On Nov. 5, the American experiment in republican government may well come to an end. Over the past two decades, we have been living through a slow-motion communist revolution. Acts of political warfare have become commonplace. The most devastating has been the corruption of our election system.

Having vilified Donald Trump more than any man in American history, the American communists and their allies in the Democratic Party (and the communist world abroad) may well be able to steal the 2024 election. One thing needs to be made clear: If this happens, they will have created an ungovernable country.

We may well be in for the kind of murder, mayhem, and sabotage that the American left has so brazenly embraced.

I have two kinds of colleagues: those who believe it is going to be a wave election and therefore a blowout for President Trump; and those who believe the election can be stolen, given the massive cyber vulnerability of our electronic voting system and the refusal of blue-state governors and secretaries of state to build a transparent, same-day voting system. At this stage of the game, I believe it will be a blowout win for President Trump. But I realize that it may well be stolen for reasons I describe in my American Mind essay “The Diminishing Likelihood of a Fair Election.”

The RealClearPolitics average of polls has Donald Trump either up or tied in the seven swing states. Very few if any undecided voters remain at this point. In these polls, Trump has historically “underperformed,” as the pollsters say. This means that a two-point lead by President Trump is likely a four- or five-point lead. Perhaps more telling are the right track-wrong track polls that ask Americans whether or not the country is headed in the right direction. As of October 29, only 27% of the American people believe the country is on the right track.

This is historically low. Never has an incumbent vice president won an election for president with these numbers. That 27% is obviously the Democratic base: hard-core progressives, communists, abortionists, and transgenderists. Only they could believe the country is on the right track. Simple math would suggest that even much of the traditional Democratic Party base believes the country is not going in ways that are conducive to the happiness and welfare of the American people.

Yes, but we are told that Donald Trump is a racist, sexist beast virtually indistinguishable from Adolf Hitler. How can this man win?

This caricature, however effective it may have been in 2016 and 2020, has lost its effectiveness in 2024. The first Trump administration was not an exercise in the exploitation of blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities. It ushered in economic good times for these groups, who enjoyed greater prosperity and freedom than at any other time in the history of the United States. Their lived experience demonstrated to them that President Trump saw them not as a problem but rather as an integral part of American society and economic life. Charges of racism, ridiculous on their face, have grown meaningless to everyday Americans.

Deep state on defense

Then there is the matter of Kamala Harris.

Harris was an obscure vice president, previously unpopular even among the Democratic Party base. Her public performances are nothing short of bizarre, ranging from frenetic to what can only be described as addled, possibly by drugs or alcohol.

She is not, in short, running a credible campaign. Even within left-wing popular culture, she comes off as little more than a joke. Does anyone believe that if President Biden had dropped out of the race last year and there had been a competitive primary season, Kamala Harris would today be the nominee of the Democratic Party? She would likely have done little better than she did in 2020. The country is quite alive to this fact.

So the question “What if Kamala wins?” must be answered in light of the fact that she should not win by any conventional understanding of polls and public opinion.

But will Harris win? A substantial number of serious people believe that the 2024 election can indeed be stolen. Very little has changed in the seven swing states that decided the 2020 election. If anything remains obvious, it is that there are substantial numbers of deep-state operatives within the Biden administration who know that if President Trump is elected, they will most certainly face investigation — and for those who have committed crimes, prosecution.

Violence is not an option. But a political disintegration of red America from blue America is not impossible.

The accusation that a second Trump administration would more broadly investigate journalists and purveyors of popular broadcast media is of course absurd. To the contrary, Trump would enjoy their collective misery as they watched him Make America Great Again.

But there are people within the intelligence community and the Department of Justice who crossed all manner of lines in their treatment of President Trump and his allies such as Steve Bannon (just released from prison). Likewise, the Secret Service’s failures to protect Trump this summer constitute an astonishing stain upon this republic.

So a large number of powerful people within our government have a vested interest in seeing Trump lose. For all of FBI Director Christopher Wray’s warnings of Russian and Chinese influence operations in the election, one doubts that a finger will be lifted to stop either country, or their surrogates within the drug cartels and dark money groups, from working to alter the results of the election.

A looming legitimacy crisis

Clearly our American oligarchs on Wall Street, in Hollywood, and in Silicon Valley have decided that Kamala Harris is not their cup of tea. Witness the fact that the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and USA Today did not endorse Kamala Harris. But they may not have a say if nation-state actors or dark money groups genuinely want Trump defeated. Our system is not designed to stop determined adversaries of a free and fair election.

So if Kamala Harris does win, it will, as of today, be the result of a stolen election. Under these circumstances, America will become an ungovernable country. Large groups of Americans will believe their vote no longer counts. We have the experience this summer of Venezuela, where it was clear that the opposition party won — so said the Biden administration — only to have the Maduro regime keep hold of power by affirming the fraudulent results and gutting it out publicly against domestic and world opinion. One imagines the Harris campaign learned a lesson from that.

For four years, the Biden-Harris administration has attempted to bolster its shaky legitimacy through the manipulation of economic data and crime statistics. Despite ludicrous claims to the contrary, everyday Americans are not better off — as that 27% “right track” figure clearly shows.

Regardless of who wins, Americans must prepare themselves and their families for what could be great societal dislocation.

Imagine another administration suffering not merely from a lack of but from a crisis in legitimacy. Americans in large numbers will believe they have had their country stolen from them and may choose no longer to participate in the body politic. Given the lack of transparency within our election system, this type of attitude by Americans would be likely to persist even if Harris did win a completely fair election.

This is a worst-case scenario, but certainly possible under the circumstances. Americans can be a very rough lot of people when they want to be. You can rig one election before their eyes, but can you rig two? And can you rig the second one so openly and brazenly and expect that the American people will not push back? How they push back is another matter, but it would serve the interest of America’s enemies to face a nation even more deeply divided than ours already is. Violence is not an option. But a political disintegration of red America from blue America is not impossible.

Elon Musk to the rescue?

I have three key recommendations, most of which rely on Elon Musk, who has the resources and platform to make them a reality.

First, establish a whistleblower program that offers a multimillion-dollar reward for concrete evidence of nation-state-level efforts to tamper with the election, whether through counterfeit mail-in ballots, fraudulent Election Day ballots, overseas ballots, or cyberattacks on our electronic voting system. While electronic voting companies may have good intentions, dismissing the possibility of cyber manipulation is naïve. Any computer-based system carries some potential for exploitation. A large-scale whistleblower program could help uncover the truth if such interference is occurring.

Second, Musk could launch a “Decision Desk 2024” on X, both in Spaces and on the “America” video platform. We shouldn’t leave the announcement of election results solely to the legacy broadcast media, as if they hold some divine authority. Mainstream outlets — from Fox News to MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS — have become propaganda arms of the American deep state. By doing so, they’ve disqualified themselves from an objective role.

Elon Musk can build a team of respected journalists and analysts to perform their own calculations and judgments about who won the election. He and his platform have a greater reach both nationally and internationally than the “mainstream” media. Imagine Elon Musk with Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the like examining the results. Not only would they be better trusted, but the democratization of the results by all the users of X would serve the American people better as well.

Finally, regardless of who wins, Americans must prepare themselves and their families for what could be great societal dislocation. We cannot ignore the potential, in the days and weeks after the election, for violence fueled by American communists, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, pro-Palestinian jihadists, and the 100,000 Chinese Special Forces who may have come over our open borders over the last three and a half years. We may well be in for the kind of murder, mayhem, and sabotage that the American left has so brazenly embraced.

We may also see China, Iran, and Russia take advantage of this situation by making moves on Taiwan, Israel, and Ukraine during America’s interruption of leadership and civil unrest. In other words, Americans must be prepared.

It is my sincere hope that Kamala Harris will concede on election night after she has lost. I pray for the country if she lets the counting continue for days and weeks on end and nefarious behavior ensues. That may yet be in the cards, but the country does not deserve it.

Let us pray to God instead that the decency of the American people prevails and that there can be a peaceful transfer of power after a sufficiently fair election.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.