I’m not talking about throwing a tantrum.

It’s likely that in the coming years we’ll be looking at mid-ranking army officers having to decide whether they want to deploy inside the United States and start shooting Americans, or say fuck it and go rogue along with all the men and women underneath them. Judges and lawyers will be deciding whether they’re going to apply obviously insane laws, business as usual, or throw in their hats with the clear facts of justice and cross their fingers that it’ll work out. There are going to be a lot of decisions like that, large and small, by people under a lot of pressure and risk without it really being clear what the right thing to do is.

If the model from the top is, “stick with your existing habits and pretend the other side isn’t planning to slit your throat as soon as you reach the head of the queue, because it would be inappropriate to deviate from how things are supposed to be,” we’re even more fucked than the fucked that we were.

Biden could get on TV from the press briefing room and say, “Trump didn’t do any kind of transition to us in 2020, and he hasn’t complied with any of the laws surrounding how to make a transition now. He’s said he wants me imprisoned and on trial for treason. I don’t see that holding a transition meeting would be productive in any way. I hope I’m wrong, but it sounds like he’s planning to go rogue against the fundamental constitutional principles that underpin our democracy, and I don’t plan on being friendly to him for as long as that’s the plan.”

It’s easy for me to sit back and criticize when I’m not in Biden’s impossible position. But yes I am criticizing anything that normalizes Trump as the constitutional leader of the US and worthy of continuing the respect and traditional role you would normally give to the person in that position.