Ross Douthat is fond of pointing out that Trump missed his Reichstag Fire opportunity to crush liberal democracy when he chose not to take the pandemic seriously. For Ross, this is proof that Trump was too lazy and inept to be the threat to the system that some of us made him out to be. There is some truth to that.
Instead, to continue with the German theme, we got something like the Beer Hall Putsch last week, with Trump splitting time between the Hitler and Ludendorff roles. If the absurdity of it makes you feel better about the future, think again; Hitler and his henchmen learned from their mistakes.