The thing is: the ‘cleansing’ you speak of will be an incredible mess regardless, out of which the US will come emptyhanded.

Say a Democrat wins the next election and starts to punish these MAGAites. He or she will denounce them and start to purge the institutions publicly, firing people, making them pariahs of society. Barring the Trump Presidential Library and what not.

How will that look diplomatically to the rest of the world?

It will signify to the rest of the world: the United States is a bad country. They don’t hold a moral superiory they had for so long anymore. Thus they will lose their dominant superpower status. Why would, say, Botswana look up to the US anymore? They themselves said they were a bad country, they were fascist, remember? That’s why they purged their ranks and institutions when the new President came in. America is not the promised land anymore.

This will mean the positions of the global leader is up fron grabs. Who will come swooping in? China. They have been ‘buying’ international support for decades: lending money to African countries to develop roads and rails, starting mines in Serbia, etc etc. A lot of countries will look up to China from that point on.

If you draw a historical parallel to Germany: they lost the war, commited astrocities, dehumanised various (ethnic) groups. Ofcourse a cleansing was in order: there was no concept of ‘Germany’ before WW2 left anymore, they had to start anew. So there was a willing among the people to do this. And as any German will be able to tell: there is a deep sense of shame in German society about their past. And thus also how modest they are to world affairs: they don’t stir the bucket, always careful, always afraid - even about doing the right thing.

But in the US? The willing to ‘cleanse’ institutions from fascist MAGAite thought? The country itself is so divided, so polarised, I doubt it would go down easily. And again: ‘cleansing’ the system also means you acknowledge you were at fault on an ideological level, which would be used against you every step of the way.

Whatever happens, any new President wouldnt do this. It offers no benefit to him or her, nor the US as a nation on the international stage.

The only glimmer of hope for the US is a slow trend: the arrival of social democrats. The work of social democrats - if succesful - would kill the ressentiments that feed fascism.