Thread by @RadioFreeTom

So, with all the talk of Orwell, I want to point out that this is not "1984" level un-personing, but it's Soviet style denunciation. It's not even ambitious or interesting enough to be Stalinism; it's more like moldy Brezhnevism. This is the "Sovietizing" of the GOP. /1

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1349543248277061633

In the post-Stalin, post-Khrushchev USSR, the Party had lost all ideological conviction and was completely exhausted and bereft of any dynamism. (Sound familiar?) The only thing left was Party solidarity and loyalty to the leader. (Sound familiar?) /2

This was a party that relied on stale formulations and buzzwords and formulations, enforced by "leading comrades" in the Party journals and outlets. (Sound familiar?) Falls from grace could come fast for suspected disloyalty or any kind of creative thinking. /3

If you toed the line, kissed the leader's ass, and repeated the Party's formulations, you had a good life: Awards, money, living quarters. (Sound familiar?) If you questioned things or became unorthodox in any sense, you were denounced and sent into a career dead end. /4

This is the Sovietized GOP: Vicious party cadres enforcing loyalty, sheltering under bullshit ideological formulas that no one believes, especially in the senior ranks of the party. Crossing the party is career (and even physical) death, but it's easy to avoid that. Until... /5

This all holds true until The Leader, whoever it is, starts to lose a grip on power through ill health or major fuck-ups or both. Then the rats start making plans and forging new alliances. But ideas, concepts, the national interest? No one cares about that. It's survival. /6

So, way to go, @GOP. You've become the Brezhnev-era Communist Party, only led by careerist non-entities who are less adept at policy, more prone to drama, and who hate American democracy more than Brezhnev did. Take a bow, comrades. /7x