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Catastrophe IS their plan... [1]

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Date: 2023-05-12  

“Totalitarianism became this century’s curse only because it so terrifyingly took care of its problems.” — Arendt

As a scholar of Hannah Arendt and Paul Ricoeur, the parallels between today’s Republican Party and the rise of Fascist regimes in the 20th century are appallingly similar. Book bans, marginalizing minority communities with moral arguments, attacking the press and anyone else who speaks out against the regime, targeting businesses and universities for failing to tow the party line, widespread propaganda campaigns, and manipulating the rules of democracy to ensure minoritarian rule are just a few of the behaviors carefully described by both Arendt and Ricoeur who observed it happening around them in the 1930s.

The debt limit battle being waged by the current GQP is nothing less than economic terrorism. Biden is doing the only thing that has ever worked to combat terrorists’ demands, refuse to negotiate. If he doesn’t, this rabid cabal of autocratic sycophants will pull the same levers next year to ensure America enters a recession in time for the election. For today’s Republican party, the only thing that matters is control. All else, even the stability of the Republic, are expendable.

That’s why there are MAGA House members refusing to vote for a debt limit increase no matter what Barely Speaker McCarthy dangles in front of them. They want the U.S. to default on its loans. They want the economy to crash. They want to tear down the system until nothing is left but their promises to “take care of these problems” they will blame on President Biden and the Democrats. There is no end game for this crowd that saves the Republic.

Republicans read the same polls we all do that shows their policies are unpopular with the majority of Americans. They don’t care. They are more interested in being right than being responsible. Republicans can see the same demographic changes coming toward them that will increasingly isolate them from the majority of voters no matter how finely they slice the gerrymanders or grant themselves the power to reject election outcomes as Texas is doing right now. It’s why they are doing it. They’re not ignorant of the impacts their policies will have on America, they’re counting on them.

For today’s GQP, the only path to salvation in the next two election cycles is the implementation of American Apartheid ruled by Christian Nationalist White Supremacists. The debt ceiling is not a negotiating lever. It’s a guillotine with America’s head in the stock, and the extremists on the right gleefully yanking the rope. If they can create an economic catastrophe great enough to inflict deep and lasting pain on the American Middle Class, and if they can, finally, completely shatter the effectiveness of Congress in preventing such catastrophes, then they are counting on Arendt’s observation that only Totalitarianism will be able to fix the multiple crises they created.

They can be stopped though. All will depend on how effectively voting rights groups and the Democratic Party can organize 80 million voters to vote for a Democrat in the coming cycle. That’s a tall order for a party without a strong history of organization and communication, but there is hope. The last cycle showed a strong surge of young and independent voters toward the Democratic Party, in particular in races where voting rights and abortion rights were big motivators. Add TFG to the top of the GQP ticket again, and we might just stand a chance.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/12/2168987/-Catastrophe-IS-their-plan

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