Thread by @RickPetree

A 🧵about this election, in historical context:

I’m under no illusions: a significant minority of our citizens are desperately unhappy with our system of government and our inclusive values of equality and justice for all. They make it plain, and I get it.

They include evangelicals who’ve always hated church/state separation. Racists pining for Jim Crow. Paternalists who want to re-establish the ‘traditional’ role of women and make decisions for them. Corporate chieftains eager to slip free of the ‘administrative state.’

Above all, they are people attracted by an authoritarian vision because they understand that none of the above will come to pass in a participatory, pluralist democracy. They’re *done* with democracy (see Project 2025 and Trump’s latest about voting becoming a thing of the past).

The existence of this minority is, of course, troublesome. Their beliefs have deep, multi-generational roots and we cannot, in this or any other near term election cycle, magically convert them. But it’s vital to recognize that they are not new to American society or politics.

What *is* new is that one of our major parties has gradually, over decades, fallen under the sway of this retrograde minority. They are in triumphal mood and, I think correctly, believe they’ve reached their high water mark. They believe it’s now or never.

While the beliefs of this minority cannot be changed anytime soon, their political foothold in our government can be. They can, and must, be so punished at the ballot box that they start to remember which country they’re living in, and begin to adjust their goals to reality.

I say again: these atavistic forces have been with us since the beginning. We’ve largely managed, by democratic processes, to keep them on the margins and to forge ahead despite them. We must do so now, emphatically. The majority must work its will.

I see many claiming that we’re in a ‘war.’ I agree, but only in the sense of Bismark’s remark that “politics is the extension of war, by other means.” A *decisive* electoral defeat of Trump and the GOP is vitally necessary, for the survival of our democratic government. END.