It’s been a wild one. Does it matter? Dahlia Lithwick on the stakes: It’s been just a clutch of days since former President Donald Trump and his allies made clear that if he wins reelection, he plans to gut the existing U.S. government and “install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists” to take over senior legal, judicial, defense, regulatory, and domestic policy jobs in the civil service. It’s been under a week since he announced in an interview on Univision that he’d cheerfully “weaponize” the power of the Justice Department to indict his rivals for no other reason than that they were “beating me very badly.” Also less than a week ago, he delivered his chilling Veterans Day promise to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and the American dream.” The news of his plans to carry out mass deportations while rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants and interning them in sprawling detention camps, as well as his hope to cancel U.S. visas—for lawful green-card and student visa holders—who harbor “anti-American” views is also very recent. All of this is to be achieved by installing armies of lawyers, judges, and functionaries who will not erect roadblocks to such projects, as they did when he was president the first time, because they don’t believe in the rule of law as we understand it. As Trump openly described…