Thread by @JoshuaCypess

1/ The GOP via their leaders Trump (ym'sh) & Barr, have openly declared war against blue states and especially cities. The evidence is overwhelming, but the disguised paramilitary forces in DC & Portland should be enough to show any reasonable person they're outright fascists

2/ The GOP gaslights the country and the media in acting as if their naked, anti-Constitutional and illiberal power grabs are normal, but we must resist.

(See yesterday's thread for why most of the media plays along with the propaganda)

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1308096930132774912

3/ The attacks on the cities as unrepresentative of America is as old as the country, from Jefferson to Jackson to the Confederacy to my favorite oddball example: Prohibition.

I won't go deeper into it now, but Proh. remains a Rosetta stone for understanding the US paradox

4/ Slavery is a better example, naturally, but it's also a rational system. Grotesquely evil, but rational: free labor plus a physical symbol of [Insert Minority Ruling Population Here] Supremacy

Prohibition doesn't fit that self-interested logic.

5/ We're a "free country" yet somehow 100 yrs ago we made it illegal to drink alcohol? The wackos now who refuse masks, who demand the right to functionally marry their assault rifles, live in a country that banned booze (and is trying to ban health care, esp. abortions)

6/ Prohibition was a religious crusade, it was a conspiracy-thinking attempt to remove the real social ill of addiction, a women's rights issue (b/c alcoholism frequently led to spouse abuse), but it was driven by anti-immigrant (anti-Catholic) animus & hated of cities

7/ So the hatred of cities runs through the evil side of American history. Those who wanted to own people hated the concept of cosmopolitan places filled with many cultures and equality among different people. They wanted to control bodies & ideas

8/ American religious movements - and the US is distinct among rich nations in the % of religious population - were often tied to the desire to control the Other, to maintain a hierarchy based in gender, religion and the made-up category of race.

9/ We can divide our history and current divide into the groups who demand a nation of slaves versus a nation of immigrants.

Immigrants are about new ideas, new cultures, new people. Who become citizens through their internalized acceptance of the Idea of America

10/ America is special because it's a nation based on ideas and ideals exemplified through the Constitution. Every place on Earth (and beyond) could be a state b/c my country is based on accepting the ideals of a democratic republic.

11/ But that notion is anathema to the Confederacy, to the RedHats. They are blood & soil people. They are white supremacists. They are "I've got mine, so tough luck to you" people.

They hate cities. Always have. And they've declared open war right now.

12/ War? Yes. The Kenosha murderer is endorsed by the GOP and the president. The paramilitaries being sent in to cities are unaccountable soldiers. And now the "anarchy zones"

See the write up by Prof. @HC_Richardson
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-21…

13/ HCR writes: "The U.S. Conference of Mayors wrote to Trump on September 7 to ask him to rescind his [anarchy] memorandum, noting that 'attacks on America’s cities are attacks on America itself. America’s cities represent 86% of the Nation’s population and 91% of real [GDP]'"

14/ Look at those numbers and you can see the veracity of the claim that cities are basically more representative of Real America, if anything because it's most of America!

Yet the GOP is trying to create a minority rule where the scrubland of Wyoming has more power than NYC

15/ This is why the GOP and their lackeys in the MSM decry the idea that the Democrats will add DC as a state or amend the Constitution to make the Senate represent the country. The GOP demands minority rule.

The GOP hates cities b/c cities are the America they reject.

16/ War is inevitable when politics breaks down. When all peaceful avenues are either suppressed or rejected ideologically.

The first Civil War started b/c the election of Lincoln showed the Enslavers that they couldn't win through politics, so they revolted.

17/ 2020 is the culmination of the GOP war against Blue America. We have copious evidence that they let the cities get COVID b/c those were their enemies.

This genocidal level violence against their fellow citizens, abetted by Congressional GOP. It's a civil war.

18/ When the Democrats say that we will need to amend the Constitution - to fix the Senate, fix the Electoral College - and add states, we're doing this to avoid both the overt illegitimacy of minority rule (an anathema in a republic) or defensive violence

19/ The RedHat GOP seems to believe that war is their only recourse because it's clear the law and the philosophy of America is against them.

So anyone who rejects expanding SCOTUS or modifying the Senate representation is - knowingly or not - demanding anti-Democracy or war.

20/ It's patently undemocratic to enshrine minority rule. Claims of "the constitution says it, so it's immediately right" are laughable, esp. in the face of 3/5ths, Prohibition, or any of the other broken ideas of the past.

The RedHats know this, I'm sure. They just don't care

21/ For our republic to survive, we need to defeat the RedHats in Nov. and change the laws, SCOTUS & Constitution to reflect 21st Century reality of cities and population distribution.

The GOP makes that need clearer every day in their desperate violence against their 'enemies'

22/ I get frustrated when I see resistance to the idea that the RedHat GOP has lost every shred of credibility to make arguments in the name of the Constitution.

Then again, I see their suicide cult send their pawns to die in rallies & refuse masks

23/ The GOP embodies bad-faith arguments. Look: they know what America is supposed to be b/c they use the same terms I do, yet they do the opposite

#Literalists are fooled by "say one thing do the opposite" tactics b/c they see only the surface & are blind to the contradictions

24/ This is why, if we prevail in Nov., we need to have public Nuremberg style hearings to expose the lies and behavior of the RedHats

That will help demonstrate the need for total reform of the Constitution to avoid permanent minority rule

25/ Exposure through hearings are the linchpin to changing public opinion on the need to fix America

I know republicans, I know many will oppose my entire line of thinking. They are motivated-reasoners filled with cognitive dissonance who are blind to their complicity

26/ See my dissertation about Kuhnian paradigms. A battle between two populations who hold different paradigm-worldviews can be solved peacefully through democracy.

{Democracy (voting with our feet) is also the root of the social construction of reality}

academia.edu/15401772/Jewis…

27/ There's a point in every battle I've been in when it's clear who can be an ally & who's determined to be 'neutral' in a way that helps the antagonists.

I'm long past, WE are long past, the time for determining that the GOP has declared war.

28/ I guess all of this is to say that I'm exasperated by any assertion we can defeat Trumpism without fundamental changes in the Constitution, SCOTUS, voting, and other liberty laws.

This is a finished issue. The GOP is against their own stated ideas of America.

29/ The RedHats know it, too. They know they've declared war, fired on Fort Sumter, crossed the Rubicon etc. They hope many people are still duped by their bad-faith posture.

They hope people will slavishly believe that adding judges to SCOTUS is illiberal etc.

30/ It's tiring to see the RedHat statements be given credence. Tiring, like all battles, but I'm not demoralized. I'm fired up. I have the anger of a thousand suns, of generations of minority people trampled on, of seeing a My country destroyed by selfish people

31/ Just know that it's clear to many people like me that this is happening. So when we win, and the GOP reacts with another illiberal spate of violence, I can claim I know why they're doing it and it's illegitimate on its face.

32/ I now say 'when we win' because only massive amounts of fraud will change the outcome. It's 42 days until the election. No rational way the GOP wins, so if the tallies show that they do, it's as illegitimate as their sending troops to DC, refusing witnesses in impeachment etc

33/ And as I said in my 4 Comforts thread, I have confidence that the public's hatred of Trump (ym'sh) will fuel a resistance to the power grab.

I'm even believing that this narrative needs to be pushed: the GOP needs to know clearly that we'll fight

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1293200851864096769

34/ I can hear some say "But you're saying you'll take unlawful action!"

First, that's a bad-faith argument given my first 33 entries.

Second, this is self-defense against a rogue government's unlawful actions. My citizenship doesn't demand slavery! It's not a suicide pact.

35/ My confidence in winning in November is buoyed by the Democratic wins in 2018

We took the House!

We flipped governorships in the swing states: WI, ME, NM, CO, NV, MI, PA, IL, even Kansas for God's sake!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Unit…

36/ We lost 3 close races due to the malfeasance we're seeing in 2020: TX Senate, FL Senate & Gov, GA Gov. And that's the real area of vulnerability.

We see the results of that tragedy already, esp. in GA & FL, with thousands of dead and wounded.

37/ GA, TX & FL should flip blue based on the polls & data, but the GOP criminal vote suppression and other fascist power grabs may work again b/c their tactics help on the margins.

That's all they have though. They're desperation (see SCOTUS) is open. They expect to lose.

38/ If we manage to take power Jan 20, 2021, I'm hoping to have investigations on the stolen elections all through the Trump (ym'sh) years. See below for my idea of the future tribunal.

We'll win because we have the facts, the numbers, the law & the will.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1293900782786482177

39/ This thread has gone on so long, the feeling of satisfaction that I receive in "OK, so I think I explained myself" has already worn off. I'm trusting I did, so I'll end here.

@threadreaderapp please unroll.

@threader_app please compile.