Painful

 In a few days, SNAP benefits will expire. The level of pain this will cause Americans - rural and urban, young and old - is going to be profound. People are going to go hungry. People are going to miss debt payments to pay for food, which will accelerate the usual debt crises among the working poor. 

A "normal" government - even a Republican one - would not want to see Americans suffer. There were competing visions on how to help the poor and the near-poor, with the GOP offering up bullshit "bootstraps" ideas, but at least they cared in the abstract.

Trump is a sadist or at least a narcissist for whom other people's pain is not "understandable." The cuts to USAID have led directly to the deaths of children. We're murdering people in the Caribbean. Those are foreigners. These are Americans, and he's showing the same callous disregard for their well being as he would for people on the other side of the world. Both are bad, but the latter is literally his fucking job. 

The Very Online Doomerism has a point when they look at things like the destruction/desecration of the East Wing of the White House and say that Trump has no intention of leaving office. Democracy is doomed, because he's behaving as if democratic checks on presidential power no longer exist. 

I don't think that's right, because it buys into the same idea that Trump is pushing: that he can create a reality with the stroke of his pen. However, the needless and immediate pain that he is foisting upon the people that he is supposed to be serving (not that he has the slightest idea what "service" means) is pretty strong evidence that he is not planning to have elections ever again.

If he keeps this up, even gerrymandering won't protect him or his acolytes in the House.