On January 6, around 2:30 in the afternoon, having completed a small mountain of time-sensitive tasks on a very stressed-out workday, I said to myself, Self, we’ve had a very productive day. Let’s take a look at Twitter and see how the certification of the Electoral College is going.

Boy howdy. What I saw instead of live streams from C-SPAN of riveting parliamentary procedure, was alarming to say the very, very least.

What we all took in, in the moment, on that appalling day, was bad. It was unthinkable. But the information and details that have emerged in the week and half since are even worse. The New Yorker published a 12-minute video one of their writers took as he moved among the mob in the Capitol, on the Senate floor, among the offices, vestibules and halls. It’s is 12 minutes of watching the very worst of America, these entitled white men so thoroughly convinced of the righteousness of their idiotic, destructive actions.

The low-hanging fruit here, that in truth, I cannot resist biting, is that these people are fucking morons. One of the few women visible among the throng points out, “Ted Cruz’s opposition to the Arizona [Electoral Vote]” on some paper on a desk. One of her fellow idiots immediately seizes upon the wrong conclusion, “He was gonna sell us out all along!” A second of fury flares up before one of his helmeted compatriots points out that no, no, no, that’s a good thing. A group continues to flip through the paperwork on a desk, snapping pictures of random documents, musing, “There’s got to be something in here we can fucking use against these scumbags.” Having forgotten their momentary, misguided ire at the Senator from Texas, they conclude that Senator Cruz would “want” them to do that, “so I think we’re good,” one of them says. Good for what? Sedition? Stupidity? What exactly? The rabid idiocy is truly astounding to witness.

But while there is definitely a critical mass of folly, shortsightedness, gullibility and stupidity of truly grandiose proportions among this braying herd of wannabe fascists, there are those that are thinking through it all. Perhaps not totally critically, as their incredible theories about a stolen and/or rigged election are so provably false, yet they persist in believing them. But I think there are some among them—and these are the people who really worry me—who probably know that the election was legit, but they don’t care. They are seizing on the moment, the chaos, the cult of personality Trump has whipped up into peaks of near-insanity, to achieve whatever ends they have been cultivating in their man caves and mother’s basements for years. That could be anything from achieving a white ethnostate to accelerating the degradation governmental order to better establish a theocratic survivalist society with every man for himself and no one telling them what they can and can’t do or say.

In the scene in the Senate chamber, there is one man, in tactical gear with a clutch of zip-ties, clearly one of the rioters, yet somehow, one with a smidge of reason, which surfaces when he insists they “be respectful” in the chamber. “We have to be respectful,” he says. Paraphrasing him, he says it’s a PR war, an information operation. This guy scared me more than the moron chanting nonsense in his Helga horns and face paint. More than the doughy incel insurrectionists taking pictures of random paperwork or the asshole putting his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. I’d bet that guy doesn’t give a shit about democracy one way or the other. (Arguably, none of these fucks do; their chants of “Emperor Trump” erase any notion of that.) All he wants is a society where he’s on top and doesn’t have to share. He wants a society where he can be the biggest asshole he wants to be and no one will call him on it. That’s what Trump has given them—that empowerment to be grossly, unapologetically self-interested.

That self-interest comes in a lot of toxic forms. Could be racism. Could be sexism. Could be homophobia. Could be all that and more. The Proud Boys, along with being white supremacists, long to take society back to traditional gender roles, to drive gay people, people of color, immigrants, all out of the country. Or, one would guess by their rhetoric, kill anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their poisonous ideology outright. It all comes down to a lot of white people being murderously bitter about the fact that culture is forcing them to contemplate the idea of sharing their power and privilege with people who, they believe, for one reason or many, do not deserve it. And they are so incensed by this notion they are literally tearing down the seat of our democracy, and whatever tenuous detentes our society has spottily achieved over our history.

In short, they don’t want black people to have their fair share. They don’t want gay people or trans people to exist or be acknowledged in any way. They don’t want immigrants of any kind in their wet dream ethno state. They don’t want anyone but them to have access to the halls of power.

Trump losing the election was a repudiation of them and their dogma by the very people they wish to oppress, nullify or extinguish. One of the main pieces of “evidence” they have for the election being stolen is their utter disbelief that so many people voted for Biden. That crusty old Joe Biden could receive more votes than any candidate before him, is an anathema to the vortex of disinformation and conspiracies in which they exist. Just because Biden had car rallies of a couple hundred instead of superspreader events of thousands. Because Democrats have the fucking sense to watch what their candidate had to say from the safety of their homes, because we do not fly enormous Biden flags off the backs of our vehicles, therefore, in their reality, Biden voters did not exist in such numbers, simply because we were not as loud and visible as they were.

What they cannot possibly conceive of is that millions of us didn’t necessarily vote for Biden—we voted against Trump. They underestimated the millions of Americans who simply could not do another chaotic four years of daily, hourly, what the ever-loving fuck did he do now? Was Biden the most compelling candidate for the left? Nah, not really. Do we all agree he’s a steady adult with the brains and experience to right the ship of state and make the news cycle delightfully boring again someday? Yes. We are done living in this horrifying reality-show version of America. And it comforts me that even though there are 74-fucking-million asshats out there who voted for another four years with that toxically narcissistic, chaotic, destructive clown, there were also 81 million rational adults who made the boring choice to make some attempt to return our country to some kind of “normal.” 81 million people who could not stomach the damage he’s done both within and without our borders for one more day.

It is three days until the inauguration. Our capital is locked down like a nation state. When Biden and Harris are sworn in, the Mall will be empty of all citizens except National Guard troops. The FBI is warning of extremist right-wing violence in a way that makes it feel almost inevitable. This is Trump’s America. This is what that man wrought. And it is exactly as bad as we feared it would be when we stared in shock and dismay at the election returns on November 8, 2016. And the most terrifying thing is that it has three whole days to get worse. Even if doesn’t, those 74 million Trump fucks are still out there, fomenting misinformation, sincerely believing that Democrats traffick children through a website that sells furniture, that the most transparent and open election in decades was rigged, that the coronavirus is a Democratic plan to sicken Republicans and seize power, and so many other things that would be laughable if there weren’t such real and violent consequences.

The Trump administration may be coming to an end. But the Trump era is just beginning. Hang tight, America. Shit’s gonna stay weird for some time to come.