FLASHBACK: This comment by Jerry Pournelle explains why people get so heated up about elections now: “We have always known that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. It’s worse now, because capture of government is so much more important than it once was. There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a long time — not during most of your lifetimes, and for much of mine — and it will probably never be true again.”

Of course, it’s even worse when you’ve been consciously weaponizing the government against your enemies and then lose an election: