If Trump tries to subvert democracy, will New Jersey - which Lincoln Steffens once described as 'the traitor state' for its embrace of corporate trusts - be implicated for the way the state's media and political elites indulged him? Was our current national misery all presaged by Donald Trump's spectacular collapse in Atlantic City, which is so evident years later in the hulking ruin of the vacant Trump Plaza at the heart of the iconic boardwalk? How did New Jersey - my home state - go from being the 'Crossroads of the American Revolution' to being implicated in our republic's disease-ridden authoritarian dead-end? With just days to go before the general election the nation is amidst another wave of a once-in-a-century pandemic, with a president who has refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power, even if his opponent gets more votes. This article was originally published by InsiderNJ.