Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

The presidential election of 2024 is in fact the unfolding of the rolling coup d’état that began in earnest four years ago. To imagine otherwise is to normalize what is patently abnormal and thus to falsify the crisis. It is to comprehend our politics as much of the political media does, clinging to shattered institutional norms, willfully blind to what is obviously the real story, always caught unawares when worse comes to worst. The superficial quadrennial trappings are here, of course, the primaries, the conventions, and the attendant hoopla. These reassuring atmospherics affirm the conventional wisdom of our pundits and pollsters that, despite the high-intensity fervor, this is at bottom a good old contest between rival political parties with different policies, different visions for America, campaigning to win two hundred and seventy electoral votes. In fact, this is no more an ordinary election than the election of 1860 was. Like then, Americans are confronted with a continuing power grab by a boundlessly ambitious and relentless force that repudiates the essentials of democratic politics (even when it avails itself of democratic language) and the rule of law. Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters have made it clear that they will not accept defeat in November any more than they did when Trump lost four years ago. They believe that Trump is the one true legitimate president, that those who refuse to accept this fundamental fact are the true deniers, and that any result other than Trump’s restoration would be a thwarting of history’s purpose and a diabolical act of treason. The authoritarian imperative has moved beyond Trumpian narcissism and the cultish MAGA fringe to become an article of faith from top to bottom inside the utterly transformed Republican Party, which Trump totally commands. So has the corollary (not stated as much