What You Get When Republicans Win

How the events of last January 6 put the existence of the United States in question (Timothy Snyder)

In 2022, Fascism Is on the Ballot (1/1/2022)

To gain control, Republicans have to rig elections because they are a minority party, funded by oligarchs whose interests they serve. Fixing the census, gerrymandering, foreign meddling, dirty tricks, Russian compromat. a partisan Supreme Court, and a Constitution that favors rural votes tilt elections toward Republicans. Trump benefited Russia magnificently.

Republican strategy includes a longstanding record of suppressing evidence to suit party ideology, which is probably one of the reasons Trump lies a lot. He relies on Fox News and even brings Fox people into his administration.

Maybe not every Republican agrees with their party, but the party is consistent. The religious Republican base denies evolution, climate change, global warming, sustainability, the expanding universe, and frequently deny the findings of science. So does money-driven Republican leadership. Here is what to expect:

Wealth inequality is a problem that underlies many others, but Republicans don’t acknowledge it and exacerbate it at every opportunity. They passed a trillion dollar tax gift to the wealthy paid for with taxpayer debt and cutting social programs. This exacerbates income inequality, a fundamental cause of many of our problems.

When they are not governing, Republicans think austerity is good policy and wail about huge government debt. All that changes when they are in control deficits don’t matter.

Republicans are corporate supremacists, and are quite willing to have lemon socialism for the rich: Bank bailouts, deregulation for polluters, and other handouts to corporations are ok, but nothing for struggling people. Trump makes his government look like a get rich quick scheme.

Republicans attack democracy and sabotage the Constitution. Endanger the press calling it the enemy of the people. Rig Election using Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and propaganda.

Trump, with cult-like Republican approval, directly attacked democracy, called the press the enemy of the people, packed the Courts and the DOJ with cronies, put his personal lawyer in charge of the Justice department. He is an authoritarian who relates well to other authoritarians creating a new axis. He allies with Putin, Kim Jong Un, Orban, MBZ or other authoritarians, not traditional democratic allies. He lies a lot, his followers know that and they do not care.

The partisan Supreme Court, ruling for Corporate supremacy, robust gun rights, gerrymandering, voting rights, Citizens United, Bush V Gore, Heller, and others have placed us on a path to Fascism. Congress is dysfunctional and seems incapable of imposing its will on the other two branches. They are supposed to make the law and even decide when to go to war, but that no longer seems true. The President has blocked Congress' oversight. Checks and balances may have failed. US Congress serves the funders, not the people.

Republicans will tell you that the economy is doing great, but they think the stock market represents the economy when, in fact, most people have no stake in the market and are actually struggling. It is possible that the well-being of the people is inversely related to the level of the market. Drugs or suicides motivated by despair are all too frequent. The poorest States are mostly Republican.

Republicans revoked net neutrality so corporations that own the internet can do what they want with it. They can destroy it with advertising, sell it to propagandists, say anything they want, surveil everyone, but make sure that no one disagrees. Don’t think that you have free speech on the internet because it is private. there are now armies of people to police speech. Just as the press is free for the man that owns one, the internet allows free speech for the oligarch that owns the ISP.

Republicans don’t trust scholars or experts to determine truth. Lately that means that government, staffed with loyalists, has become incompetent, corrupt and frequently scandalous reaching many cabinet level positions and even to Senator Mitch McConnell and Trump himself. The swamp is much fiercer now.

Republicans are determined and have tried many times to repeal healthcare without a replacement. They do not agree that healthcare is a right. If they have a plan for replacement, it has not been made public. Republican States have even rejected Medicaid expansion without concern for the thousands of preventable deaths that occur. That is only one of the socially beneficial programs to be cut.

Republicans, on religious grounds, are working to make abortion illegal. They seem to think that their ‘small government’ is justified in making complex personal decisions for women. Abortion is a complex personal choice for women, but Republicans, being Religious fundamentalists, want government to decide, not the woman and he doctor. If they get their way, abortion will be unsafe, just as it used to be. Being tribal they are too often violent about it.

Building a wall on the border is a sign of a racist anti-immigrant mind-set and a wealthy oligarchs instinct to be selfish. Although it is guaranteed not to work, it has been the cause of human rights violations, concentration camps and cages for children. Republican States brought a lawsuit arguing that the President didn't have the Constitutional authority to protect DACA people who have lived here for all their lives. Republicans created the chaos and abused the human rights of immigrants.

Trump said he would fix crumbling infrastructure, but Biden got it done. It is possible that we may have created something unsustainable.

Republicans led by Trump think climate damage is a hoax and suppressed research, rolled back auto-emission standards, doubled down on fossil fuel extraction exacerbating the problem and Republicans follow. The science is ominous: climate collapse is a slow moving threat, but Republicans don´t acknowledge it, block action to mitigate it, and double down on use of fossil fuel. They actively promote fracking, drilling on public land, deregulation of polluters, and resistance to renewable energy sources. So the US is exceptional: Trump made it the only country not to sign on the Paris Climate Agreement. We have a projected 12 years to the point of no return. There is no known fix if we get this wrong. The fate of the planet is at risk.

Climate change is an existential threat visible in levels of CO2, melting glaciers, open sea in the Arctic, extreme storms, failing fisheries, wildfires, heat waves, drought. We have a projected 12 years to the point of no return. A country that denies science is on a fast path downhill.

Republicans are militarists. Trump has fed the military-industrial complex with considerable new money and also funded a trillion dollar expansion of the nuclear arsenal. The UN nuclear weapons ban is not even considered by Republicans. Instead the US is spending a trillion dollars on an upgrade of its nuclear arsenal. Feel safer ? Think about it. This is a really bad government jobs program that specializes in building Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Military is deployed world-wide. This can not end well. It is hard to imagine a worse way to use resources. Because the military-industrial complex won, we are within a short distance of destroying ourselves.

Republicans renewed nuclear arsenal like the world has never seen. Long standing international agreements were broken for this, so there will likely be a new arms race. Trump broke the deal with Iran to stop their nuclear program, but is sold the technology to Saudi Arabia without bothering to get Congress approval. What you prepare for will surely come to pass.

When they are not governing, Republicans think austerity is good policy and wail about huge government debt. All that changes if they are in control. Then it is ok to pass trillion dollar tax gifts for the wealthy while piling up taxpayer debt and cuts to social programs. This exacerbates income inequality, a fundamental cause of many of our problems. Voodoo economics has been discredited, but Republicans rely on it. Extreme wealth inequality can kill democracy.

Resulting deficits put Social Security, Medicare and other social safety net programs at risk.

Civil rights and voting rights: ROLLED BACK

Workers' rights and consumer rights: TRAMPLED

The right to choose: GONE

LGBTQ equality: DENIED

Republicans have created racist, humanitarian crisis at the border. Abandoned long standing international agreements.

Abandonment of traditional American high values.

Religious bigotry accelerates the culture war that includes denigration of racial minorities, woman, gays, trans, anti-abortion, and religion, in the schools and the public square. Expanded gun rights. Regular mass shootings underscore the wilding of America.

Republicans under Trump didn't act to repair crumbling infrastructure.

Militarization of foreign policy, downsizing of the State Department.

Contined the forever wars in an effort to hold together the empire.

Corruption at the highest levels of government benefits party loyalists, polluters, privatizers, etc.

Surveillance by the NSA captures every electrical pulse and extends to Internet connected devices creeping into every cell[phone, telephone, home, and automobile.

Republicans are militarists and, while their budget cuts funding for the people, it expands the military. The forever war is assured as long as the AUMF is in place and the President is a Republican.

An authoritarian head of state who constantly lies, ignores the emoluments clause of the Constitution, engages in self-dealing, nepotism, has been elected without the popular vote, probably with Russian assistance. Disdains former democratic allies, while creating a new axis of tyrannies.

Rule by corporations was facilitated by the Citizens United decision. That is the very definition of Fascism, which is what we seem to be facing.

We may have lost WWII.

We would do well to go back to FDR’s Second Bill of Rights which looks a lot like Bernie Sanders agenda. Republicans call it socialism, thinking that the argument is over once they have said that. It is not.

Bibliography

How Fascism Works, The Politics of Us and Them: Jason Stanley

See here.