3d ago

What exactly is the republican game plan here?

At this point they're actively hostile to all American Institutions that keeps them in check and are also actively hostile to the population itself. Trump's previous Term was comparatively tame and even if he won in 2020 it would've been tamer than this. This is pretty much war being waged against the working class by the rich.

Do these people believe that they'll be able to assert total control of all government institutions by 2028? Or is it some form of fascist self destruction ritual? Because right now even the chuds are having second thoughts about their party.

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Destroying every institution is a necessary part of rebuilding it the way they want.
- They are simply embracing a fact that the Liberals are too cowardly to even discuss. The sclerotic republic is dead, and the constitution is not worth the paper it is written on. It has been dead for a while. Blatantly violating the Bill of Rights has been a cliche for the past 25 years, but it isn't just the Bill of Rights. Powers vested in Congress by the constitution, like the power to declare war, or the power of the purse, have been delegated to the Executive in various ways for the better part of a century. Elections have been stolen outright by the judiciary. The entire elected government is immune from public pressure.
  Events like Covid and the Gaza Genocide have demonstrated there is nothing stopping them from deliberately killing millions of people. What is the point of pretending any more? It's a waste of time.
  I feel like "Destroying every institution" is giving them too much credit. These institutions were all withered carcasses to begin with. Bush v. Gore was 25 years ago. The Republicans stole a presidential election and the Democrat's response was to LET IT HAPPEN because fighting it would be too divisive. From there we get the Global War on Terror and the Patriot Act, and that is the high water mark. Those policies were never reversed. Nobody responsible suffered personal consequences, let alone political or criminal consequences. These institutions have had the blood drained out of them for a while. They are finally being dispensed with.
  Zoomed in a little bit more from the "these institutions were already dead" diatribe, there are practical implications for doing this. There is little motivation for migrants to make court appearances in municipal / state courts if the feds will just use that as a honeypot to arrest and deport them. This effectively turns them into fugitives, "justifying" their arrest and deportation at a later time. It is a policy crafted with the deliberate intent to boost "gang" behavior (creating underground networks of "justice," patronage, and bribery) by ensuring no legal recourses are available for any dispute whatsoever.
  
  The Republicans stole a presidential election and the Democrat's response was to LET IT HAPPEN because fighting it would be too divisive. From there we get the Global War on Terror and the Patriot Act, and that is the high water mark. Those policies were never reversed. Nobody responsible suffered personal consequences, let alone political or criminal consequences.
  This right here. Anybody who tries to downplay the tectonic significance of these events is either stupid or lying.
  Seeing the current reality requires viewing history not as a series of discreet disconnected events but a continuum with each new event born from the previous. On some level the democrats understand that holding the republicans accountable would necessitate holding themselves complicit.
  And by marketing their desire to "let bygones be bygones" as some gesture toward institutional stability and legitimacy (while actually deflecting from their own collaboration) they have done more harm to institutional legitimacy than the republicans ever could manage alone.
  
  Really, it goes back to Nixon, and Gerald Ford's pardon. A general pardon for crimes which may or may not have happened, so don't worry about the actual crimes which took place and don't bother investigating what happened because as a matter of law, they're moot. From that moment, there was impunity. Issues of consequential importance for the republic DON'T FUCKING MATTER. Death to America.
  But of course, it wasn't all the napalm he rained on Vietnam that got him impeached. It was some DNC after-hours skullduggery.
  
  True, which explains why the liberals bought into the narrative of Russiagate and the theater of Mueller Reports and all that bullshit, which was a farcical mirror of the Clinton (both of them) hearings about Libya and blowjobs. They really thought it might work but the whole Nixon debacle proved it was toothless spectacle, even when they tried going after some domestic side crime instead of the massive criminal actions taken by default as a president of empire.
  The "success" of Watergate was actually huge poison pill. It got Nixon to resign and appeared to work. But the subsequent pardon and the vector (some domestic skullduggery, to borrow your word) ensured that the business as usual of killing countless innocents abroad would forever remain beyond reproach.
  Marg bar, you know, the thing.
- I don’t like Naomi Klein’s anti-China brainworms so I’m gonna skip that section, but I’m reading The Shock Doctrine right now and it really does seem like this is the plan - to shock, destroy, and rebuild. Shock Doctrine is what neoliberal America imposed on so much of the world, so this really is an example what’s learned in the periphery coming home to the core.

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