I've never understood the argument that Dems will hesitate to amass or abuse power because it could be used against THEM after they lose the next election.
Passive conservatives and the GOP Establishment spend every day loudly promising they would never do that.
Passive conservatives and the GOP Establishment spend every day loudly promising they would never do that.
There is no detente, no mutually assured political destruction. Every Dem plotting to abuse power for political gain and play hardball to advance their agenda can read a dozen op-eds a day from passive conservatives promising they would never dream of responding in kind.
Even now, even after everything that's happened, you can see the MUH NORMS MUH PRINCIPUHLS crowd recoiling in disgust from suggestions that the Right should start fighting the way the Left does, even as we teeter on the brink of a socialist and authoritarian abyss.
If there's one thing the hard-Left activists running our increasingly weaponized Leviathan State know for sure, it's that Republicans will never follow thorough on hilariously insincere warnings of dire consequences for the abuse of power.
The closest we've come to that is Dems belatedly realizing they shot themselves in the foot by monkeying with the rules of Congress, and even there, the price they paid has been more annoying than unbearable or insurmountable - procedural hurdles, not critical wounds.
The Left understands that REAL power comes not from writing rules, but from writing exceptions. They will always find ways to protect themselves and their allies. And they know they can intimidate passive conservatives out of responding to their escalations.
In case you haven't noticed, warnings to the Left that their abuses and power grabs could someday be turned against them have not slowed their march to authoritarianism at all. No one of stature on the Left is worried about getting silenced, punished, or even embarrassed.
That's because they know their main opponents are openly, proudly sworn to never use the weapons of the Left against it. It's their core principle. They're devoted to "leading by example" even if no one is following, even as they march into endless bloody ambushes.
It's nice to have a controlled opposition that promises it will never use power to acquire more power, accepting every revision to the rules of the game without ever trying to change the rules itself. Why does that opposition think its dire warnings would be taken seriously? /end
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