Trump didn’t destroy democracy alone. He had help. And it started in the places that were supposed to resist him.

The courts hedged. The universities equivocated. The press platformed and parsed. The military leadership, with few exceptions, complied through silence.

You can track the collapse by watching the language: “normal,” “unprecedented,” “complicated.” Every euphemism was a white flag. Every failure to name what was happening gave him another inch.

And now the second term feels easier. Because the walls that were supposed to hold didn’t. They absorbed him.

The tragedy isn’t that institutions failed. It’s that they wanted to survive more than they wanted to be right.

And they still do.

— Marina Thorne