Quick take: It can happen here because "it can't happen here"

 Yesterday, the January 6 Committee held more hearings.  Nothing was particularly new nor surprising, with the potential exception of Cheney's claim that Trump committed witness-tampering, which is new, but not even close to surprising.  Rather, the Committee is fleshing out details, and even the witness-tampering allegation will go nowhere.  Merrick Garland will not prosecute it, nor any charge against Trump, himself.  All of which means that in 2024, we go down this road again.  Either Trump wins legitimately, or the GOP steals the election for him.

Why?  How can this happen?  It can happen because of the belief that it cannot happen.  I reference the famous novel by Sinclair Lewis, which has probably sold more copies since Trump than at any point in its history, but consider witness-tampering.  The idea of a president blithely engaging in such a crime is so inconsistent with the American psychological schema that even many who are not dyed-in-the-wool Trumpists cannot fully accept it.  It requires too much of a change in perception of America itself that a president would do that.

Schemas.  There are a lot of problems in psychology, as I regularly write (including last weekend), but much of cognitive psychology holds up to replication, and the concept of a schema is controversial, but sometimes useful.  You have a set of ideas, a lens through which you see the world, and that which is incompatible with your lens is difficult to process, remember or accept.  Schemas are, of course, closely related to notions of cognitive dissonance, and that's the point.  Yet they also simplify the task of processing information.  Unfortunately, that simplification process, by necessity, leaves out real information.  When it does so systematically, you have a problem.

When taken to a deterministic extreme, "it can't happen here," will block out observations that it is happening here.  Hence, the existence of that schema will permit "it" to happen here.

If you don't know what "it" is, go read the damned book.  Maybe I'll start assigning it.