If tomorrow’s election delivers the Republicans the power they hope for, what then?
The dark voice I often turn to for a glass-is-half-full-but-it’s-hemlock perspective is Brynn Tannehill, who wrote last week, and I’m excerpting here for brevity:
The credible, close-call attempt to kill or maim Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a second time, and the GOP response, signals how close the US is to the end of the road as a Democracy….
There is the implicit assumption by Republican leaders that violence will come for their opponents, and not for them. And at the moment, they're correct. But, most of them weren't in Iraq from 2004-2006.
I had a front row seat as Sunnis, cut off from power, formed AQI and started launching a campaign of terror aimed at government officials, particularly judges. …
One lesson I took away is that once political murders are normalized, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. It turns into an accelerating cycle of violence…
The repeated violence against Pelosi, and ongoing stochastic terror, is a promise of what is to come. If the GOP seizes power, you can be sure that they will do as little as possible to prevent, stop, deter, or prosecute political killings.
The DoJ will become a tool for imprisoning political opponents. It also won't lift a finger to do anything about assassinations of Democrats, journalists, or political enemies or disfavored minorities (like trans people or doctors treating them).
The problem with their thinking is that they assume that the status quo will hold: that their opponents will continue to feel like they can vote their way out of the problem, the threat is not perceived as existential, and they will eschew targeted violence…
Take it from someone who spent most of the aughts studying insurgency, counter insurgency, destabilized countries, hybrid governments, and evaluating the risks of civil war: what is happening with Pelosi is playing with fire.
Oh America. You’re supposed to be a shining city on a hill, America. What the Fox News is happening to you? Do you know where you’re going any more?
