The GOP Plot Against America

[kpete]

The following isn’t written by some hysterical blogger or a middle-aged Resistance wine-mom. It’s written by Robert Kagan (!) and it’s remarkably clear eyed about what’s really going on.

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Let’s be clear about what that America will look like. An administration that steals an election by abusing power must continue abusing that power to keep it. And Trump will have no shortage of excuses to wield power. A stolen election will bring tens of millions into the streets, possibly for weeks and months. The nation will have descended into an extra-constitutional civil conflict, with each side using the tools available to try to prevail.

For Trump, those tools are those of the executive, which the founders entrusted with immense power, from the administration of justice to the defense of the nation by the armed forces. The administration’s opponents, lacking institutional power, will be able to count only on its millions in the streets, and on the democratic consciences of individual judges and justices and federal employees, armed and unarmed, across the country. But consider what they will be asking. They will be counting on federal employees to do the “right thing” by turning against the man whom even the Supreme Court has declared their legitimate president.

Meanwhile, Trump and his minions will purge the federal government of all those deemed disloyal. Barr will open and expand investigations into anyone suspected of conspiring against the president, in 2016, in 2020 and for as long as Trump remains in power. Owners of mainstream media outlets will become targets of investigations by government agencies. Smears against Democratic lawmakers will mount. Trump’s supporters at massive rallies will shout “Lock them up!” And who will come to the rescue of the persecuted? Who in a position of power will have an incentive to reverse the events that kept them in power?

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This may sound like the Sinclair Lewis novel “It Can’t Happen Here.” Perhaps it won’t happen. Maybe Trump and his gang don’t have the skill or steely courage required to pull it off. Perhaps they will just fade away. If so, we will be fortunate, but undeserving. We kept counting on others to save us — our institutions, our political leaders, our courts — but help never arrived. And as we waited for someone, anyone, to do the right thing, we moved closer to the end.

Now all we have left is the people. The voters, for all their failings, may prove more trustworthy than their supposed guardians. They may deliver us by delivering an irrefutable landslide to Biden. Or, failing that, by going out into the streets in an American version of “people power” to foil the plot against their democracy. A republic, if we can save it

MORE:
https://digbysblog.net/2020/10/its-the-gop-stupid/

[Fiendish Thingy]

1. Yeah, if he steals it, a general strike with no labour, and most importantly, no buying

Will be the only option left to the people.

The people would have to be willing to stop working, and stop buying anything (after stocking up on groceries). Don’t pay any bills, cancel your Netflix, don’t buy anything from Amazon. If two thirds of Americans could do that for a month, maybe two months, I’m telling you right now, the damage to the economy would be so great and the pressure on the politicians so immense, that Mitch McConnell himself would spearhead a senate trial convicting and removing Trump in an impeachment trial before Inauguration Day.

But that’s only IF two thirds of the governed withdrew Their consent from the government.