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solarbirdI mentioned in a recent update that the GOP is fascist all the way down, and what I mean by that is lawless authoritarianism with a deep contempt for elections, democracy, and the will of the voters in general. As Beau of the Fifth Column likes to say, they want to rule you, not represent you.
Getting rid of Trump forever will help – a lot – but will not end it. He did not create this. It was made by decades of work by the fundamentalist movement. He merely supercharged it, with his celebrity. Even if he vanished tomorrow, the movement – while wounded – would carry on. The temptation would be to decide – without evidence – that with him gone, it’s all over, but I assure you – it won’t be.
Right now, little exemplifies that more than Ohio. So let’s start by talking about Ohio.
Against the best efforts of the Ohio Republican party – rules changes, misleading ballot summaries, lawsuits, all of it – Ohioans overwhelmingly voted to legalise recreational marijuana and implemented a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution.
Naturally, Republicans are moving to nullify the result, in fact if not in name. The most authoritarian circulated a letter denying the plain meaning and intent of the initiative, vowing not to remove any of their anti-abortion laws. Fitting with previously-discussed views that rights are a zero-sum game, they insist that they have a God-given right to ban abortion, will of the people be damned, and that you are violating their rights by opposing them in doing so. On Wednesday the 15th, the party launched efforts to bar courts from enforcing the new Constitutional amendment, and floated a 15-week abortion ban as a “compromise.”
Similarly, in the face of anti-trans politics being rejected across several elections nationally, they moved immediately after the election to push new anti-trans law including bathroom bans, drag bans, and bars on health care to trans people.
All of this illustrates the reality of the Republican Party at the state level; results are invalid unless they win, and they are appointed by God to rule. If the people disagree, it’s the people who are wrong. If they lose an election, it’s automatically invalid, intrinsically fraudulent simply because they lost, and for no other reason.
It shows up everywhere, not just Ohio. It shows up in voter purge after voter purge in state after state. It shows up in Wisconsin, where the Republicans have engineered gerrymandering so severe Democrats cannot be elected without a 60-40 landslide, and in North Carolina, where they’ve done the same this year.
It shows up in Alabama trying to enforce its anti-abortion law against people in other states. It shows up in Texas counties banning travel if you might be headed elsewhere for abortion services. It shows up in Idaho’s first “abortion trafficking” prosecution. It shows up in the New McCarthyism of Texas. It shows up with elected Republicans saying fascists and authoritarians like Hitler and Stalin are being quoted “out of context” and deserve to be re-examined. It shows up in closing libraries if they cannot be adequately censored in order to toe whatever fascist line they’ve decided marks acceptable reality today.
And it shows up in people making careers out of teaching Republicans how to deny election results, selling the system of lying endlessly and spreading conspiracy theories and finding ready buyers – even places like here, in Washington State.
It shows up in making money out of destroying the Republic. Not just at the high level; we’ve talked a lot about how looting is always part of the Fascist playbook, and how the swindle, the scam, is used to tie people to the movement – to make them feel like they “bought in” – rather than to push them away.
It shows up when the bottom feeders have jumped in and are running their own, sad, local versions of the scam – the dirtball cults of the abandoned strip-mall storefront – and making money.
That’s how you know the rot of fascism goes all the way down, when even the lowest, weakest, lamest purveyors of conspiracy theory and authoritarianism can find a market for their lies.
Trump didn’t start this. He just unleashed it, gave it critical mass, made it look briefly like a winner, and gave everyone involved permission to be their absolutely worst, most brutal and horrible selves.
And when he leaves, when his career is over, that will not be its end, no matter how much we might want it to be.
But there’s good news, and that good news is that most MAGA voters are frankly pretty old, and they’ve made themselves even older with COVID denialism. (Yes, really. It’s already changed election outcomes, and will over time change more.) The popular bulk that gives the movement the heft it requires – the bulk of the Republican party that wants to pretend that they aren’t the problem – are predominately baby boomers.
Yes, the movement has a violent wing, and most of those are young – but the violent wing doesn’t win elections or hold political value and they don’t have the numbers or the discipline to win a civil war. Just as Trump corrupts everything he touches, that corruption – and that perception, once it finally turns around – will apply equally to the young of their movement.
Which means that while 2024 isn’t the last important election – 2026 will still matter, and 2028 should be the last gasp, even with the help of people like Elon Musk and his fascist disinformation fountain – it does mean that there’s going to be a point at which critical mass fails, and when it does, it will be abrupt and complete.
We just have to make sure those votes keep mattering, all while keeping them out of power at as many levels as possible.
But it’s something that’s going to get easier over time, not harder – as long as we don’t let up.
We have to fight. If we fight, we will win.
And we can do it again.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
