Before President-elect Donald Trump eked out a victory on election night last week, the greatest source of liberal apprehension was that he would reject the legitimacy of his defeat, inviting his most reactionary supporters to seek revenge in various unsettling ways.

Instead, Trump described the presidential election as “open and successful,” presumably a moment for his supporters to bask in happily. Victory, however, has not quenched the thirst for revenge.

It is one thing for the losers of an election to lash out in anger as they cycle through the stages of grief. It is another thing altogether for the winners to do so. And yet the post-election landscape has been defined by a frightening outburst of retribution and calls for reprisals against Trump’s political enemies.

The way the Trump entourage and his rank and file supporters have responded to their triumph mirror each other perfectly. The tone of his pre-presidency was set during his victory speech, which was itself unusually gracious for a man of Trump’s narcissism and disdain, but was delivered to supporters beseeching him to jail Hillary Clinton and shoot President Barack Obama—interruptions which did not faze him at all.

Trump has been similarly unfazed by a national outpouring of racial hatred and violence directed at African Americans, Latinos, and Muslims, frequently done in his name. What has fazed Trump are the imagined sins and crimes of those who have been most clear-eyed about the dangers of his presidency. The same Republican officials who acquiesced to Trump during the campaign trail are now shrinking from any sense of responsibility to promote pluralism or obligation to reject threats to the constitution. The descent between where we are today and unchecked authoritarianism is long, but we are sliding down it very fast.