THE GOP RED LINE
This week, Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, one of the most extreme members of the Tea Party movement announced that he would not run for re-election in 2024.
Buck’s unstated reason for this decision was his recognition that his position that the 2020 election was not stolen and that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president, is a position so at odds with the beliefs of Republican voters that he would have no likelihood of success if he did run in the 2024 election.
Buck’s decision followed the election as Speaker of the House of Representatives of Mike Johnson, a sworn believer in the Big Lie that Donald Trump was the victim of massive voter fraud, acclaimed now as “the architect” of the attempt by House Republicans to deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election by voting to oppose the results of the Electoral College on January 6, 2021. That Buck himself had joined the rest of the caucus in making Johnson’s election unanimous - despite having publicly stated he would not vote for an election denier as Speaker - was his recognition of defeat.
As of today, the litmus test to be considered a Republican office-holder in good standing is to answer “yes” to the question, “Do you support a radical revolutionary movement to overthrow the government of the United States as organized under the Constitution?”
Radical. Reactionary. Revolutionary.
There’s a seven letter word that describes that political movement. It begins with “f” and ends with “t.”
Fascist.
The MAGA Red Hat in our political system is now synonymous with the Black Shirt of the Italian Fascists and the Brown Shirt of the German Nazis.
According to Jonathan Karl, in his coming book “Tired of Winning,” when he asked Steve Bannon why Donald Trump was holding the first rally of his 2024 re-election campaign in Waco, Texas, on April 19, Bannon responded, “We’re the Trump Davidians.”
It was not a coincidence; it was not a case where Donald Trump is a fucking moron with no knowledge of history or anything else. Holding the first rally of his campaign on April 19 in Waco, Texas, was a deliberate choice . April 19 is the date of the first act of violent resistance in what would become the American Revolution - the confrontation of the Minutemen and the British Troops on Lexington Green - and the anniversary of an act of radical resistance by the far right militia movement in contemporary America in the Branch Davidian confrontation, both acts were direct resistance to the established government.
When the rally opened to the recording of the “J6 Choir” - ta group of 20 January 6 insurrectionists who were currently held in the Washington DC Jail - singing “The Star Spangled Banner” over the jailhouse phone while the jumbotrons in the stadium played footage of the January 6 insurrection that was cut in such a way as to laud the insurrectionists, while Trump stood before the audience with his hand over his heart - pledging allegiance to the insurrection - that was also a deliberate act.
Believe people when they tell you who they are.
Believe Trump when he told the crowd, “For seven years, you and I have been taking on the corrupt, rotten, and sinister forces trying to destroy America. They’re not going to do it, but they do get closer and closer with rigged elections. Twenty twenty-four is the final battle.”
Four days after Enrique Tarrio and the other leaders of the Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in the storming of the Capitol. Trump posted on his Truth (anti)Social: “The DOJ and FBI are destroying the lives of so many Great American Patriots, right before our very eyes. GET SMART AMERICA, THEY ARE COMING AFTER YOU!!!”
Karl makes the point that the Trump campaign’s focus on “retribution” - averring to Trump’s speech to CPAC last Spring where he declared “I am your retribution”- relates directly with the “Come Retribution” effort made by the Confederacy’s Secret Service to capture or assassinate President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Trump’s speech was not a direct call for the assassination of his political opponents, but it did advocate their destruction by other means.
Over the past months, there have been reports of the “2025 Project” of Trump supporters to plan for a return to power that has them “hit the deck running” with proposals to overturn the independence of the Federal Civil Service, to remake Federal agencies to directly support the aims of President Trump, to overthrow the system of government that has existed since the Constitution was adopted in 1789.
This past week, the New York Times reported that these Trump supporters are now making lists of lawyers who would be hired by the Trump Administration, who are specificially NOT Federalist Society members, who are now seen as potentially disloyal in an administration that will personalize Trump’s control under the theory of the “unitary executivem” lawyers who will follow Trump’s orders, not previous standards of the rule of law.
These seditious conspirators are not committing their sedition in dark alleys or candle-lit basements. They’re giving quotes about their aims and their goal to the New York Times. They’re the most open group of traitors in the history of any country.
“We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers. We will drive out the globalists; we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country. We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House. And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.”
Believe people when they tell you who they are.
And now it is clear that allegiance to this revolutionary insurrection against the United States of America as we know it, this campaign of open sedition, is the Be All and End All of what it means to be a member of the Republican Party today.
They are all insurrectionists. They are all seditionists. There are no “moderates,” there are no “traditional conservatives,” left in the Republican Party.
The Republican Party is now the Party of Insurrectionary Sedition. They make no bones about it. They expel those who do not see the writing on the wall and voluntarily depart, like Ken Buck. They promote a leading seditionist to be Speaker of the House of Representatives.
They are like the Nazi Party when the election of 1930 brought the party into the German Reichstag. Mike Jordan is their version of Herman Göring when he was made President of the Reichstag in 1931. Dedicated to the overthrow of the institution in which they claim membership.
Believe people when they tell you who they are.
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Remember that in 1980, Ronald Reagan declared himself for states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, near where the Freedom Summer killings occurred and the KKK had reigned, then his campaign sabotaged the release of the hostages from Iran to hurt Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign. The republican party really hasn't changed.
The mind-boggling thing about the Church of the Latter Day Trump is that he is an absolute caricature of the demagogue. He'd be too over the top for a film of "It Can't Happen Here." From beings in alternate reality a huge chunk of America has evolved into being very bad fiction.
I guess bad novels--in this verging-on-illiterate society, bad graphic novels-- are indeed dangerous.