Bob Harris at This Modern World:

When I was a kid, I remember reading about how democracies ended. What surprised me was how often it was a peaceful takeover. Fascists took power in many places not through force, but through rigged elections, broken rules, and consolidation of power, all hidden behind flags and God and promises of glory.

Today, the fanatics who have seized the GOP are beginning their attempt to flagrantly defy a half-dozen Senate rules which have existed for generations in order to install federal judges more interested in ideology than legal precedent.

If this “nuclear option” works, they will very likely soon also begin stacking the Supreme Court as they wish… The character of the very laws of our nation itself could soon be under the fundamentalists’ control.

It’s happening right now.