5/5 The window for action is short. Once loyalty purges are complete, coordinated resistance becomes nearly impossible. Democracy rarely dies through violence - it dies through the quiet compliance of people who know better but feel helpless to resist.

4/5 History shows autocracy fails when institutions refuse to cooperate EN MASSE. Individual resistance gets crushed. But when judges, bureaucrats, business leaders and media act together, the authoritarian machinery can't function.

3/5 Most crucial: Breaking the fear. When Musk's team plugged into Treasury systems - where were the IT staff's refusals? When loyal bureaucrats are purged - where are the mass resignations? Fear of individual consequences prevents collective action.

2/5 Real resistance would need: Mass civil service refusal to implement illegal orders, coordinated state-level opposition to federal overreach, business leaders willing to accept losses over compliance, and media unity in calling out authoritarianism.

5/5 As America teeters toward autocracy, we face the potential end of the post-WW2 liberal order. The question isn't whether institutions will hold - they're already failing. It's whether we can create new safeguards against systematic dismantling from within.

4/5 Trump's "Golden Age" isn't about making America great - it's about returning to pre-modern governance where loyalty trumps law, uncertainty breeds compliance, and the state serves a privileged few. It follows a tested blueprint: Hungary's Orbán showed how democracy dies quietly.

3/5 The goal isn't just eroding norms - it's converting the state into a tool for its own destruction. When career officials who'd resist illegal orders are replaced by loyalists, when fear paralyzes opposition, when business elites rush to appease - democracy's defenses fail.

2/5 The playbook is clear: Mass purge of civil servants via Project 2025, loyalty tests for remaining officials, government power weaponized to spread fear through deportation threats & investigations, while tech billionaires & media moguls suddenly enable the transformation.