If they claim executive authority rests with the president, then why can't Joe Biden do the same thing? The Democrats can't show up to a gunfight with a knife.
I believe they are conveniently interpreting the Constitution to serve their agenda. Which will be “the President’s agenda.”
Executive orders weren’t meant to be heavily used. But when Congress passes no laws and does nothing but fundraise and obstruct, executive orders sometimes keep the government running. They were not meant to replace a dysfunctional legislative branch.
I agree that executive orders were not meant to be heavily used but if 45 will be using them, then Joe Biden need to be thinking about that right now. The alternative is a complete loss of this country, we cannot bear that.
I don't think it's optics though. If there's a way to use executive orders to save democracy, do it. But the problem is executive orders kind of aren't democracy; that's the whole idea. If it's one set of executive orders against another, we're just choosing our dictatorship over theirs. Which I will do, every time, but it's not the same as saving democracy.
Alright, there are others in the room....so my question has to do with the expectation that the three branches of the government would be equal (divining the difference between 'equal' and 'co-equal' is a duck-rabbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit–duck_illusion#/media/File:Kaninchen_und_Ente.svg) exercise for another day). Is it fair to propose that Project 2025 assumes Congress is now an unreliable short leg of the stool, and focuses on the control of the Executive combined with inordinate influence over the Judiciary as their route to theocracy?
Project 2025 calls on Congress to pass laws, but it hedges toward understanding they may not have full control of Congress. So it recommends steps to use the executive branch and a corrupted judiciary to achieve theocracy.
Fair point. They certainly hope the President's agenda aligns with theirs...if it doesn't, then they get to rely on the fact that the Supremes keep positioning themselves to be more than your co-equal Motown girl group.
That’s the danger of using someone like 45. A narcissist’s agenda evolves depending on what they need in the moment. The Christo-fascists have propped him up as god. They won’t be able to tell the base to reject him when they’re done using him.
Frighteningly that almost sounds like it means we need Trump to save us from the Christian Nationalists. Get him to think they've betrayed him. It sounds like a movie but everything else so far has too.
I don’t even want to think about the “I used you to get total power and now fuck off” scenario. But I guess they’d be fighting each other at that point.
At this point I would take anything that would cause them to fight one another. Honestly I would forgive Trump and embrace him if he were looking to wreak vengeance on the Christian Nationalists; that's how much I loathe them. Remember he used to be a Democrat. But that won't happen. He's gone too far down this path to find a way to redeem himself.
Inordinate power of the judiciary: YES, that is exactly what has happened over the past several decades. Our legislative branch has sleepwalked into allowing the judicial branch, scotus, to gather more power unto itself; especially the power of judicial review, which allows them to decide that bills/laws passed by congress are unconstitutional & overturn them. We have seen glaring examples of that just in the past 2-3 yrs.
As all of us on here are very aware, this 6/3 extremely conservative CN court has been very activist & quite partisan, despite their public denials.
I know I’ve written this before, but I really want to make sure any newcomers see my recommendation.
I strongly suggest everyone take the time to listen to the 8 episodes of the podcast “Contempt of Court” by Elie Mystal. He has some very clear & passionate answers for what Congress needs to do to take back their power & rein in this runaway court. I find it gives me hope that IF Democrats win power there are ways to get us out of this ridiculous situation our country finds itself in where our lives are essentially being governed by 9 (actually 6) unelected people who are just as fallible as anyone else.
If you can afford a few bucks, I also highly recommend you purchase the audiobook read by Elie;
“Allow Me to Retort- A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution” I loved it & learned so much about our Constitution & how we could fix it.
Absolutely our Constitution is very outdated & it is the most difficult to amend of any democratic country’s constitution in the world.
I don't know if they've sleepwalked. Or if Republican majorities understood that getting nothing done legislatively = destroying government and turning it over to an unelected judiciary. Capturing and controlling the judiciary has long been a far-right goal.
I'm looking up Mystal's work. Thank you for recommending it.
I suspect they know that even with majorities in Congress, there will be Republicans who balk when asked to get fully behind an unpopular far right agenda. So they have plans to sideline them. Ultimately they will sideline the judiciary if/when needed too. The fewer people you need to convince the easier it is. When all you need is Trump, and half the time he has no clue what's going on, it becomes possible. The idea is an unaccountable administration of their own brown shirts. Or exactly what they claim Democrats are doing now.
The problem with checks and balances, as a philosophy, is that they only work if you have multiple sources of independent power, which have sufficient autonomy.
And they are not so wrong in their assessment that power is concentrated in the executive branch. They think it's a leftist conspiracy, but it's actually the result of citizens demanding more out of their government as our civilization advanced, and became wealthier, and a constitution written in the 18th century that was designed to stymie government. If we consider major events - the civil war, the depression and world wars, the civil rights era, the great recession more recently - pressure built up, and the only outlet for it became the executive branch. So the president, and the civil service, had to take on more and more responsibilities over time. Which they now call the 'deep state'.
An honest and sincere response would be to try to create or re-establish significant other independent sources of power, which may very well entail extensive constitutional reform.
But it is no longer about philosophy or ideals or sincerity. These Republicans are on a war footing, so it is only about power. And they intend to fight fire with fire. If the executive branch has all the power, so be it, and all the better for them to take control of it, increase its power, and use it for their own ends.
Quite possibly our system of government is hopelessly broken, that there is no other place for the pressure building up to go, other than to an authoritarian presidency.
The difference, and I suspect it's not easy to convince swing voters that this is crucial, is that the Republicans already have all the other pieces in place. If they win, they have full control and it will be much much easier to exert an autocratic regime. If Democrats keep the presidency, they very likely still won't keep the senate, they may not win the house, and we know they will not have the federal judiciary (at least not without packing the supreme court, which I can't imagine they could have the votes for).
The presidency may very well have too much power. But if so, voting for a Democrat would be by far the lesser of two evils, for anyone who has concerns about the concentration of power in this country. Obviously Republicans will do everything they can to obscure this simple fact.
I remain hopeful for both Democrat control of the Senate and House. We won't be able to flip enough seats to overcome the filibuster, but that thing needs to go anyway.
So much power is invested in the executive branch because our Congress is completely dysfunctional. Sometimes an executive order is the only way to get anything done, because Congress spends more time fundraising and hobnobbing with donors than they do legislating. Our Congress has been very dysfunctional since at least the 90s, meaning more and more had to be done by the executive branch to keep government running. Most of this dysfunction is the Republican Party's fault. Newt Gingrich started it.
If we survive this, we MUST have campaign finance reform and a repeal of Citizens United. We MUST stop our endless cycle of campaigning and make these politicians do the jobs they were elected to do: make laws on behalf of their constituents. The sewer of billionaire money has gotten us to this point. I don't know why every American can't see that, but plenty don't.
I also believe our Constitution needs democratic updates. We cannot keep relying on a 250-year-old document to run our country. We need to follow the lead of many other democracies and update our Constitution to reflect modern situations and scenarios. If they win, they WILL do this, and they will write a Christo-fascist Constitution that we will not get rid of in my lifetime.
If they win they will try to do it, but I'm not conceding any stage to them. If they win at the election, we fight them at the next stage after that. If they win again, we fight at the next. And so on.
We'll need a big win to hold the Senate. We have to win everywhere Biden won in 2020 (Georgia is not up but all the other swing states are) and hold on in Montana and Ohio, which Biden almost certainly won't win, just to get exactly 50 seats. It's possible but I think Tester (MT) and Brown (OH) need Biden doing better at the top of the ticket than he is now. He won't win those states but the margin matters.
I’m backing those candidates in MT and OH all the way. I think we can do it. We have to invest the time, personnel, and money to turn out enough voters.
(It is so laughable for me re: OH. I spent my entire upbringing hearing how sinful and satanic my OH family was. How liberal and worldly. And now they’re voting for this garbage. As a child, I saw OH as this demonic liberal hellscape. So it’s hard for me to shift that thinking.)
Ya if Ohio is someone's idea of cosmopolitan liberal, yikes! (Although I do think it's gotten a good bit Trumpier / more conservative over time, because young people who are more liberal leave for Chicago or New York or the Twin Cities or Pittsburgh even, and the people who remain are the ones who are more conservative.)
I think Tester has a better shot of the two. Montana is small enough than he's probably met a lot of the voters personally, and it's always been relatively red, his whole tenure, and yet he's won. Although all of his elections have been very close. Bigger states like Ohio are more likely to go with partisan lean; there's just more to overcome for the minority party. And Obama was winning Ohio in 2012, as was Ted Strickland for governor in 2006. It's only more recently that it's gone from being a swing state to a solidly red state. Hopefully Brown will draw a poor opponent (same for Tester, too), but I think it's a very uphill climb. If Biden were up 7 or 8 nationally, the Republican margins in those states might be small enough that it would be doable. Idk. I just feel like I've seen this movie before. On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing normal about these times anymore, so who knows.
My OH family has always voted democrat. I'm pretty sure that's still the case. But I've spent enough time there to grasp its conservatism. A Dayton-based reader wanted to fund a party for me in 2021, and I was grateful but also like, "Compromised immune system. Can people mask?" And they were like, "Nope. Liberal insanity. We aren't doing the party for you now." I didn't even mention politics or vaccines. Simply my own health issue and guarding myself.
I hope they both draw 45-endorsed candidates who will lose.
We might all be underestimating how much covid has changed politics in this country. It can be hard to see because you and I don't feel this way, but a lot of people felt Democrats were deeply illiberal during the pandemic, and they're not forgiving or forgetting. I felt like, wear a mask, what's the big f-ing deal, but I suppose closures, especially of the schools, were more consequential.
There's a lot here. Opening this on my tablet so I can read and write at the same time (can't do that on the phone app) :)
One phrase here particularly stands out, in the context of who these people are: 'the government can be further weaponized'
If I have learned anything about Republicans, and when I started reading your insights into Christian Nationalism from your own experiences, it strongly reinforces this, it is that everything is projection. They accuse others of doing what they themselves are doing.
I can never be sure to what extent they truly believe this, and to what extent it's a tactic. I suspect the leaders may be more aware than the followers, who often are not all that capable of any higher level thinking.
Regardless, right now they are a large mob of people who claim they are being persecuted, who claim that the government already is weaponized, against them. That's certainly their answer to anything related to investigations into their former president. It almost has to be, as otherwise his transgressions are so painfully obvious. Once they've overcome that cognitive dissonance, they can believe just about anything else.
This is very dangerous because they are behaving as animals backed into a corner, who will fight for their very lives. I don't think the median voter shares this sentiment, but they also don't yet seem to realize how dangerous these Republicans are.
I suppose there's a risk that if they're talking about 'weaponizing' the government, and we're talking about weaponizing the government, the middle tunes it out as rhetoric. Idk.
But if they gain power, they absolutely will use it to wreak vengeance on all of their perceived enemies, because they believe they are only responding to what has been done to them.
This is basically a population primed for civil war, the only difference being we don't have a strong history of political violence in this country. Yet.
This is long so I think I'll stop and start new comment(s) for my other thoughts.
Yes. Republicans accuse everyone of doing what they are doing, and they accuse Democrats of wanting to do what Republicans will actually do. It's projection and gaslighting.
I believe the leaders know they're doing this. Many of the followers don't. It isn't because many of them aren't capable of higher-level thinking. It's because they CHOOSE not to think. They ignore anything that doesn't line up with what their leaders tell them to believe and who their leaders tell them to heed.
I read an article today (can't remember where now; I read so much every day). It was by a man who used to have a great relationship with his Republican dad...until he voted for 45. Then his father gave himself over to that echo chamber. It became impossible for the son to converse with his father about any topic. I've experienced that myself, both within my own family and with people in the world of my youth.
I don't know how many people in the Christian Nationalist movement are fully radicalized. I'd guess most of the 10% who are strong adherents are. But you always have people within these movements who go along until something hard is required of them. It's easy to say you'd give your life or kill someone else or fight to protect something until you must do it. I don't know how to project that onto the 30% of Americans who profess some affinity for Christian Nationalism. 30% of them wouldn't start a civil war, but what percentage would?
"Weaponizing the government" is my conclusion based on what's in Project 2025. They accuse liberals of weaponizing the government against conservatives in their screed, but they don't specifically say they will do that. They say all executive authority rests with the President, and every government employee must carry out the President's agenda. But given all the talk of vengeance and retribution, it is a logical conclusion I can't fail to draw. I mean, when 45 says these things, he's saying he will weaponize the government.
Absolutely. I mean, theoretically, they could back down once they win, and not be sore winners, and be more magnanimous, but, based on everything we've seen from Republicans over at least the past eight years, and really going back to Obama's election, (and of course the seeds have been there since at least 1968), it would be quite shocking if they didn't at least attempt to finish what they started.
What we don't know for sure is how the vast majority of Americans will react to this from their political leadership. Orders still need people to execute them. We can imagine the president firing huge numbers of employees, and replacing them with vetted MAGAts, but no matter how well they are prepared, that's still a huge undertaking, and things could go wrong.
If they do successfully quickly install an army of brown shirts, they still need everyone to enforce oppressive orders against their fellow Americans. I think of the soldier in a tank ordered to run over the protesters. Some will do it; some will have some humanity at the last moment. They need a lot of people who will do it.
Otherwise they depend on Americans obeying orders, on there not being any massive civil disobedience. Again, we don't know how Americans will react. We don't know how far they can be pushed. What happens in the South is one thing; what will millions of Americans in New York and California do when their federal government turns into Texas, Alabama, Idaho, overnight?
I think they've realized this is their moment. They call it their last stand. I don't want to awfulize, but we are going to have violence no matter the outcome in November. I don't know how many Americans will gleefully kill other Americans, but I'm afraid we're going to find out.
I can only go back to hearing I might have to kill my fellow Americans to protect my faith when I was 7 or 8. How many people never left that church and have listened to that message for over 40 years? How radicalizing is that?
And yes, all kinds of things could go wrong in the implementation. But I think they'll move like a blitzkrieg. They'll do what they must to fire everyone they need to fire on or near Day 1, and they'll trust the judiciary to protect them from lawsuits. Besides, those will take years to resolve. Their brown shirts will have already been working for months or years by that point.
They will turn the military on massive civil disobedience. (They've already said that, so I have to assume they mean it.) Hell, other Americans will deputize themselves and turn on it. I cannot stress enough how awful this will be and how much we don't want to live through this, but I'm not sure how many Americans can be bothered to care about it now.
Absolutely there will be violence. If Democrats win there will be some uprisings, hard to know how bad and extensive at this point, but certainly worse than January 6th and the things that happened at state capitols.
If Republicans win the violence will come from the state rather than against it. They'll want enough protests to give them cover to impose emergency national security laws (which become permanent). Autocracies always do that.
The thing is, often the violence of others can change hearts and minds, for the better, when everything else is failing to do so. I have at least some hope in that, as grim as it sounds.
I feel you give too much credit to humanity, look what the Germans did, they didn't have a problem rounding up and murdering Jewish people, and of course it wasn't just Jews, anyone that disagreed with the Nazi program was rounded up including homosexuals. I have a lot of mistrust for Humanity right now. I see people doing whatever is needed to save their own fucking ass, they don't care about integrity.
I don't know. We're probably going to find out. I know there are a lot of good people out there, a lot of them. But there are also a lot of people who don't care, or at least can't be bothered to care yet.
At this point, I believe following this is a choice not to think. Because if you’ve hung on this long, if you haven’t been persuaded by now, you are choosing that course.
Geeez.... everything in this Manifesto is word salad. They claim the DOJ does not put our national interest and justice first, of course they do - the Christian Taliban just doesn't like it justice.
If they claim executive authority rests with the president, then why can't Joe Biden do the same thing? The Democrats can't show up to a gunfight with a knife.
I believe they are conveniently interpreting the Constitution to serve their agenda. Which will be “the President’s agenda.”
Executive orders weren’t meant to be heavily used. But when Congress passes no laws and does nothing but fundraise and obstruct, executive orders sometimes keep the government running. They were not meant to replace a dysfunctional legislative branch.
I agree that executive orders were not meant to be heavily used but if 45 will be using them, then Joe Biden need to be thinking about that right now. The alternative is a complete loss of this country, we cannot bear that.
I suppose the argument is that it's all that's separating us from them. The public doesn't like authoritarianism, from either side.
There is too much at stake, I don't really care about optics at this point.
There won't be any "Us" again if "They" get in.......
Either Biden can use executive orders to save democracy. Or 45 uses executive orders to turn this country into a dictatorship theocracy.
I don't think it's optics though. If there's a way to use executive orders to save democracy, do it. But the problem is executive orders kind of aren't democracy; that's the whole idea. If it's one set of executive orders against another, we're just choosing our dictatorship over theirs. Which I will do, every time, but it's not the same as saving democracy.
They want to turn the United States into a police state.
Into a Christian police state governed by their interpretation of the Bible.
Alright, there are others in the room....so my question has to do with the expectation that the three branches of the government would be equal (divining the difference between 'equal' and 'co-equal' is a duck-rabbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit–duck_illusion#/media/File:Kaninchen_und_Ente.svg) exercise for another day). Is it fair to propose that Project 2025 assumes Congress is now an unreliable short leg of the stool, and focuses on the control of the Executive combined with inordinate influence over the Judiciary as their route to theocracy?
Project 2025 calls on Congress to pass laws, but it hedges toward understanding they may not have full control of Congress. So it recommends steps to use the executive branch and a corrupted judiciary to achieve theocracy.
Not that they say the word “theocracy.” They are enacting the President’s agenda.
Fair point. They certainly hope the President's agenda aligns with theirs...if it doesn't, then they get to rely on the fact that the Supremes keep positioning themselves to be more than your co-equal Motown girl group.
That’s the danger of using someone like 45. A narcissist’s agenda evolves depending on what they need in the moment. The Christo-fascists have propped him up as god. They won’t be able to tell the base to reject him when they’re done using him.
Frighteningly that almost sounds like it means we need Trump to save us from the Christian Nationalists. Get him to think they've betrayed him. It sounds like a movie but everything else so far has too.
I don’t even want to think about the “I used you to get total power and now fuck off” scenario. But I guess they’d be fighting each other at that point.
At this point I would take anything that would cause them to fight one another. Honestly I would forgive Trump and embrace him if he were looking to wreak vengeance on the Christian Nationalists; that's how much I loathe them. Remember he used to be a Democrat. But that won't happen. He's gone too far down this path to find a way to redeem himself.
Inordinate power of the judiciary: YES, that is exactly what has happened over the past several decades. Our legislative branch has sleepwalked into allowing the judicial branch, scotus, to gather more power unto itself; especially the power of judicial review, which allows them to decide that bills/laws passed by congress are unconstitutional & overturn them. We have seen glaring examples of that just in the past 2-3 yrs.
As all of us on here are very aware, this 6/3 extremely conservative CN court has been very activist & quite partisan, despite their public denials.
I know I’ve written this before, but I really want to make sure any newcomers see my recommendation.
I strongly suggest everyone take the time to listen to the 8 episodes of the podcast “Contempt of Court” by Elie Mystal. He has some very clear & passionate answers for what Congress needs to do to take back their power & rein in this runaway court. I find it gives me hope that IF Democrats win power there are ways to get us out of this ridiculous situation our country finds itself in where our lives are essentially being governed by 9 (actually 6) unelected people who are just as fallible as anyone else.
If you can afford a few bucks, I also highly recommend you purchase the audiobook read by Elie;
“Allow Me to Retort- A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution” I loved it & learned so much about our Constitution & how we could fix it.
Absolutely our Constitution is very outdated & it is the most difficult to amend of any democratic country’s constitution in the world.
I don't know if they've sleepwalked. Or if Republican majorities understood that getting nothing done legislatively = destroying government and turning it over to an unelected judiciary. Capturing and controlling the judiciary has long been a far-right goal.
I'm looking up Mystal's work. Thank you for recommending it.
He is absolutely great, I love listening to him. 💙💙 He is very passionate & irreverent; fyi - he cusses. 🤣
Then I will love him for sure. :)
I suspect they know that even with majorities in Congress, there will be Republicans who balk when asked to get fully behind an unpopular far right agenda. So they have plans to sideline them. Ultimately they will sideline the judiciary if/when needed too. The fewer people you need to convince the easier it is. When all you need is Trump, and half the time he has no clue what's going on, it becomes possible. The idea is an unaccountable administration of their own brown shirts. Or exactly what they claim Democrats are doing now.
The problem with checks and balances, as a philosophy, is that they only work if you have multiple sources of independent power, which have sufficient autonomy.
And they are not so wrong in their assessment that power is concentrated in the executive branch. They think it's a leftist conspiracy, but it's actually the result of citizens demanding more out of their government as our civilization advanced, and became wealthier, and a constitution written in the 18th century that was designed to stymie government. If we consider major events - the civil war, the depression and world wars, the civil rights era, the great recession more recently - pressure built up, and the only outlet for it became the executive branch. So the president, and the civil service, had to take on more and more responsibilities over time. Which they now call the 'deep state'.
An honest and sincere response would be to try to create or re-establish significant other independent sources of power, which may very well entail extensive constitutional reform.
But it is no longer about philosophy or ideals or sincerity. These Republicans are on a war footing, so it is only about power. And they intend to fight fire with fire. If the executive branch has all the power, so be it, and all the better for them to take control of it, increase its power, and use it for their own ends.
Quite possibly our system of government is hopelessly broken, that there is no other place for the pressure building up to go, other than to an authoritarian presidency.
The difference, and I suspect it's not easy to convince swing voters that this is crucial, is that the Republicans already have all the other pieces in place. If they win, they have full control and it will be much much easier to exert an autocratic regime. If Democrats keep the presidency, they very likely still won't keep the senate, they may not win the house, and we know they will not have the federal judiciary (at least not without packing the supreme court, which I can't imagine they could have the votes for).
The presidency may very well have too much power. But if so, voting for a Democrat would be by far the lesser of two evils, for anyone who has concerns about the concentration of power in this country. Obviously Republicans will do everything they can to obscure this simple fact.
I remain hopeful for both Democrat control of the Senate and House. We won't be able to flip enough seats to overcome the filibuster, but that thing needs to go anyway.
So much power is invested in the executive branch because our Congress is completely dysfunctional. Sometimes an executive order is the only way to get anything done, because Congress spends more time fundraising and hobnobbing with donors than they do legislating. Our Congress has been very dysfunctional since at least the 90s, meaning more and more had to be done by the executive branch to keep government running. Most of this dysfunction is the Republican Party's fault. Newt Gingrich started it.
If we survive this, we MUST have campaign finance reform and a repeal of Citizens United. We MUST stop our endless cycle of campaigning and make these politicians do the jobs they were elected to do: make laws on behalf of their constituents. The sewer of billionaire money has gotten us to this point. I don't know why every American can't see that, but plenty don't.
I also believe our Constitution needs democratic updates. We cannot keep relying on a 250-year-old document to run our country. We need to follow the lead of many other democracies and update our Constitution to reflect modern situations and scenarios. If they win, they WILL do this, and they will write a Christo-fascist Constitution that we will not get rid of in my lifetime.
If they win they will try to do it, but I'm not conceding any stage to them. If they win at the election, we fight them at the next stage after that. If they win again, we fight at the next. And so on.
We'll need a big win to hold the Senate. We have to win everywhere Biden won in 2020 (Georgia is not up but all the other swing states are) and hold on in Montana and Ohio, which Biden almost certainly won't win, just to get exactly 50 seats. It's possible but I think Tester (MT) and Brown (OH) need Biden doing better at the top of the ticket than he is now. He won't win those states but the margin matters.
I’m backing those candidates in MT and OH all the way. I think we can do it. We have to invest the time, personnel, and money to turn out enough voters.
(It is so laughable for me re: OH. I spent my entire upbringing hearing how sinful and satanic my OH family was. How liberal and worldly. And now they’re voting for this garbage. As a child, I saw OH as this demonic liberal hellscape. So it’s hard for me to shift that thinking.)
Ya if Ohio is someone's idea of cosmopolitan liberal, yikes! (Although I do think it's gotten a good bit Trumpier / more conservative over time, because young people who are more liberal leave for Chicago or New York or the Twin Cities or Pittsburgh even, and the people who remain are the ones who are more conservative.)
I think Tester has a better shot of the two. Montana is small enough than he's probably met a lot of the voters personally, and it's always been relatively red, his whole tenure, and yet he's won. Although all of his elections have been very close. Bigger states like Ohio are more likely to go with partisan lean; there's just more to overcome for the minority party. And Obama was winning Ohio in 2012, as was Ted Strickland for governor in 2006. It's only more recently that it's gone from being a swing state to a solidly red state. Hopefully Brown will draw a poor opponent (same for Tester, too), but I think it's a very uphill climb. If Biden were up 7 or 8 nationally, the Republican margins in those states might be small enough that it would be doable. Idk. I just feel like I've seen this movie before. On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing normal about these times anymore, so who knows.
My OH family has always voted democrat. I'm pretty sure that's still the case. But I've spent enough time there to grasp its conservatism. A Dayton-based reader wanted to fund a party for me in 2021, and I was grateful but also like, "Compromised immune system. Can people mask?" And they were like, "Nope. Liberal insanity. We aren't doing the party for you now." I didn't even mention politics or vaccines. Simply my own health issue and guarding myself.
I hope they both draw 45-endorsed candidates who will lose.
We might all be underestimating how much covid has changed politics in this country. It can be hard to see because you and I don't feel this way, but a lot of people felt Democrats were deeply illiberal during the pandemic, and they're not forgiving or forgetting. I felt like, wear a mask, what's the big f-ing deal, but I suppose closures, especially of the schools, were more consequential.
There's a lot here. Opening this on my tablet so I can read and write at the same time (can't do that on the phone app) :)
One phrase here particularly stands out, in the context of who these people are: 'the government can be further weaponized'
If I have learned anything about Republicans, and when I started reading your insights into Christian Nationalism from your own experiences, it strongly reinforces this, it is that everything is projection. They accuse others of doing what they themselves are doing.
I can never be sure to what extent they truly believe this, and to what extent it's a tactic. I suspect the leaders may be more aware than the followers, who often are not all that capable of any higher level thinking.
Regardless, right now they are a large mob of people who claim they are being persecuted, who claim that the government already is weaponized, against them. That's certainly their answer to anything related to investigations into their former president. It almost has to be, as otherwise his transgressions are so painfully obvious. Once they've overcome that cognitive dissonance, they can believe just about anything else.
This is very dangerous because they are behaving as animals backed into a corner, who will fight for their very lives. I don't think the median voter shares this sentiment, but they also don't yet seem to realize how dangerous these Republicans are.
I suppose there's a risk that if they're talking about 'weaponizing' the government, and we're talking about weaponizing the government, the middle tunes it out as rhetoric. Idk.
But if they gain power, they absolutely will use it to wreak vengeance on all of their perceived enemies, because they believe they are only responding to what has been done to them.
This is basically a population primed for civil war, the only difference being we don't have a strong history of political violence in this country. Yet.
This is long so I think I'll stop and start new comment(s) for my other thoughts.
Yes. Republicans accuse everyone of doing what they are doing, and they accuse Democrats of wanting to do what Republicans will actually do. It's projection and gaslighting.
I believe the leaders know they're doing this. Many of the followers don't. It isn't because many of them aren't capable of higher-level thinking. It's because they CHOOSE not to think. They ignore anything that doesn't line up with what their leaders tell them to believe and who their leaders tell them to heed.
I read an article today (can't remember where now; I read so much every day). It was by a man who used to have a great relationship with his Republican dad...until he voted for 45. Then his father gave himself over to that echo chamber. It became impossible for the son to converse with his father about any topic. I've experienced that myself, both within my own family and with people in the world of my youth.
I don't know how many people in the Christian Nationalist movement are fully radicalized. I'd guess most of the 10% who are strong adherents are. But you always have people within these movements who go along until something hard is required of them. It's easy to say you'd give your life or kill someone else or fight to protect something until you must do it. I don't know how to project that onto the 30% of Americans who profess some affinity for Christian Nationalism. 30% of them wouldn't start a civil war, but what percentage would?
"Weaponizing the government" is my conclusion based on what's in Project 2025. They accuse liberals of weaponizing the government against conservatives in their screed, but they don't specifically say they will do that. They say all executive authority rests with the President, and every government employee must carry out the President's agenda. But given all the talk of vengeance and retribution, it is a logical conclusion I can't fail to draw. I mean, when 45 says these things, he's saying he will weaponize the government.
Absolutely. I mean, theoretically, they could back down once they win, and not be sore winners, and be more magnanimous, but, based on everything we've seen from Republicans over at least the past eight years, and really going back to Obama's election, (and of course the seeds have been there since at least 1968), it would be quite shocking if they didn't at least attempt to finish what they started.
What we don't know for sure is how the vast majority of Americans will react to this from their political leadership. Orders still need people to execute them. We can imagine the president firing huge numbers of employees, and replacing them with vetted MAGAts, but no matter how well they are prepared, that's still a huge undertaking, and things could go wrong.
If they do successfully quickly install an army of brown shirts, they still need everyone to enforce oppressive orders against their fellow Americans. I think of the soldier in a tank ordered to run over the protesters. Some will do it; some will have some humanity at the last moment. They need a lot of people who will do it.
Otherwise they depend on Americans obeying orders, on there not being any massive civil disobedience. Again, we don't know how Americans will react. We don't know how far they can be pushed. What happens in the South is one thing; what will millions of Americans in New York and California do when their federal government turns into Texas, Alabama, Idaho, overnight?
I think they've realized this is their moment. They call it their last stand. I don't want to awfulize, but we are going to have violence no matter the outcome in November. I don't know how many Americans will gleefully kill other Americans, but I'm afraid we're going to find out.
I can only go back to hearing I might have to kill my fellow Americans to protect my faith when I was 7 or 8. How many people never left that church and have listened to that message for over 40 years? How radicalizing is that?
And yes, all kinds of things could go wrong in the implementation. But I think they'll move like a blitzkrieg. They'll do what they must to fire everyone they need to fire on or near Day 1, and they'll trust the judiciary to protect them from lawsuits. Besides, those will take years to resolve. Their brown shirts will have already been working for months or years by that point.
They will turn the military on massive civil disobedience. (They've already said that, so I have to assume they mean it.) Hell, other Americans will deputize themselves and turn on it. I cannot stress enough how awful this will be and how much we don't want to live through this, but I'm not sure how many Americans can be bothered to care about it now.
Trump wanted to send in the military to put down BLM. So yes, there will be no end to their takeover of our military.
Absolutely there will be violence. If Democrats win there will be some uprisings, hard to know how bad and extensive at this point, but certainly worse than January 6th and the things that happened at state capitols.
If Republicans win the violence will come from the state rather than against it. They'll want enough protests to give them cover to impose emergency national security laws (which become permanent). Autocracies always do that.
The thing is, often the violence of others can change hearts and minds, for the better, when everything else is failing to do so. I have at least some hope in that, as grim as it sounds.
This is so grim to consider. Necessary. But grim.
I feel like ever since January 6th the majority of America has been trying very hard not to think about this.
I feel you give too much credit to humanity, look what the Germans did, they didn't have a problem rounding up and murdering Jewish people, and of course it wasn't just Jews, anyone that disagreed with the Nazi program was rounded up including homosexuals. I have a lot of mistrust for Humanity right now. I see people doing whatever is needed to save their own fucking ass, they don't care about integrity.
And that lack of humanity may very well continue. I hope not, but it’s hard not to think it will.
I don't know. We're probably going to find out. I know there are a lot of good people out there, a lot of them. But there are also a lot of people who don't care, or at least can't be bothered to care yet.
You are totally correct when you say "the followers are not capable of higher level thinking" . Unfortunately we see that with all the magats.
At this point, I believe following this is a choice not to think. Because if you’ve hung on this long, if you haven’t been persuaded by now, you are choosing that course.
The right always thinks that are the victim, kind of like the white man always thinks he's the victim.
They've been pursuing that path since 1968. We're seeing the culmination.
Geeez.... everything in this Manifesto is word salad. They claim the DOJ does not put our national interest and justice first, of course they do - the Christian Taliban just doesn't like it justice.
They want to control the “justice” meted out.