It's been disclosed that the White House will be fumigated before Joe Biden moves in, and one hopes that the chemical agent will be extra-strength. It's unclear whether mere fumigation will be enough to remove the disease that Donald Trump has spawned in the American people's house. Even if one round suffices to rid the White House of COVID-19, it may take additional rounds to eliminate the other toxins that four years of epic corruption have produced in our body politic.

By God's grace, a vaccine will protect us from the coronavirus. But there is no vaccine for the disease of ugly anti-Americanism that has infected large swaths of America, promoted and spread by a president who cares not one whit about the country he purports to lead. The extent of the damage Trump has wrought was illustrated in yet one more new way last week, when the majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives and 18 Republican state attorneys general demanded that the Supreme Court, dominated by Republican appointees, declare the winner of the presidential election — Biden — the loser and declare the loser — Trump — the winner. Put another way, despite the fact that the voters, the states and the courts have all determined that Biden won the election fair and square and there is zero evidence to the contrary, these Republicans demanded that the election results be disregarded and Trump be installed for a second term.

The sad truth about these officials and the millions of Americans who support them is this: They either do not know what democracy is or do not approve of it; they either do not know what America is or reject it.

Indeed, some of them have begun to wonder whether, if America really insists on distinguishing between fact and fiction and insists on honoring elections, they belong elsewhere. Conservative commentator Candace Owens ruminated that if the election results aren't overturned, Trump supporters should simply take a page from the seven pro-slavery states that withdrew from the United States in 1861 and formally pull out of the country. "You actually don't need a bloody war to secede — just an agreement," she noted. Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, Trump ally extraordinaire, said: "I actually think that we're trending toward secession. ... There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs."

After the Supreme Court, including three justices appointed by Trump himself, quickly concluded that his bid to overthrow the election was too meritless to even consider, the head of Texas' Republican Party denounced the court, saying that it was time for the states whose attorneys general filed the frivolous lawsuit to form their own country. "Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the Constitution," he said, true to Trump World's near fetish for rubbish.

Say this for the Kool-Aid-drinking cultists at Jonestown: They may have drunk the poison, but they didn't try to destroy a country. Even lemmings have the common decency to jump off cliffs alone, without dragging others with them. The same cannot be said of those in MAGA Land, who seem to have seceded from America in spirit, if not formally.

"Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes," implored Abraham Lincoln shortly after the secession that triggered the Civil War, "would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?" Those patriots and adults left in the Republican Party would do well to insist to their brethren that this question be asked — and asked again. The future of America may depend on it.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast. To find out more about Jeff Robbins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.