1) "All of our previous failsafes", I'm assuming, refers to the notion of "faithless electors" and the idea that the Electoral College exists to keep madmen like Trump from assuming office. Except it's been in the best interests of the political system to remind us how much we have a representative democracy pretty much since the War of 1812 and you can't assume that the electorate standing up and defying the states that they represented would go all that smoothly either. You get a constitutional crisis either way. I'm not sure how well you remember 2000... that was nearly dicey. I wish it were dicier. But it, too, was a full-blown constitutional crisis and we got through it.

2) is an extremely hand-wavey argument. You're basically saying "no one could know" yet everyone with two eyes and an ACLU card pointed out that Trump, were he to become president, would be a bombastic buffoon with no interest in governance who would be deeply swayed by whatever sycophants he surrounded himself with. The disconnect is none of us thought it would get that far. Now that it is, this is pretty much what you'd expect if you thought Team Trump had zero chance of executing things smoothly. I figured things would be rough, but even I didn't think they'd suck this hard.

Remember: we're in a full-blown holy fuck what happens next moment over an executive order that prohibits immigration from seven countries. We've done that sort of thing all the time. The difference is, it usually happens based on consensus.

Want a glimpse into the mind of Steve Bannon? Here's his hero:

(psych! had to poke a little fun)

No actually it's this guy:

Prolly well before your time, but back in '81, the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike in the middle of the summer. Reagan told them to get back to work in 48 hours or he'd fire 'em. Pandemonium was predicted. Chaos in the streets! Who will land the planes! So they stood firm, and Reagan fired 15,000 of them.

Everything went better than expected.

Air traffic was back up to 80% within a few days, thanks to 2,000 scabs, 3,000 supervisors and about 800 military. The system was effectively all better in a couple years and 15,000 sour-ass union pricks were out of a career. Yay Reagan! Yay strike-breaking! Yay free enterprise!

Thing is, though, Congress passed a law that air traffic controllers couldn't strike back in '55. They upheld that ruling in '71. It was damn dramatic, no doubt, but it was also the legislative, judicial and executive branches acting in concert. Reagan's big power move was literally doing his job (despite the truly scary consequences). His renegade, maverick action was preventing a constitutional crisis.

But Bannon doesn't think that deeply.

So here we are.