by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
You hear a lot of people talk as if as long as we never elect Republicans again, we’ll have a functioning democracy. The problem is, of course, is this is not possible. There is going to come a point when we face Republicans in power again.
And that’s the issue at hand — what happens Republicans are in power again? That’s the issue — what will be our reaction when radical reactionaries seize power again and simply never let it ago? I know that sounds hysterical, but it’s a very real possibility.
The reason is, the Republican Party is fascist and reactionary and we either have a civil war or we turn into an autocracy. Again, that sounds hysterical, but I just don’t see how those aren’t our options. Republicans — especially people like Steve K. Bannon — are pretty open about how they want to strangle American democracy.
And it’s not like we can stop them from ever gaining power again. So, in a sense, the Republican Party is, unto itself a macro trend that we can’t control. At the moment, I think we’re going to transition into an autocracy without a struggle. There will be a lot of wringing of hands about the transition, and a lot of wealthy liberals will flee the country because they’re a bunch of fucking cowards, but, in the end, that’s what’s going to happen.
DeSantis will become president at some point after Trump (or whatever), change the Constitution and 20 years from now we’ll be talking about Generation DeSantis and how he’s been the only president that millions of Americans have ever known.
Or, like I said, we’ll have a civil war, and “national divorce” and suffer through a pretty horrific civil war that will happen in conjunction with WW3. So, things are pretty stark. It’s not like we can simply assume the Republicans will never gain power again. And their growing more radical and reactionary by the day, not less so.
And, is so often the case whenever I talk about such things, a lot depends on what happens with Trump. If he is the nominee, then we’re more likely to go the civil war route. If he’s not, we’re more likely to simply peacefully become an autocracy.
But the key thing is –we can’t simply hope that Republicans will never gain power again. All they have to do is gain power ONCE and that’s it. The die is cast. Then the ball is in our court, then we have to decide if we’re going to have a civil war or allow ourselves to slip into autocracy.
