Studying history and writing about it is so much more straightforward than white-knuckling crisis after crisis and trying to analyze them in real-time. I have read an awful lot of hypotheses about why doughfacedonny won't concede and why his sycophants refuse to admit the obvious, where the meritless lawsuits come in and every trump-appointed government official refusing to cooperate with the transition. Everything from garden variety narcissism, fund-raising, Ed is pretty sure it's all a dry run for a future election with non-braindead republican authoritarians. All these may be true to one degree or another, but what has me defecating diamonds is that the mass chaos and obstruction is about more than gaslighting and money; it's sending signals to the lone-wolf "patriots" out there to start spilling blood for the leader.
This is correct but overlooks that everything happening now and for the past six months to undermine an election outcome is a dry run for doing it for real in the future. https://t.co/AfdKxguTm8
— Mass for Shut-ins (Podcast) (@edburmila) November 10, 2020
Jack Holmes at Esquire put the Driftglassian theory of how much republicans hate this country and hate anyone not on their team or under their control pretty well last week:
The Republican Party is an authoritarian outfit. They do not believe in democracy and, in their actions, they are enemies of democracy. This is a polite way to say "fascist," which freaks people out and shuts down their brains. But it's the same. They believe they should be in power, and if they don't win the support of a majority of citizens—which these days, they usually do by stopping certain citizens from voting and drawing maps where those citizens' votes count for less—then they'll simply try to steal the election. That Donald Trump is lazy, and his plot to do so has been clumsy and telegraphed, does not change the fact that international observers have already issued a report on his behavior this election cycle that reads like an indictment of some tinpot dictator.
Fascists also do not believe in the rule of law. As Robert Altemeyer pointed out a while ago, authoritarian leaders (social dominators) believe in the law of the jungle, 'if I can take it I will, the rules don't apply to me', and can and will say anything they need to in order to get power and wealth or whatever other shiny things they want. Most are simply not smart enough or powerful enough to get this far. But now Pandora's box is open and the fascist republican base will accept nothing less. So, because doughfacedonny and his sycophants have no shame, don't give a squirt of piss about rules and norms, and spent the last 4 years stacking the courts with as many partisan judges as they could, they will throw every stupid, baseless argument they can at the wall and see if anything will stick.
But the larger point is creating chaos, convincing the brainwashed fascists that the election was illegitimate, and fearmongering to plant the seeds of revenge. The "stab-in-the-back" narrative floating beneath the surface since Vietnam is what at least some of donny's people are trying to stoke. And because the rural republican followers don't get out of their caves very often to see how utterly unpopular trump really is, revenge for having their leader ripped away from them might be marinating within some of the 71 million reprogrammable meatbags. We have already had a ring of fascist "patriots" rounded up for plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan, and maga idiots arrested with guns in their cars. If even one in a million of these republican assholes gets through to commit violence in trump's name they could cause innumerable casualties.
Doughfacedonny is the greatest mass murderer of Americans in history, even now as COVID races through rural, republican areas of the country as well as the cities his administration does nothing. Sure, he's not coughing in people's faces personally, but deliberately acting against even the most basic public health measures ensures that the death toll will continue to rise. Republicans are doing this to their own supporters.. because they hate America and just want as many of us to die as possible. If some good 'ole boys start shooting people in his name, acting on his urgings that is, it is the same thing, this is the definition of stochastic terrorism. As usual I hope beyond hope that I am wrong, but every day that passes with no one throwing a damn net on doughfacedonny and dragging him away is another day for those seeds of revenge to grow. Every day of confusion and doubt is a day where some ammosexual can decide to go out with a flash of glory (from their diseased perspective) and take as many of "them" with him as possible.
I win means you lose to doughfacedonny, he can't get away with this.
No comments:
Post a Comment