Let’s be clear: Trump backers have no one but themselves to blame for having foisted a mentally unstable man-child with literally no redeeming qualities upon the country. So determined are they to avoid responsibility for this that they have crafted an elaborate theory assigning culpability for Trump’s impending defeat not upon the candidate but those who warned he would lose. Considering these conservatives’ soft spot for Weimar-like stab-in-the-back myths, a more fitting historical analogy for the confrontation we’re soon to witness amidst the rubble of the GOP is the political state of affairs in postwar Berlin. Like the victorious Allies who worked to rid Germany of National Socialist influence, so too will the GOP need to cleanse itself thoroughly of the cowards, opportunists, and authoritarians who collaborated in the rise of the closest thing this country has ever had to a nationwide fascist movement. What’s needed after Trump loses isn’t, as writers more magnanimous than I have proposed, an amnesty wherein everyone simply forgives and forgets, but something closer to de-Nazification, or the “lustration” of communist officialdom that Central and Eastern European countries carried out after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I’ll always remember where I was when (1) Chris Christie endorsed Trump. Christie was first of the 16 Republican presidential contenders to support the eventual nominee, and his announcement was all the more startling coming from a twice-elected, moderate Republican Governor with solid “establishment” credentials. Christie’s endorsement was a decisive moment, opening the floodgates for other Republican elected officials to back Trump. Almost immediately after joining the Trump Train—and in a sign of things to come for others who would hop on it—Christie began debasing himself, audibly taking orders from Trump on the campaign trail and allegedly fetching him fast food. Despite the serial humiliations, Christie has remained one of Trump’s most servile surrogates, defending the nominee’s five-year history of challenging President Barack Obama’s citizenship with arrant nonsense such as, “It wasn’t like he was talking about it on a regular basis.”