I’m glad to see ex-Republicans like Charlie Sykes calling out the Republican Party for embracing white nationalism and political violence, and it’s a little jarring to see his dire warnings about where this is all headed.
Unfortunately, calls for violence are no longer confined merely to the far edges of the right’s fever swamps.
Just last month, at an event held by right-wing group Turning Point USA, an attendee asked, “When do we get to use the guns?” The audience applauded, The Atlantic reported. “How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”
Prominent figures on the right have also penned fictionalized fantasies of racial violence. Kurt Schlichter is a columnist at the conservative website Townhall.com and fills in as a guest host on Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated radio show. He has also written a series of books featuring what one critic called “white genocide paranoia and race war fantasy.”
Prominent figures on the right have also penned fictionalized fantasies of racial violence.
Schlichter’s self-published Kelly Turnbull series, Christian Vanderbrouk wrote, “imagines a red state/blue state split, the latter now a progressive dystopia called the People’s Republic of North America, where whites have been impoverished and left homeless by reparations taxes.” In the books, Schlichter describes a brutal and hyperviolent “all-out war.”
In Schlichter’s books — which are widely praised on the right — the body count of progressives, minorities and even police officers is extraordinarily high. This can be dismissed as hyperbole and lib-triggering lulz … at least until the shooting starts.
But there are a few rather important things lacking from Sykes’s analysis. At no point does he mention the near certainty that the Republicans will win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections. He doesn’t mention that it’s a good bet they’ll win control of the U.S. Senate, too. He doesn’t address what it means that the American people are looking at all of this horrifying behavior and preparing to reward it with political power.
Maybe Sykes doesn’t address these things because he has no answer for how it’s possible, nor for how to prevent it. But if there’s a point to writing these types of pieces, it must be more than to just preview the atrocities. We need to know what the hell to do.
We lack solutions because we still can’t diagnose what’s going wrong. A jury can award a $25 million verdict against the organizer of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, but the electorate is going to put those people, or folks just like them, in charge of the Capitol Building they stormed on January 6.
It’s like an asteroid, headed straight for the Earth, and we’re complaining about the asteroid rather than the destruction it will cause.
I’ll be the first one to say I have no real solutions or diagnoses — other than the country is very evenly divided and seeking to govern in any capacity causes the previous supporters to demand a check on what you propose to do. But I’ll say for sure one big problem is not naming the Republicans as the enemy. We are validating their behavior by seeking to govern with them as bipartisan partners. Perhaps this is a demand that must be met because it benefits Manchin specifically. But it harms Biden’s own party’s brand, and helps elevate the Republican brand.
I’m not saying this would help prevent the losses of Congress. That seems like a law of American Politics. But I’ve also never seen such a disconnect with reality and what’s being reported in the media. Blaming the American Rescue Plan for inflation, but we see the same inflation pressure worldwide (although it’s lower in Asia…because they’ve dealt with the pandemic better). It’s an unreality. We don’t have shortages of stuff! We have so much stuff that it’s having trouble keeping up with how good the economy is!
As I said in a previous thread, Biden is suffering because young people do not like him. He is fine with seniors, but if you’re only breaking even then you need youth to be in the 50’s-60’s to push you over the top. That’s not happening right now. Because Sinema and Manchin are forcing him to break promises made. Just wait until student loan payments start again in January:
https://twitter.com/pollsandvotes/status/1465032602914631692?s=21
This is specifically Dems and Dem Leaners.
Where is the urgency from Democrats?
In my view, the decision or inability to change the filibuster has been our downfall. The framing from the beginning was unity, which reporters, taking the Republican bait (as they always do), interpreted as bipartisanship. Republicans were never going to play ball, but they sure as hell were going to use the narrative of bipartisanship to keep attacking Biden, making it look like he wasn’t accomplishing anything. Once his agenda came to a standstill, Republicans and the conservative media empire could do what they do best—create an alternate reality and brand the Democratic Party, which never has a sufficient unified response. Day after day reporters ask the same process questions derived from GOP talking points. Democrats never develop an effective communications strategy for flipping the narrative. They always appear to be on the defensive. The big cost of not changing filibuster is that we lost the opportunity to push through voting rights, police reform, and immigration legislation. Now we are left with reporters asking over and over again: “Do you really think they will be able to pass it in the Senate before the end of the year?” And our answer: “But Manchin and Sinema never woul…”
Yep we got our priorities backwards. The asteroid is headed straight at us and we don’t see it or ignore it bc we got all these here progressive ideas we gotta pass.
Voting rights isn’t just a progressive idea. It is saving our democracy. Republicans are gearing the system in their favor all across the country and the Democrats in Washington aren’t doing anything to stop them.
I was pedaling a bike at the Y the other day and guess what? The tv, as per usual, was tuned into Fox News. Oh what joy. Anyways, they were saying as how so many dem cities had an increase in killings. They had a list of them on the tv and said how bad they were. The Dems can’t fix the lawlessness. They are useless was what they said. And on it goes and some of the Ys customers were saying and nodding how right they were. So on it goes, Then of course they went on to say how really bad Biden was, couldn’t fix anything,
so after so much of this and not a word of push back from our dem leaders or the President guess what folks believe? There’s your asteroid. Dems really can’t fix shit and argue over the big bill when then need to get their priorities right. Fix the voting rights, fix the debt limit and screw the build back better. Get Manchin and Sinema to support the filibuster and pass those bills and if you can’t do that then you lose. Passing the big spending bill will get you nothing. We don’t need Charlie Sykes to tell us we are fucked. MSNBC and CNN can whine all they want and it means zip. Fight back damn it.
My YMCA banned news shows (apart from sports), thank God.
Let’s not mention that Trump didn’t fix the lawlessness either.
Really tired of this defeatism. Yes, this is going to be a very heavy lift. Thing one: nominate winners. If they have a D after their name, and they have a reasonable chance of winning in the general, that’s our choice regardless of where they are on the political spectrum.
This utterly useless bullshit where Democrats are afraid to call out Republicans, and afraid to let Republican voters get the Republican policies they vote for, is creating this current impasse and enabling the fascists to get exactly what they want..
To me it is obvious that Republicans are a clear threat to our country. Yet, Democrats aren’t saying that.
So, to people who are politically naïve or who don’t pay attention, this failure to call out Republicans for what they are, is just a tacit admission that Republicans aren’t a clear threat to the country. So guess what, they’ll vote Republican after voting Democrat in 2020 because why not? Throw the bums out or whatever.
In the long term, it’d be better to kick Manchin and Sinema to the fucking curb, declare the Republican Party as a clear threat to the country, and then demand voters pay attention to what is happening and to vote for more Democrats in 2022, or else. The “or else” is simply allowing the politically naïve to get the Republican policy that the politically naïve idiotically vote for.
It’s starting to become obvious that the only way to prevent outright violence, is outright Federalism. And it’s becoming clear that the Democrat’s desire to “save everyone” means that they will save no one.
Let Republican states get Republican policy. If they like it, then good, that’s fucking Federalism for ya. Texas can make abortion a capital offense, and California can legalize all drugs. If Californians don’t like it, they can vote for Republicans, and if Texans don’t like it they can vote for Democrats. Otherwise we keep this impasse where NOTHING that is needed gets done because the whole BothSidesDoIt™ BigLie continues by the media, because The Democrats aren’t screaming that they don’t.
This god damn impasse exists because Democrats are trying to save everyone at the same time, which pisses off politically aware Democrats who know that Democrats aren’t doing what is necessary…AND it pisses off politically unaware voters who are allowed to believe that the Republican Party isn’t their enemy because they never have to actually stew in the Republican policies they go and fucking vote for.
Federalism or bust, literally.