Despite the failure of the January 6th insurrection – what result other than failure did you expect from a Trump endeavor? – American democracy is still under attack. If at first you think I’m engaged in hyperbole; read on. You will change your mind.
Especially after reading recent works of Madeleine Albright, Masha Gessen and Timothy Snyder I am convinced that democracies die from within not from attacks from the outside. America’s right wing domestic terrorists are the greatest threat to American democracy along with America as we know and love it. The real danger is that they have taken over the Republican Party and/or have intimidated enough legislators to have effective control of one of America’s two political parties of significance.
In Arizona an “audit” of the November 2020 Maricopa County is underway. Transparency along with security is close to nonexistent. The organization conducting the “audit” is suspect to say the least. Add to that the recent reporting that one of the people physically touching ballots was part of the January 6th Capital Building activities, a failed state legislature incumbent whose name was on said ballots and a “blacklisted” former law enforcement officer. Hardly either a qualified or impartial audit worker!
Speaking of January 6th, a significant number of those arrested so far have expressed no remorse. The most we have gotten from some of them is that they are blaming Trump in an effort to save their own skins.
Just how many prominent elected Republicans actually believe Trump and his Big Lie is a question at this point. That being said, all but a small handful are falling in line with it. When Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney are labeled as insufficiently conservative while simultaneously Marjorie Taylor Greene Matt Gaetz are hauling in millions you know the inmates are running the asylum!
In a move of incredible chutzpah, (and I don’t mean that in a good way) the Republicans have used the Big Lie to justify introducing voter suppression laws in 43 states at my last count. The Big Lie of course never happened (that’s why it’s called the Big Lie) and therefore this is literally a solution in search of a problem. However it does play well with that huge segment of its base that is racist.
We have known the GOP was in bad shape for some time. I remember during the 2016 debates thinking that Chris Christie often looked like the reasonable person and the intellect on the stage and thought how low the party had sunk. Now those look like the good old days.
The battle for America is far from over and the main enemy is from within. I am among those who expect other atrocities but an event of the scale of January 6th may not be in the cards. In part the effort to destroy American democracy is an asymmetrical war indistinguishable from other terrorist activity around the world.
This effort undertaken largely by self-proclaimed patriots (what a joke!) is and has been to a degree foreign aided. The domestic terrorists’ main foreign benefactor is Vladimir Putin. Putin completely controls Russia and they have given the domestic terrorists and Trump aid primarily in the form of online attacks and misinformation. Unlike Trump, Putin is intelligent. He knew that if he got lucky and Trump was elected in 2016 he would not last for long. Trump proved to be Putin’s bonus and useful idiot of short duration. Putin’s real goal was to topple American democracy by sowing the seeds of doubt in the process among a significant portion of the American people. To date he has had at least limited success.
I am not calling for the banning of the Republican Party. Much better for America would be the party ridding itself of the bad element and returning to being a center-right party for which there is a market in American politics. Until and unless that happens America remains under attack and most frighteningly largely from within.
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