I know plenty of Republicans who would claim to not be Trump supporters (though might not be willing to disclose who they voted for in the last two elections) who sincerely believe “the squad” is equally as dangerous to Democracy as the Freedom Caucus, and that the most anti-Democratic thing to happen in America in the last four years was the Colorado SC decision.
These folks absolutely think America will survive a Trump election, because they have convinced themselves that standing against liberal hysteria is the most noble cause there is, or at best that “both sides” are equally bad. Sure January 6th, but did you hear what AOC said!?!? Vote ‘em all out… including Joe Biden!
My mother is the only MAGA I speak with on a regular basis, or at least the only one I know of, and she will swear up and down she’s an independent. She an independent who does her own “research” and pays lip service to “both sides,” but nontheless echoes MAGA talking points practically verbatim. I think you’re right. She’s one of those people who are taking a stand against liberal hysteria as they see it.
Internal Secret Service emails obtained by CREW show special agents in close communication with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, while failing to acknowledge the group’s ties to white nationalists and clashes with law enforcement.
Absolutely. We have such a very deeply ingrained templatization of both parties as legitimate, serious entities that both society and the media have been unable to process the collapse of one of them. Further, by their very nature, Liberalism and Conservatism are two absolutely opposite and equally valid perspectives with the Truth always lying in the center between them.
The Republican party is irrecoverable. It can’t be saved. Moreover, traditional Conservatism is irrelevant in the 21st century. It may have had something to offer in the past, but it’s now played out, obsolete. It’s even been abandoned by the Republican Party itself.
It would be nice if the American people could catch up to reality, but it’s not going to happen before it’s too late. It’s already too late.
Sadly, the people you describe are fucking idiots.
I think when republicans really lost it all was in their unrelenting opposition to anything Obama did. They gave up all pretense at governing responsibly. It became only about defeating Obama (and, by extension, democrats). We can point to earlier steps on this path like Reagan and Newt Gingrich but Obama was the end of that road and the results are nothing but a continuous train wreck now.
After the fiasco of Dubya (who was, IMO, a Top 3 Train Wreck President along with Buchanan and Trump), yeah, it’s like they gave up on doing anything and decided merely to be the Party of Obstruction. No ideas, no vision, no plans. Just run on hating Democrats and stoking troglodyte rage.
Indeed. The fact is that the catastrophic consequences of a Trump re-election – including the possibility of Trump declaring martial law and/or appointing himself dictator for life – are considered by the MAGAts to be, as Hamlet said, “a consummation devoutly to be wished”. The fact that there are enough of these dumbfucks that Trump stands a good chance of being re-elected, and that a Republican Congress would support his criminal actions, means in no uncertain terms that America now literally lacks the ability to govern itself.
I believe some of them think there is a deep state in illegal control of the US, and Trump is the one to be able to expose that and end that, thus restoring the US. Others I think that the US experiment has failed and gone woke irreparably, and we really need a king like ruler. Some others were never for US democracy but went along with it as long as they were in power, and now see it slipping away and just want thing to go back to how it was.
So for many they don’t care about the country, they care about their ways imposed on others. And the (middle) group thinks it will go back to normal, but better after Trump goes to work.
I think most of them think the country won’t survive unless he is reelected. They’ve been convinced that the Democrats are baby killing satan worshipping communists hell bent on destroying the US and that only DJT, who was sent by Baby Jesus himself, can return America to the leadership of the white Christian heterosexual world that God wants and loves. I think this might encompass say 20% of the electorate, but it’s enough to paralyze the House and nothing can get done at present.
Back to the crazy 20%, I think they’d rather roll the dice and live with anarchy or fascism as long as the right sorts of people are oppressed. They would much prefer that to having to respect the rights of LGBTQ, women, or religious or racial minorities. If fascism makes everyone who is not a white straight maile Christian a second class citizen, they say bring it on.
I read the thread down to about post 45 and have skipped the last 12-ish hours.
IMO this pretty well nails what I think. And was the first post to notice the critical distinction. Well done Buck:
Ref the OP title…
IMO MAGAs in particular and Rs in general are persuaded the country cannot survive a Biden election in a form they recognize and would be willing to live under. “Socialist woke anti-white prison” is how they think a D-controlled 2024-2028 will go. Electing trump is the last and only chance to save the USA in a form they recognize. Electing an R majority to both houses of Congress is another 99% need-to-have. But electing trump is a 1,000% absolutely positively utterly-need-to-have. “You’re only hope Obi-trump!!”
Of course those beliefs are overwrought BS fomented by Reactionary Wacko media and reinforced by echo chamber media consumption, but that’s what we’re facing.
Ref the OP body …
As to what would actually happen in a trump presidency, I part company somewhat with Buck as I just quoted. IMO …
There are really two forces at work here: trump as petulant grifting man-child, and darker forces of RW totalitarianism who are riding trump’s coattails and writing agendas for him to, mostly unwittingly, implement.
E.g. in his first term, trump remade the Supreme Court. Not in his image as trump toadies, but in e.g. Koch’s image as hardline pro-corporate, pro-White, antigovernment minimalist toadies.
In a trump second term something similar would be done to the civil service. And the upper ranks of the military.
And would attempt to be done to as much of the federal judiciary as is possible. Refusing to approve any federal judges during Biden’s term certainly gave them a nice backlog of empty slots to occupy. Plus of course the opportunity to either grow the judiciary or purge it. Ditto growing the supreme court enough to drown out any non-reactionary voices.
trump himself might not directly care about these tiresome details. But if he can be shown that it hurts people he hates, and delivers thundering applause from the folks whose adulation he craves, and he can make a few million billion on the side, he’ll be all over that like a toddler on ice cream.
They are not worried about the Ds doing these same moves in reverse 4 years hence because they don’t intend to let the Ds ever win another election. And these moves largely ensure that outcome.
My bottom line:
The folks here who think a second trump term will be as loudly but pointlessly ineffectual as was the first are totally discounting the legion of eminence grises who have since latched onto the permanently hard-Right possibilities of a trump presidency. They will deliver the dictatorship while trump plays with his busy box.
They (the shadowy insiders) don’t actually want a revolution. That would be far too crazy and unpredictable. They might well lose.
What they want is a Hungary under Orbán or a Brazil under Bolsanaro. On the surface everything is the same, elections still happen, most laws are mostly still followed, etc. But oddly enough the Rs always win at all levels in most places and investigations into that (or anything else inconvenient) always come up empty handed or somehow never get off the ground. Crime goes way down, even if all that really changes is the reporting on the faked statistics shows it going way down.
Right now the Brazilian example was that despite the rampant pre-existing corruption throughout their legislative and executive branches, the public wouldn’t stand for that crap and Bolsonaro was ousted at the end of his term. And he lacked the cojones or backing to foment a true coup at that time and extinguish their constitution in favor of President for Life.
Conversely, over in Hungary Orbán is still in power after 13 years, having cemented himself in as the always-reelected only plausible candidate from the only thing approaching a real party.
The central challenge to trump become President for Life is trump’s own brand of childish crazy. Plus his age. And the fact he’s only got 4 years for those shadowy forces to consolidate around him despite the raging opposition in public.
But IMO that is a much smaller obstacle to Reactionary Right single-party rule for the indefinite future by whoever emerges as the front runner in the sham 2028 elections when trump is either term limited, too loony, or too dead to run again.
Some might object to my leaning on term limits here in 2028 as a factor. Nope. Leaving those in place and clearly abided by is part of maintaining the sham of normalcy just a bit longer until they finish welding the cage around what had been a truly two-party democracy. Then in 2028 we collectively elect his acolyte in a sham election, and that person finishes the job for good.
IMO that person is not visible now. On purpose. And is probably not a conventional politician. It’s either a retired military or senior federal law enforcement type, or it’s a big time corporate or Wall Street fatcat. But rest assured that right now there’s a competition / climb up a greasy pole going on to pick that person. And doubtless the hidden front runner today won’t be the final pick.
If Trump doesn’t win, I expect there will be at least some violence in a few places. The thing is, that will be mostly amateur violence carried out by his most deranged followers. Those idiots could shed a lot of blood, but they’d be put down themselves in short order, and really don’t present any real risk of US society collapsing.
But if Trump wins? Trump will demand the loyalty of everyone in the government, and those guys are highly skilled in professional violence. If some large percentage of the US military comes down on Trump’s side, then they can re-make the US in its entirety, and there’s no one else with the physical power to stop that.
And when you get to the point where the other party does not just have different ideas on how to govern… when the other party is painted (as in Obama’s case) as the epitome of evil, as the antichrist, as the worst thing in history…
Then you’re done. You can’t do this and then tell your voter that you’re going to compromise on legislation. You can’t do this and work on cross-party projects. You can’t do this and have bipartisan normal commitee work. You CANNOT compromise with pure evil. So after this, Republicans had to oppose absolutely everything Obama said or did, even if they agreed with it.
Authoritarian learning is an appropriate term here. Authoritarians tend to be stupid and make terrible decisions, but they do learn from their failures and adapt their approach.
This is partly why a second Trump term would be so disastrous. Trump himself is of course a deeply stupid man who will never learn anything, but as you pointed out, his entourage likely does possess a dangerous capacity for learning and adaptation, and they’ve had plenty of time to study what worked and didn’t work last time.
Something I did not mention in my marathon post is that the very same process is actually much farther along here in 2023 in a number of red-leaning states than it is at the federal level.
TX being the most obvious, but that may be more a matter of them being biggest and noisiest, not in fact the most advanced down the road to perpetual single-party rule.
To the degree the trump coattail effect on state-level elections turns some purple-state governments distinctly red and turns more red-state governments harder red two mutually reinforcing bad things will happen:
More states will more quickly run off into hard right single party-land.
Any Federal opposition to that will be token, toothless, or entirely absent. And the Feds may in fact be cheerleading, not complaining.
That will be a very baleful outcome if it comes to pass.
Yes. I think it will, as I kinda described above, be a semi-breakup in which the more powerful entities (e.g., California, the military, big corporationbs, etc.) converge upon a new order, instead of a storming the Bastille kind of thing.