It seems to me that the chance of a Trumpist coup is slim, as his support among the forces that might assist him doesn't seem to be there. But I try not to put myself in the position of thinking like those forces, so what do I know.
But that possibility isn't the only reason to be frightened of the US election results. Trump being ousted aside, it's clear from what transpired that the US electorate is a more conservative and more nationalist place than it was four years ago. More than two-thirds of Trump's voters were enthusiastic about him. The extremely high turnout that is supposed to lead to more left-leaning outcomes instead saw Trump accruing as much of the vote as Democrats did, and the Democrats lost seats in the House and failed to take control of the Senate, which they should have coasted to. In California, 65% of the population voted *for* Biden but almost the same number voted *against* protections for casualized workers and against reinstituting affirmative action. Those results deserve underscoring: in the midst of a deep recession, voters decided for regulations that would further immiserate precarious workers, and after a summer of uprisings against police violence and of liberal insistence that racism must be cured, people in US's (allegedly) most liberal state voted overwhelmingly against simple protections for racial minorities. And so on. Reading the results nationwide yield similar conclusions. Even the minimum-wage ballot measures that passed could be read as a renewed economic nationalism rather than any sort of benefit for low-wage workers, especially the results in California. I'm not convinced using election results to read the political present and future necessarily leads to accurate conclusions. Elections are blunt, and the mass revolt against police violence, among other movements, is still going on. But if you want to use the results, they point to some grim possibilities. And that's on top of Biden already openly stating that he will do nothing to change the US system of segmented and private health care in the middle of a pandemic, his insistence to not only do nothing to check police violence but to actually put more cops on the street, etc. Shit's fucked up and bullshit, as the old saying goes.
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