Should we take comfort in the fact that the president has proved too stupid, lazy, and incompetent to effect the wholesale subversion of democracy? That he has nor actually imprisoned his rivals, executed whistleblowers, declared martial law or deployed mutant sharks with lasers?

What if next time we face not a fake Mussolini, but a real Mussolini? What comfort is there in the fact that GOP officials even now, in the face of his insane, seditious, and paranoid ravings about the election, refuse to speak out and say, “Now you have gone too far?”