In September of 2016, Michael Anton, a member of Claremont College’s hothouse for aspiring conservative intellectuals, penned an essay for the school’s Review of Books titled, “The Flight 93 Election.”  It generated quite the buzz. Using the pseudonym “Publius Decius Mus,” Anton argued the probable election of Hillary Clinton constituted such a terrifying threat of permanent, progressive tyranny that American voters should rush the cockpit in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy. Once he was identified, Anton briefly served in the White House, but his presence has since been eclipsed by his Claremont colleague, John Eastman, who conjured up the dubious legal strategy for overturning Trump’s 2020 election loss. Eastman also was serving as a visiting faculty member at the University of Colorado’s Benson Center for Western Civilization Thought and Policy on the Boulder campus.

This generously endowed academic sinecure afforded Eastman the freedom to peddle his fake elector scheme to have then-Vice President Mike Pence reject certified swing state electors in favor of self-appointed impostors. Once his Machiavellian role was exposed, the Benson Center promptly sacked him before Pence surprised everyone by rediscovering his backbone, which had gone missing during the previous four years. Although President Joe Biden has failed to deliver the leftist dictatorship Claremont feared, might another four years turn the trick? MAGA zealots have circled their wagons tightly around the re-election campaign of former President Trump in what is proving a transition from the Flight 93 plan to a “Time to Drink the Kool-Aid” Republican suicide pact.

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Prize-winning Little Rock columnist Gene Lyons argues, “So, how can we call it a proper election when everybody knows that the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, one Donald J. Trump, will refuse to accept defeat?” He also references pundit Adam Serwer writing for The Atlantic, “There is something naïve to assuming that Trump would accept such a verdict from the electorate a second time when he didn’t accept it the first time. Neither a close election nor a sound defeat matters when Trump can induce his supporters to believe any fiction he conjures.” Polling in both Iowa and New Hampshire recently found two-thirds of Republican primary voters profess to believe Joe Biden and Democrats stole the 2020 Presidential election — so craftily that no one has been able to determine how their theft was achieved.

Exactly where does this Republican cohort think its third coronation of Trump as its presidential nominee will take them? I suppose, if they are truly convinced a landslide victory was reversed in 2020, they may think they can get it right in 2024 — returning Trump to the White House. What if they’re wrong?  What if voters reject Trump in 2024, just as they did in 2020? He no longer enjoys the numerous powers he possessed then, even though they were often deployed ineptly, leaving, it seems, only violence as an enforcement tool for securing the result he views as his divinely ordained right. In fact, he frequently promises “bedlam” in the streets. We shouldn’t kid ourselves, the authoritarian phalanx of bootlickers surrounding Trump see the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection as a trial run. They’ll be far better prepared to overturn election results in 2025.

My friend, former U.S. Rep. David Skaggs, has been advancing his hope that the Supreme Court could perceive the very real danger of returning Trump to public office and, consequently, find in favor of Colorado’s decision denying Trump access to our ballot. Though the Colorado Supreme Court was amply justified in finding Trump an insurrectionist, there is vanishingly little chance the federal supremes will spare us the risk of a twice defeated and feral loser.

Trump promises his supporters he will serve as their retribution — for what, you may ask? His vengeance will arrive in the form of a cultural and social backlash. Are you unhappy women have earned growing social power? Do you resent the fact their college degrees are making them your boss wherever you work? Consider the repeal of Roe v. Wade — why not strip women’s access to contraception next time? Not crazy about equal opportunity — why not a total repeal of affirmative action, not just for college admissions? The Supreme Court is already on the case. Do you resent the gerrymandered tyranny of a minority — sorry, the SCOTUS justices say their hands are tied. Are you pissed about immigrants? The hell with asylum, return them to whatever hellholes they crawled out of. Unless, like the Trumpster, you find you have to marry immigrant girls (two times out of three) because American women wouldn’t take the job. Worried about climate or the environment? Tough luck, profits are toxic. Does LGBTQ+ advocacy give you the creeps? Rescind Obergefell.

I guess I’ve let myself get carried away. Retribution promises an eternal battlefield. It will deliver a 24/7 fight for the next four years. Reality-based voters are likely unprepared. There’s considerable irony in the fact Michael Anton’s Flight 93 pseudonym was a Roman general and consul who sacrificed his life to defend the republic. Why strain our brains when we can substitute the opinions of a single, infallible leader? It required centuries to rid Rome of its Caesars.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.