It’s instructive to look at the cabals that surrounded Hitler and Stalin (and there are plenty of others too; I’m condensing for the sake of brevity). In these cases a relatively small number of inadequate personalities were able to take control of the reins of power due to a mixture of historical chance and total ruthlessness. Once in power everyone pretended it was still “situation normal” and all the elements of the power structure (the bureaucracy, the police, the military, et al) served these small cabals regardless of the nature of their demands and regardless of the harm they were causing their respective nations.

In both cases the leaders were ruthless and cunning (both attributes the orange moron conspicuously lacks, being both spineless and mindless) and although they had no real plan they moved from one tactical advantage to another (just like Putin today) while never seeing (or at least never caring) that these moves fundamentally weakened the long-term viability of the State they’d captured.

Today the various government elements are enabling Trump and his pathetic group of intellectually stunted cronies to undermine the USA, all while telling themselves “we’re just doing our jobs.” Trump won’t remain on the scene for more than another decade — he’s too old, too flabby, to senile — but somewhere out there is a much more self-controlled and cannier person who’s learned the lessons Trump has accidentally taught, and is reading himself to be the USA’s version of Stalin. And when this person comes to power, all the organs of the State will be behind him and support him to the very end. Because all those government folk will be “just doing our jobs.”