Passivity Isn't Consent

Wait for It

From a Google Image Search - Bloomberg

Kudos to a Republican Party that was inspired by 1) a pledge to never vote to raise taxes, 2) being booed off college campuses, 3) learning that they were on track to be a minority party, 4) anti-immigration sentiments, 5) nationalism as a reaction to cultural change, 6) nostalgia, 7) pseudo-Christian moral outrage, 8) environmentalist attacks on fossil fuels (black gold), 9) a new line of reasoning against social programs paid for by tax dollars, 10) greed, 11) an addiction to progress, 12) profits, 13) a desire for power, 14) complex feelings about globalism, 15) the decline in popularity of Conservative ideology.

Kudos to putting together an organized and quasi-secret movement to turn America into a single-party state that will be all conservative, all the time.

"There will be only two genders."

"Liberals are using schools to foster liberal ideas like tolerance, compassion, equal opportunity, that human activities cause climate change, that everyone is interconnected, that science trumps religion, that too much wealth in the hands of too few is bad for the economy. And they are grooming kids to become gay or trans."

"Social programs make people dependent on government handouts instead of their own resourcefulness."

"Liberals and their labor unions were responsible for factories leaving America (although most CEOs were conservatives)."

"We need to ban all immigrants, migrants, and asylum seekers because we can't tell which immigrants are good people and which are bad people (and they are taking your jobs)."

"That by banning the teaching of certain books (ideas) we can make sure our schools conform to conservative ideology and Christian beliefs (although we are not a theocracy)".

Kudos to the Republican Party because they were able to stage a coup and make it happen even as liberals saw power slipping through their grasp. The party and the churches found common ground to paint the government takeover as a moral fight. They were able to turn Congress into an inert body. They found ways to manipulate voting (so many tactics, a blizzard of strategies - purging voter rolls, gerrymandering, moving polling places, changing voting hours, casting doubt on our trust in free and fair elections, fighting against voting innovations (during a pandemic) like mail-in voting, absentee voting to stop the spread of COVID, any innovation that made it easier to vote).

Then Republicans tackled campaign finance, made money speak, allowed corporations to be people, and let unlimited money (some dark money) flow into campaigns. And they guilted the left into trying to compete using only grassroots funding while they spent billions of donor dollars on media messaging and slick attack ads.

After that, they tackled the law and the courts by developing a new way to interpret the Constitution, Originalism. They appointed new conservative Federal Judges. They did this day after day without doing much other Congressional business. They did not want another liberal on the Supreme Court, so they refused to allow Obama to fill an empty seat using a transparently self-serving rationale. Then, when they had a Republican in the Executive, they appointed one, two, three very conservative justices to fill seats with no regard for proximity to an election.

Next, that (stuffed) Supreme Court did the bidding of the church and overturned Roe v Wade, parceling out to the states women's rights to make decisions about their bodies. We anticipate that they (Republicans and Evangelicals) intend to impose a national ban on birth control and abortion as soon as possible.

The Supremes then turned the Presidency into an office with unrestrained power and along came Donald Trump to his second term, "God's instrument," (He works in strange ways you know). Donald Trump, the eternal victim (everyone is against me, but I'll show them) who will say or do anything to hang on to power (lie, break laws, change laws without due process, trample our Constitution, insult our allies, pretend to be a champion of ordinary people).

Republicans used mainstream and social media to commiserate with workers they displaced by allowing corporations to flee the country. They whipped up real resentments into strident hatred towards all things "liberal". They turned family and friends, bound by love, into rivals. Then Trump turned our friends and neighbors into his MAGA cult. Trump became our first dictator or king at the insistence of his cult followers. And here we are.

Some of us watched the coup unfold, but it was argued that human history is a spiral, that we experience political, economic, cultural, and social cycles, and that this has all happened before—no big deal, nothing to see here until insurrectionists tried to change the results of a free and fair election.

Kudos, Republicans, your coup was successful. Your Trumpy guy got away from you a bit, but you made it work, you liked it. Already, only four days in, it looks like the right-wing will get everything it ever wanted and then some. Too bad you had to sell your souls to do it. Some of you may have niggling doubts about some of the details (like Pete Hegseth as head of Department of Defense), but Republicans these days are walking around with big cocky smiles on their faces. All the Grand Old Men are having fun, especially the one in the Oval Office.

As for the "libs" who seem so passive, this is not like the last Civil War, the last time the nation was so divided. The sides were more geographically separate in 1860 and slavery was an anathema. Today MAGA and "libs" live side-by-side and, although red states and blue states resemble the old Civil War geography, the demographics have changed. This time we would have fighting in our streets, neighbor to neighbor, sibling to sibling, loved one against loved one. Is it any wonder we don't want to go there? There must be another way we hope.

Can we take a beat? When passions are engaged, can we discipline ourselves to wait and watch, hoping overreach will result in popular disgust? Do we expect the neurologically entranced will eventually be aghast at what is being done in their name, with their consent? Is learning restraint our best strategy? Who knows how long we will be able to stay silent as we lose our Republic and any powers that once accrued to "we the people." Staying quiet is hard. We could use the time while we wait and watch to organize and plan.

Or is waiting to react likely to doom us to autocracy for years and years? Was it wrong to respect the votes of our neighbors? Republicans exploited our democratic ideals to turn America into an autocratic state. Will we rebel?

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