Minority Rule
Timothy Synder is a Yale University history professor and the author of the excellent short book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. He’s an expert on the history of fascism and totalitarianism and in the latest issue of his newsletter he describes how the United State in on a fast track to tyranny.
The scenario then goes like this.
- The Republicans win back the House and Senate in 2022, in part thanks to voter suppression.
- The Republican candidate in 2024 loses the popular vote by several million and the electoral vote by the margin of a few states.
- State legislatures, claiming fraud, alter the electoral count vote.
- The GOP House and Senate accept that altered count.
- The losing candidate becomes the president.
- We no longer have “democratically elected government.”
No one is seeking to hide that this is the plan. It is right there out in the open.
The prospective Republican candidates for 2024, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley, are all running on a big lie platform. If your platform is that elections do not work, you are saying that you intend to come to power some other way. The big lie is designed not to win an election, but to discredit one. Any candidate who tells it is alienating most Americans, and preparing a minority for a scenario where fraud is claimed. This is just what Trump tried in 2020, and it led to a coup attempt in January 2021. It will be worse in January 2025.
9/11 led us to the invasion of Iraq, the foreign policy disaster that marked our century. 1/6 leads us to a catastrophe on that scale, but inside our own country.
Via BoingBoing
And so, therefore…what? What are we supposed to do with this information?
I’ve long since grown tired of this constant drumbeat about what the Republicans are doing. Yeah, and? What’s the plan for stopping them? What’s the plan for action once they do it?
Or is the hand-wringing the point?
I think step 1 is being aware that this plan us underway. Step 2 could be making sure it never slips out of public awareness. I think that could ve tough because Americans have short attention spans. Step 3? I’m no expert. Maybe trying to turn that awareness into some tangible commitments from people and organizations to have specific actions and goals to try and stop the plan as it unfolds?
Whatever the plan is – no part of it should depend on Tom Carper or Chris Coons doing anything.
This is exactly the Doomsday Scenario that terrifies me.
Especially since there is such a lack of urgency among D’s, particularly those in the US Senate.
The Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party. Overthrowing democracy as we know it is the only way they can triumph, and they are in the process of overthrowing democracy. Only a bunch of Stockholm Syndromed Senators can stop them.
This is the problem — sure, we all see them doing this, but there’s nothing we can do about it. If our elected Democrats choose to sleep-walk into it, what exactly can we do? I’m all ears, and despite these doomsday scenarios being discussed for months I haven’t heard of a single thing the average schmo can do to blunt it.
If this scenario comes to pass, will Democrats storm the Capitol?