@susan also shared a very useful summary of Heather Cox Richardson’s interpretations here:
I’m interested to hear if others see what I see, a Republican party eager to complete a plan they’ve had in the works for decades. If so, what should we who are opposed to a fascist government modeled along the lines of Oban’s Hungary do about it?
I think it’s especially important to keep in mind that this plot does not require Donald Trump to be the standard bearer. For Republicans, any nominee willing to go along with this program (DeSantis, Tim Scott, et. al) will do.
This is meant to be a wide-ranging thread, but I want us to stick to discussing this potential dictatorship coming our way as much as possible.
Clearly this is bad news for democracy. I am curious, however, how the proponents attempt to spin it? Presumably they’re not packaging it as “dictatorship in America,” so what is the rationale they’re using?
In hearing portions of Trump’s recent speeches, he’s not trying to hide it at all. It’s all right out in the open. Ditto DeSantis’s efforts in Florida and Abbott’s in Texas. They’re not hiding their intentions for the entire country.
“You, my loyal voters, will be in the in-group that our laws protect but don’t bind. Everyone else will be the out-group the laws bind but don’t protect”.
Only later do they found out they are in the out-group with everyone else.
It’s the rationale they’ve been using all along: the government has been taken over by the Deep State, with every government employee fully subservient to the Biden Crime Family, the Chinese Communist Party, The Crazy Radical Leftists, The Trans Perverts, All the Other Perverts, Soros, “Globalists” (wink wink), and Those People.
They’re really not hiding it. They’re quite open that they’re going to purge everyone they deem insufficiently loyal (to them, of course, not the United States of America), and “sufficiently loyal” is defined as “Does everything we tell them to do, nothing less and nothing more”.
If Trump – Og forbid – won in 2024, and succeeded in creating and solidifying the Unitary Executive that he seeks, would the resulting government be more of a:
Kleptocracy - a government or state in which those in power exploit national resources and steal; rule by a thief or thieves.
Kakistocracy - government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.
All of the above
None of the above (almost metaphysically impossible, JFTR)
So … devil’s advocate here … why didn’t they do this during Trump’s first term?
I’m not seeing anything in this plan that requires a Senate supermajority or anything – in fact, they could theoretically even pull this off with Dems holding Congress.
Oh, they tried. You have to do deep dives into the extent to which all government agencies and entities were hollowed out during Trump’s time in office. They were well on their way. They just ran out of time.
The short answer is, they did try. Google “trump purges”, and you’ll find many articles about how he tried to install loyalists in as many places as possible. The problem was, they weren’t yet confident enough that just purging everyone would be acceptable to the public, and the institutions in question still had lots of people willing to push back on such blatant politicization of the civil service. So it was a matter of “too little, too late, too slow”.
Now? He’s seen that his supporters don’t care about this, and he doesn’t care about anyone else. Purging “disloyal” people will be priority number one, and any legal fallout will be dealt with later. He won’t care that the Undersecretary of Something has a legal claim for improper dismissal, because he knows it will take years for that case to make it through the courts, the worst he’ll have to do is compensate that person with government money, and in the meantime, his hand-picked man is doing the job the way Trump wants it done, the law be damned.
The “Deep State” is really just a bunch of smart, dedicated, hard working civil servants who are overwhelmingly loyal to the country and the Rule of Law – not to a party or a politician.
A long-time observer can readily understand why a wannabe’ autocrat would see them as a problem.
I’ve been doing this a lot lately, Godwinizing threads, surely as a result of just having finished reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. But, damn, there are such parallels.
Countless times throughout the narrative I shook my head over the kindred spirits the modern GOP had with the German fascists—the unquestioned entitlement to power, the contempt for democracy, the systematic restructuring of government institutions to advance their agenda, the “othering” of those genuinely believed to be lesser citizens.
For the longest time (I’m 62) I rolled my eyes at those who called out the GOP’s march to fascism. They were right. This is scary stuff.
So you’d be OK with a GOP president essentially abolishing the Democratic party – along with many civil liberties and environmental protections – as long as they weren’t personally corrupt? Charming.
