Russia and related investigations have moved the numbers a bit, but the authors of the study are now giving a lot more attention to How Democracies Die, by Dan Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. At some point soon, I'll put up a more detailed post on this because it is getting a lot of attention in the more political science-aware circles of the commentariat, but the short version is this: "ideological collusion." One side, committed to a set of policy goals over everything else, sacrifices the principles of democracy to a demagog because it allows them to get a few policy wins, and democracy slips away.
I have a lot of concerns right now, obviously, if you read this pretentious, little blog, but that isn't quite the main one. No, my primary concern is the diminution of journalism. Ideological collusion can be combatted with facts, presuming the existence of facts and their potential for diffusion. That doesn't work in the current media environment.
Devin Nunes shouldn't have a microphone. He is not just a Trump flunky. He is a stupid Trump flunky. Trump, himself, is an idiot, and one of the dumbest Members of Congress has done a sloppy job putting together cover for him. For all of my "stoner philosopher" jokes, the problem is not that Devin Nunes is guilty of ideological collusion. The problem is that we have a media environment in which people treat Nunes as something other than what he is: a shamelessly incompetent liar who allows Trumpists to keep telling themselves batshit crazy conspiracy theories about how the FBI is some left-wing deep state anti-Trump cabal.
The way to combat someone like Nunes would be with facts. He isn't a collaborator. He's just a flunky, and the way such people should be fought is with journalism.
Too bad journalism is dead.