading a coup against the Capitol, and dismantling the "Deep State" of institutional knowledge and democratic standards. Anyone who supports him is, knowingly or not, betraying the core values of American life. Period.