Do you similarly dismiss the life’s work of other scholars, or just those who study fascism?
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For the record, which part do you find far-fetched?
The part where Republicans win back the legislature in the midterm elections (which is a relatively common occurrence) or the part where they refuse to recognize the outcome of the following Presidential election if their candidate loses (which they’ve already signaled a willingness to do)?
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Absolutely. They’ll bring up impeachment to harm the chances of either Biden or the person who will run in 2024.
If Republicans get the Senate in 2022, you can look forward to a 7-justice conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court for the next 20 years. If Breyer is still on the Court in 2023 and dies on January 4, McConnell will completely stonewall any nominee for the next two years because of a principled reason and not some bullshit he made up to justify stealing another seat from a Democrat.
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FTFY.
The reality is that no matter how preposterous it sounds, they’re clearly stating that they’re going to try again what we all witnessed them trying to do already! Next time there will be more traitors because the Big Lie will have deeper roots, it’s that simple. You’re already seeing it with Manchin’s mythical “7 Senate GQP Patriots” who voted for impeachment, but not the commission to investigate their attempted murder. The second impeachment was the point of no return and their choice will carry consequences for generations. They’ll do it in state houses, in redistricting, in voter intimidation at the polls, in Congress and anywhere else they can get a toe hold.
You’re right throughout this thread; the manner in which they ultimately succeed is immaterial if we allow it to come to pass. We have to remain vigilant of all possibilities and move aggressively to thwart them. And then show up to the polls and bring the coalition that saved our asses in November and January. If they win or steal any part of 2022, it will precipitate 2024 being the end of this fragile democracy.
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Some have done so, but the reason we aren’t in the midst of a full-scale civil war yet is that almost everyone who really mattered in the 2020 election was willing to uphold their duty to the rule of law and certify the election outcome—even Republican officials.
I’m not at all convinced that we can count on the same thing happening in 2024, especially if the current purge aimed at awful-but-basically-law-abiding Republicans like Liz Cheney continues through the 2022 midterms.
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That’s exactly it. They’ll purge and marginalize anybody who has a shred of integrity (they’ve already begun), and those who seem to have a soul and some sense of accountability will just learn to ignore the tumor and get right in line. Susan Collins was the only one to vote against Boney Carrot and even then she had to make up some bullshit instead of saying that it was immoral to steal another SCOTUS seat. All they need is a slight shift of the breeze and they’ll be glad to end this Grand Experiment.
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I honestly think it’s far more likely that states with republican legislatures simply decide to dictate their electors to the republican candidate.
There’s not really anything that says a state has to use its people to determine who the electors vote for. It’s all just state laws, and state legislatures can change those state laws at will.
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My take was that the “fuck you button pushers” are already here. This is one mechanism they might use (among others).
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Well, this is America! Of course it can’t happen here… also what does a historian who studies authortarianism know! I mean, they’re closing history departments for a reason, right? It’s a useless field that tells us nothing about the world we live in today. People like Timothy Snyder who literally spent his adult life studying this stuff should give it up and go get a real job and leave pontificating about things like fascism to people on the internet who spent 5 minutes reading wikipedia! /s
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It might be worth mentioning at this point that Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany never actually gained a majority in a democratic election for the Reichstag. Instead of being voted in by the electorate according to the rules – like, say, Trump in the US in 2016 –, Hitler was installed as Reich chancellor by Reich president Hindenburg, who privately detested him but was pressured by a right-wing coalition of industrialists. Hitler then took it from there (including holding an early rigged election that ended up giving his party the “majority”). In fact, in the last free election in the Weimar republic, Hitler’s party did worse than in the one before that.
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The fact that the choice is between a Republican and a Democrat, and you all know that and don’t consider how any other option is even a possibility shows how far away from really being a democracy the United States is.
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That was an excellent podcast. The idea of rural fascists using explosives (Tannerite) bought over the internet to block the highways into major cities still gives me chills.
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And thats why trump should already be rotting in jail, along with all the republican congressmen that have enabled him.
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If there’s ever going to be a possibility of getting someone in the White House who isn’t from one of the two major parties it’s going to come from a shit-ton of work to restructure our political system before election day, not from a handful of nonconformists who choose to cast a third-party protest vote in a neck-and-neck race between an imperfect centrist and an outright fascist.
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So when do we finally get some breathing room to restructure our political system before Election Day? When do we finally get to turn our political system into something functional and not a fucking joke?
Because the way it’s looking, we’re gonna have to vote for the imperfect centrists every time and told to suck it up and deal with the lack of real change by people proclaiming “Do you really want the fascist to win?!?” until the fascists do win because the imperfect centrists managed to get jack shit accomplished.
This system isn’t working. It doesn’t seem that there’s any route for us to get to a better place, and it feels like that’s by design rather than by accident. When we’ve tried asking for game-changing progressive action, we not only lose, but we get shit on as impractical dreamers, a resounding “Meh” uttered in response to our concerns and criticisms. Which just helps confirm that this is a feature of the system, and not a bug.
I’m really fucking tired of being told to Vote Blue No Matter Who. The long arc of history bends toward justice, but you can die starving on the floor of a prison waiting until it comes. I feel like the right could stage a coup and start marching Dems off to internment camps and most of them would still be relying on zingers like “Aren’t Republicans supposed to be the party of small government?!?” while thinking about what John Oliver will have to say about this on Sunday and what gifs from The Simpsons or Futurama they’d use to respond to their imprisonment if they still had their phone. The GOP is all geared up to win a game of Calvinball that will decide the future of this country and all the Democrats have managed to do is turn to the referee and politely mumble “ahem sir that’s not how you correctly score a wicket.”
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If you’re hoping to put someone other than a Democrat or Republican in the White House in 2024 the time to get to work is now, not on election day.
If your only act of political engagement is to refuse to vote for the Democratic candidate then you aren’t likely to help create any kind of transformative change.
And I’m tired of people acting like casting a write-in vote when there’s a fascist on the ballot makes them Patrick Freaking Henry.
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I’m a big fan and advocate for ranked choice voting. We finally got it in my state recently (after years of organization and hard work, all well worth it). It matters. It’s a start. Don’t lose hope.
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I am sorry that electoral politics in the US are a stark choice between bad and evil, but they are. It is no exaggeration to say that the Democrats are the only thing holding back the floodgates of outright fascism, and they are barely holding on. When a ship at sea is listing, people do not generally complain that the food being served in the dining room is not up to their standards.
You may not get breathing room to restructure our political system in your lifetime. It may take years or decades. But it certainly will not happen if the Republicans are able to seize and keep a grip on power by hook or by crook. And if they do, millions of people will suffer. Do not forget that point. This may sound like exaggerated rhetoric, but it really is not. The past few years have shown us how much this is not just hyperbole.
If you really want to do something, I suggest that you get involved in primary races even at the city and state level. Change has to start somewhere, and that’s the most likely place.
In the meantime, you really do just have to vote blue, no matter who. Because what is at stake is the futures of all of the people whom the GQP wants to destroy.
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And then y’all are going to tell us to shut the fuck up and stop doing that in late 2021/early 2022 so as not to sap political time and resources away during the midterms.
And this sentiment is gonna be used as a cudgel to keep left-progressive candidates from ever getting near the ballot ever again.
