Thread by @BrynnTannehill

I posted about this a while back, and it dovetails with my previous analyses on the US political system, but I'm going to run it back:

There's only one possible way to pass gun control legislation to stop mass shootings, and Democrats aren't willing to do it.

End the US. 1/n

At this point, the 7-point tilt of the US Senate towards the GOP means that Democrats will rarely control the Senate. And when they do, they will NEVER have the 60 votes to defeat a filibuster. That'd take winning elections by ~16+ points 3 cycles in a row. 2/n

Yes, you could end the filibuster and pass a law in the VERY rare times the Democrats hold the trifecta, but then you run into two problems:

1. The GOP will just repeal it next time they hold the trifecta

2. SCOTUS is just going to overturn it anyway. 3/n

So, federal gun control legislation can't happen without overturning the filibuster and holding the trifecta, but it would likely just get overturned by the Supreme Court if it had any teeth whatsoever. And, it is more likely is the GOP will LOOSEN federal regs. 4/n

Because of the GOP tilt in the Senate, and the 5-point electoral college lean, Republicans will hold the trifecta far more than Democrats (assuming that the GOP doesn't just decide to overturn federal elections at the state level, House, or Senate). 5/n

At the state level, most states are held by the GOP, who have gerrymandered and suppressed their way to permanent majorities. The odds of the GOP base embracing gun control is zero, even if it started impacting them. 6/n

The GOP genuinely believe owning an assault rifle is a right ordained by God. They blame what's happening on "mental health", video games, not enough prayer in schools, or society needing MORE guns (despite the 420 million already out there). 7/n

Jonathan Swift wrote that, "You cannot reason someone out of something they were not reasoned into." Thus, there's no possible way to convince Republicans that the source of the problem is 420 million guns being distributed without regulation. 8/n

The law of averages will always catch up to you: enough guns in enough people hands will inevitably result in someone committing a mass shooting eventually. Every serious scholar knows this. Every other nation with a functioning government knows this. But 40% of the US won't. 9/n

And that 40% controls the government. They control the Supreme Court, and will do so for decades. SCOTUS, for it's part, looks primed to strike down most gun control laws. The 9th circuit struck down California's assault weapon ban too. 10/n

There is no law you can pass that the courts won't strike down. Indeed, SCOTUS just found that innocence should be no barrier to the death penalty.

The system is broken and depraved, clearly. But what's more, we as a people are broken and depraved. 11/n

slate.com/news-and-polit…

One observer remarked the US has, "“waning years of the USSR” energy; nobody thinks the system works or is even hypothetically capable of working except the tiny minority of elites running it, who know it doesn’t work but don’t have to care."

I agree.

12/n

The most Democratic politicians do (like @ChrisMurphyCT) is rail passionately against the intransigent GOP. The GOP base is either deluded into believing that the problem isn't the guns, or that piles of dead children are simply the price of "freedom". 13/n

It's time Democratic voters, sick of the slaughter of innocents in the name of a depraved ideology, demand that their leadership in Democratic states do what must be done. Realistically, there's only two choices: 14/n

1. Continue pretending the system works, and live with schools full of massacred children forever

2. Escape the sunk cost fallacy and end the union

15/n

We must seriously ask the question: are all these dead children worth preserving a broken system that mostly serves a depraved, deranged people? Democratic leaders at every level need to come clean in admitting the system has deliberately been broken beyond repair. 16/n

There is no conceivable way to fix this for decades, if ever (especially if the GOP starts simply overturning election results they don't like). Democratic politicians will make all kinds of promises to do everything they can to prevent this from happening again. 17/n

They're lying.

They know there's zero chance of passing meaningful legislation that sticks. Deep down, most of them know this, and are okay with this, because admitting the only way to win is not to play the game terrifies them. 18/n

They know that they can't go before a room of grieving parents to tell them, "I'd love to do something, but it's far more important to preserve the broken system that caused this to happen, and prevents us from doing anything to stop this from happening over and over again." 19/n

So they lie. Or they delude themselves that the GOP will come to its senses, or maybe the public will vote out the people who oppose doing anything, or maybe the Supreme Court will stop being ideologues, and start being pragmatists. 20/n

Or maybe if we just wait a decade or so for Thomas and Alito to leave the bench, there's a chance that maybe Democrats will hold the Senate and the White House then and be able to re-balance the court again.

Maybe.

But realistically, almost certainly not. 21/n

But while we wait for a day that will almost certainly never come in my lifetime, or perhaps ever, the laws of probability say that we'll be putting row upon row of small, white caskets in the ground with increasing frequency as we wait for Godot and a day that never comes. 22/n

Calling it quits as a nation would potentially be every bit as ugly as the end of the USSR. But Democrats have decided that the mangled bodies of children are an acceptable alternative.

In reality, they're probably only kicking the can down the road. 23/n

Eventually, the public will figure out exactly how and why the system is broken. They're already losing faith in the courts. There's growing dissatisfaction with the current arrangement in both deep red and blue states. 24/n

Eventually, there will come a time when the vast majority of the public believes that crises can no longer be addressed by voting, legislation, or the courts. That's when it all comes apart. 25/n

I have zero belief that Democrats will admit to the reality of the situation. Therefore, realistically, I believe that in the years to come we will continue to see people continuing to pretend there is a political or legal solution, and that our system CAN work. 26/n

Calling it quits as a nation is still admittedly fringe, and I can't see it gaining traction with either party for a while. Republicans won't because they're on the cusp of complete and total victory. Democrats b/c their fundraising depends on pretending they can fix it. 27/n

But eventually, we'll be forced to choose a path: Hungary or Yugoslavia. It's a matter of when, not it. 28/n