Last night, @HC_Richardson ended her thought-provoking letter by asking this:
"Last month, six in ten Republicans in a Reuters/Ipsos poll said they believed the election was stolen. Where do Republican lawmakers think this is going to end?"
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Heather Cox Richardson is the author of⤵️, so the question comes from someone with a deep knowledge of party history.
It seems to me that the GOP leaders have no long-term plan, and no long-range ideas or visions.
They have a short-term plan: Win at any cost and hold power.
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Scholar @jasonintrator defines fascism as a set of tactics for seizing and maintaining power."
The fascist wants power. They do what it takes to achieve that power.
It comes from cynicism: They think everyone is out for power.
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That's where Borowitz got his joke: "Republicans accuse Biden of ending the pandemic to score political points."
True cynics think all people act from self-interested motives. They don't really believe anyone wants to use power to help people.
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Because they think all people act from self-interest, they think attempts to achieve equality or fairness are really power grabs: They think people lower in the hierarchy want to displace them.
They don't believe fairness is possible. They don't believe equality is possible.
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If this is your outlook, your only goal becomes seizing and maintaining power.
This is why Republican leaders cynically embrace what they know to be a lie.
They want to "win."
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The advantage fascists have is that they are ruthless. They're willing to lie and cheat and steal.
The disadvantage is that they are a minority. That's why Biden has about a 60% approval rating now.
I don't think you can compromise with fascists. . .
. . . but you can outnumber them. It isn't easy because they always punch above their weight.
But if people committed to democracy mobilize, they can be outnumbered. We have a few years now to rebuild and strengthen the institutions that Trump battered so we're ready again.
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Yup, that's because so many of my favorite scholars (the ones I learn the most from) are experts in Putin's regime and other fascist movements.
Everyone has a list of their favorite scholars, right? 🤓
(Make nerdiness cool again!)
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About the GOP "plan" I think it's the "push off and keep turning" theory.
Remembering back several decades to a college test: A guy wants to cross the river, so he calculates where to aim the boat to end in the right place, given the strength of the current. . .
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I am not a scientist, so what jumped into my head was, "This wouldn't really work! You'd have to push off and keep turning."
I think that's basically what the GOP leadership is doing. In 2015, they hoped someone else would take on Trump.
Same thing now.
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Trump hijacked the party and turned the subtext into text.
Their policies are not popular with most people, so all they can do is lie ("the election was stolen").
They're figuring how to grab power (and money) as they go.
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I just gave a talk on what we learn from the History of the Second Amendment to Lift Every Voice Oregon and The Youth Leadership Academy to end gun violence.
I will have an audio recording to post. Meanwhile . . .
The talk is too long for a Twitter thread (35 minutes plus questions!) but I can put a few takeaways here.
What do we learn from studying the history of the Second Amendment?
First, there have always been gun control laws . . .
. . . there were gun control laws in the U.S. before the ratification of the Second Amendment and immediately after. The idea that the Second Amendment was intended to allow unfettered access to guns is therefore nonsensical.
We need to divide the people responsible for the attack into two groups:
🔹The thugs who carried out the attack
🔹The leaders who didn't actually storm the capital, but who either aided with the planning or in some way enabled the attack.
To summarize, this case is bad for Trump for a whole bunch of reasons.
🔹First, the plaintiffs sustained actual injuries . . .
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Some of these tort cases are a bit weak because the plaintiffs have a hard time showing why they should have standing to sue. (Also, these are particularly sympathetic plaintiffs.)
🔹The facts are bad for Trump. The facts in this case are devastating.
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