how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would sell out to completely destroy our Constitutional principles

This is not something done to us by leadership. This is a democracy; we voted for this.

We have another election coming up momentarily. We have the opportunity to put a stop to this. There's good reason to think that the election will not be entirely fair, but there are limits: if people are genuinely against this, they will turn out and say so.

We'll see what happens, but even in the best possible case, tens of millions of people will come out to say "Yes, destroying American science is exactly what I want". This is not a leadership problem. This is an us problem.

> there is simply no coming back from the fact that it's been laid bare how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would sell out to completely destroy our Constitutional principles.

I think you are right. At the same time it’s also an opportunity to get rid of an outdated constitution and have another go, with the benefit of 250 more years of experience. Just don’t fall into complacency: this government was voted in, partly because of a toxic and polarised culture that sees compromise and consensus as weaknesses (and gerrymandering, and the electoral college, and disenfranchisement, fair enough), but also partly because a lot of people did not bother showing up. Republicans have had a grassroots strategy for decades, where they seized everything they could get, even very modest positions. That’s how they progressively ended up redrawing maps and steering politics at the state or county level. You need a long term plan and a good strategy to counter this. So don’t give up (I beg you, from the other side of the Atlantic). Even if things are bad now, they can get better tomorrow.

> it really feels like I'm grieving a death.

Jimmy Carter's funeral a few days before Trump was inaugurated really felt like the funeral for America. The moral gulf between Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump is just so vast. To imagine that the US elected someone with the integrity of Jimmy Carter in 1976... and then elected someone who is as morally bankrupt as Trump is in 2024.

> there is simply no coming back from the fact that it's been laid bare how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would sell out to completely destroy our Constitutional principles.

Indeed. Well said. I doubt we'll ever see the likes of a Carter again in the Whitehouse.

The primary system means that nobody with any principles is left in the Republican Party, unfortunately.

But not all is lost. Many are very eager for the reins of power to come back and for laws to be enforced. Sure, the Trump regime may tell itself that it's immune from tax audits ever again, but that's not legal and as soon as the force of law is back there are many eager attorneys with high principles that will be hired back into the DoJ and enforce the law.

We saw this after Nixon's lawlessness too. Those who abetted Nixon in breaking the law were disbarred.

Prosecutions will come. Trumps's key mistake is thinking that his popularity doesn't matter anymore. It does. It means that people with morals and ethics can legally gain power and legally enforce the law.

If Trump was at 60% popularity, I would be singing a different tune. But at 35% popularity and 60% unfavorable, there is appetite left in our democracy to remain a democracy and to go after the crooks. Even if a good 30% of that unfavorable opinion is just about people's own pocketbooks rather than the principles of law and democracy, that's enough for those who care to actually enforce law.

Be concerned, but be ready tk supppprt those who will correct the course of our ship.

Sometimes you have to die to get back stronger. Ask the chinese.