Americans face a stark choice in this election: do you want to preserve and to defend the American democracy we have enjoyed for 246 years, or do you want to burn it all down for a grifter, con man, thief and criminal who wants to be the autocratic dictator of an authoritarian GQP tyranny of the minority of White Christian Nationalists?
On Thursday morning, the wannabe dictator gave us a preview of his dystopian vision of “American carnage.”
Donald Trump suggested again yesterday that he’d issue presidential pardons to Jan. 6 riotersinsurrectionists if he returns to the White House, echoing a line he’s said several times before. Yesterday, however, the Republican went even further in expressing support for those who attacked the U.S. Capitol.
During an on-air interview with conservative radio host Wendy Bell — one of his first broadcast interviews since the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search nearly a month ago — Trump said he supports “full pardons” for many rioters, whom he would also reward with some kind of official government “apology.”
But as The Washington Postreported, the former president went on to break new ground.
Trump, during his conversation with Bell on Thursday morning, also said that he met with some Jan. 6 defendants in his office this week and that he is helping some financially. “I am financially supporting people that are incredible and they were in my office actually two days ago, so they’re very much in my mind,” Trump said. “It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to them. What they’ve done to these people is disgraceful.”
In other words, the former president — the ostensible leader of one of the nation’s two political parties and the presumptive frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination — wants to give pardons, apologies, and money to political [domestic terrorists] who launched a violent insurrectionist attack on his own country’s Capitol.
Trump is trying to turn his MAGA/QAnon thugs into political prisoners, patriots and “J6” martyrs, and turn his reelection into a “restoration” of sorts, like Napoleon returning from exile in Elba for “the Hundred Days.” Your Waterloo is coming for you, Donny boy. I’ll be damned if this country ever apologizes to these goddamn domestic terrorists. Long prison sentences for everyone – we’ll build more prisons.
By evening, the pro-democracy forces rallied to respond to the threats from this evil treasonous traitor.
Last night in Philadelphia, President Joe Biden warned Americans of the societal dangers posed by Trump’s twisted and dangerous ideology. Hours earlier, the Democrat’s immediate predecessor had helped prove Biden right.
Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal.
Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.
Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.
I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.
These are hard things.
But I’m an American President — not the President of red America or blue America, but of all America.
And I believe it is my duty — my duty to level with you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful.
Mark Finchem and Kari Lake confer earlier this year on the House floor. (Capitol Media Services file photo by Howard Fischer)
And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.
They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.
They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.
They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.
And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.
They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.
That’s why respected conservatives, like Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig, has called Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans, quote, a “clear and present danger” to our democracy.
But while the threat to American democracy is real, I want to say as clearly as we can: We are not powerless in the face of these threats. We are not bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy.
There are far more Americans — far more Americans from every — from every background and belief who reject the extreme MAGA ideology than those that accept it. (Applause.)
And, folks, it is within our power, it’s in our hands — yours and mine — to stop the assault on American democracy.
I believe America is at an inflection point — one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that’s to come after.
And now America must choose: to move forward or to move backwards? To build the future or obsess about the past? To be a nation of hope and unity and optimism, or a nation of fear, division, and of darkness?
It is “a time for choosing.” (Take that, Ronnie.)
Steve Benen continues:
Circling back to our earlier coverage, I’m struck by the degree to which the Republican has come full circle when it comes to the rioters. Indeed, let’s not forget that during the Jan. 6 attack, the then-president sat on his hands and ignored calls to intervene. More than three hours after the violence began, Trump released a video urging his mob of radicalized followers to disperse.
But even then, the Republican made clear that he and the rioters were on the same side. In the video he released at the time, Trump told his supporters that there had been “an election that was stolen from us.” He added, “We love you. You’re very special.”
It was soon after when the then-president started to realize that this, at least at the time, was a politically untenable position: His own cabinet had begun conversations about removing Trump from office by way of the 25th Amendment. He and his team decided he needed “cover“ to remain in the White House.
And so, Trump shifted his message: The then-president said on Jan. 7, “Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem.” He went on to describe the riot as a “heinous attack.”
Reading from a prepared text, Trump added, “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy…. To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country, and to those who broke the law: You will pay.”
Of course he was lying!
In the months that followed, Trump struggled to keep up the pretense that he almost certainly never believed in the first place. By May 2021, the former president was suggesting the rioters were victims. He eventually started describing them as “patriots.” Around the same time, the former president first broached the subject of extending pardons to convicted radicals.
And now, the multi-step process has not only brought Trump back to the beginning, he’s actually gone further than ever before.
Trump “loved” the rioters.
Trump then condemned the rioters’ “heinous attack.”
Trump then said the rioters are innocent “patriots” and their attack “represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.”
Trump now wants to give them pardons, apologies, and “financial support.”
To be sure, whether the rioters will ever actually see such money is an open question: The former president does not easily part with his own cash. It’s one thing for him to say he’ll offer financial support; it’s something else for him to actually pick up his checkbook.
Either way, of course, the larger point remains the same: As questions swirl about the Republican Party’s commitment to democratic principles, Trump has picked a side — and it’s the wrong one.
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss recently wondered about what future Americans might say about Jan. 6, and the degree to which the answer depends on whether the United States is a democracy or an autocracy. “If the latter,” Beschloss wrote, “the nation’s authoritarian leaders might celebrate January 6 as one of great days in U.S. history.”
One former president apparently doesn’t need to wait for the future to draw such a conclusion.
The White House had already signaled days in advance why President Joe Biden had scheduled a prime-time address and the topic the Democrat intended to explore. With this in mind, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy came up with a plan to try to turn the tables on the debate over the future of our democracy.
[McCarthy] aligned himself with former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to undercut federal law enforcement over the search of Mar-a-Lago, condemning the court-ordered seizure of classified documents from the former president’s home as an “assault on democracy.” In a half-hour speech delivered from Scranton, Pa., Mr. McCarthy sought to take the themes that President Biden was hitting in a prime-time address and turn them on their head against Democrats, in a remarkable attempt at political jujitsu aimed at muddying the waters about Mr. Trump’s conduct and his handling of sensitive government material.
The political strategy behind the speech was based on a relatively straightforward idea: McCarthy knew that Biden would accuse much of the Republican Party of abandoning democracy, so the House GOP leader would effectively deliver remarks in which he said, “Oh yeah? Well I think you’re the one who’s undermining democracy.”
As part of his remarks, for example, the Californian declared, “Joe Biden and Democrats support defunding the police, which led to an historic rise in crime. That is an assault on democracy.”
In reality, Biden and Democratic leaders have repeatedly and explicitly rejected defunding the police; it’s McCarthy’s own members who keep talking about defunding the FBI; sharp increases in crime rates began during Trump’s presidency; and debates over law enforcement funding allocations do not represent an “assault on democracy.”
The minority leader added, “Joe Biden and Big Tech colluded to silence your freedom of speech and shut down your voice on the largest communication platform in the world. That is an assault on democracy.”
To be sure, this might theoretically be a problem if such “collusion” happened in reality, but since McCarthy made this conspiracy theory up, it’s easily discarded.
The GOP leader added, “Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are hiring an army of 87,000 new IRS agents, more than the population of Scranton, Pennsylvania, to do what? To snoop around your bank accounts. your small businesses. That is an assault on democracy.”
Again, McCarthy was just brazenly lying, not only about the number of IRS agents, but also about the nature of their professional work. What’s more, as federal lawmakers need to understand, enforcing tax laws is not “an assault on democracy.”
But the would-be House Speaker then tried to land the big blow: “Joe Biden and a politicized Department of Justice launched a raid on the home of his top political rival, Donald Trump. That is an assault on democracy.”
Of course, as McCarthy really ought to understand, it was Trump, not Biden, who went to great lengths to politicize federal law enforcement — which unfolded during McCarthy’s tenure, though he raised no objections at the time.
But more to the point, the House minority leader has had ample opportunity to learn just how serious the Mar-a-Lago scandal is, and instead of defending the rule of law, he’s still publicly condemning law enforcement — pretending that to do so is to put him on the right side of democracy. Indeed, the Republican suggested yesterday that investigating evidence of a suspected felony is somehow itself “an assault on democracy.”
It seems either McCarthy no longer knows what “democracy” means, or he’s cynically assuming those listening to his remarks weren’t smart enough to know the difference.
To save American democracy it is imperative that you must vote every Republican out of office. There must be a zero-tolerance policy for the enemies of democracy.
UPDATE: Conservative commentators are in full meltdown mode over President Joe Biden’s speech warning of the rise of extremism in the Republican Party as well as his recent comments calling the MAGA movement “semi-fascism.”
A new supercut video from MSNBC shows how many of those same people who’ve taken offense over the word have no problem throwing it around themselves, especially on Fox News:
The right-wing is happy to call Democrats fascists. But letting the left use that label for Republicans? Unthinkable!
2 thoughts on “A Time For Choosing: American Democracy v. GQP Authoritarianism”
“The Republicans’ reaction to Mr. Biden’s speech was remarkable. For years, they stood quietly by as Mr. Trump vilified and demonized anyone who disagreed with him — encouraging supporters to beat up protesters; demanding that his rivals be arrested; accusing critics of treason and even murder; calling opponents ‘fascists’; and retweeting a supporter saying ‘the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.’ But they rose up as one on Thursday night and Friday to complain that Mr. Biden was the one being divisive.”
This is because Republicans always see themselves as victims, martyrs for their extremist beliefs, and it is the party of grievances.
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As a student of history, I was reminded of the Strauss–Howe generational theory of history – America faces an existential crisis every 80 years or so. We were due.
America has faced many crises in its 245-year history as a republic (that has, over time, evolved toward a democracy). History informs us that at 80 year intervals, in 1780, 1860, 1940, and 2020, the nation faced massive challenges, but overcame them within five or more years three times. Hopefully, in the next few years, the same will happen to the threat to our nation provoked by Donald Trump.
—
The challenges for Joe Biden include restoring our position of world leadership in an environment of authoritarianism spreading around the globe, and meeting the evolving threat of white supremacists and racists working to undermine American democracy. The willing support of a political party that has sold its soul to Donald Trump, with Republican leaders competing to mollify him in hopes of being his successor if he is unable or chooses not to run in 2024, is a threat to the traditions and longevity of American democracy. The propaganda promoted by right wing media and social media also threatens the stability of American democracy.
The survival of the United States as a functioning democracy is clearly at stake, including the ability of Americans to insure the facts and truth of science and history are taught in schools and promoted in journalism and public knowledge, rather than right wing propaganda that denies the importance of facts and truth.
Joe Biden has the potential, if he is successful in overcoming the authoritarian challenge of Donald Trump and his supporters, to be seen in the long run of history as influential on the level of George Washington against Benedict Arnold; Abraham Lincoln against the Southern defense of slavery; and Franklin D. Roosevelt against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. As in those three times in our history, the success of promoting the survival of American democracy will take at least the years until 2025, when the next presidential inauguration takes place.
The role of historians, political scientists, and journalists in this struggle to maintain and promote democracy, equality, and freedom is a major one as America looks to its future, and as we near the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026!
–According to the Strauss–Howe generational theory of history, each generational persona unleashes a new era (called a turning) lasting around 20–25 years, in which a new social, political, and economic climate (mood) exists. They are part of a larger cyclical “saeculum” (a long human life, which usually spans between 80 and 100 years, although some saecula have lasted longer). The theory states that a crisis recurs in American history after every saeculum, which is followed by a recovery (high). During this recovery, institutions and communitarian values are strong.
So if we manage to survive this GQP assault on our democracy, we should enjoy a recovery (a turning), a restoration and renewal of American democracy in which our democratic institutions and communitarian values are restored for a period lasting around 20–25 years (a generation).
But our first order of business is crushing the anti-democracy MAGA/QAnon enemies of democracy and forcing them to wander in the political wilderness for a generation.
[McCarthy] aligned himself with former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to undercut federal law enforcement over the search of Mar-a-Lago, condemning the court-ordered seizure of classified documents from the former president’s home as an “assault on democracy.” In a half-hour speech delivered from Scranton, Pa., Mr. McCarthy sought to take the themes that President Biden was hitting in a prime-time address and turn them on their head against Democrats, in a remarkable attempt at political jujitsu aimed at muddying the waters about Mr. Trump’s conduct and his handling of sensitive government material.
“The Republicans’ reaction to Mr. Biden’s speech was remarkable. For years, they stood quietly by as Mr. Trump vilified and demonized anyone who disagreed with him — encouraging supporters to beat up protesters; demanding that his rivals be arrested; accusing critics of treason and even murder; calling opponents ‘fascists’; and retweeting a supporter saying ‘the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.’ But they rose up as one on Thursday night and Friday to complain that Mr. Biden was the one being divisive.”
“Parties’ Divergent Realities Challenge Biden’s Defense of Democracy”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/us/politics/trump-biden-democracy.html
This is because Republicans always see themselves as victims, martyrs for their extremist beliefs, and it is the party of grievances.
As a student of history, I was reminded of the Strauss–Howe generational theory of history – America faces an existential crisis every 80 years or so. We were due.
Ronald Feinman had a good explanation in “THE EIGHTY-YEAR CYCLE OF EXISTENTIAL NATIONAL CRISIS: HOW WILL THIS ONE END?”, https://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/154510
America has faced many crises in its 245-year history as a republic (that has, over time, evolved toward a democracy). History informs us that at 80 year intervals, in 1780, 1860, 1940, and 2020, the nation faced massive challenges, but overcame them within five or more years three times. Hopefully, in the next few years, the same will happen to the threat to our nation provoked by Donald Trump.
—
The challenges for Joe Biden include restoring our position of world leadership in an environment of authoritarianism spreading around the globe, and meeting the evolving threat of white supremacists and racists working to undermine American democracy. The willing support of a political party that has sold its soul to Donald Trump, with Republican leaders competing to mollify him in hopes of being his successor if he is unable or chooses not to run in 2024, is a threat to the traditions and longevity of American democracy. The propaganda promoted by right wing media and social media also threatens the stability of American democracy.
The survival of the United States as a functioning democracy is clearly at stake, including the ability of Americans to insure the facts and truth of science and history are taught in schools and promoted in journalism and public knowledge, rather than right wing propaganda that denies the importance of facts and truth.
Joe Biden has the potential, if he is successful in overcoming the authoritarian challenge of Donald Trump and his supporters, to be seen in the long run of history as influential on the level of George Washington against Benedict Arnold; Abraham Lincoln against the Southern defense of slavery; and Franklin D. Roosevelt against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. As in those three times in our history, the success of promoting the survival of American democracy will take at least the years until 2025, when the next presidential inauguration takes place.
The role of historians, political scientists, and journalists in this struggle to maintain and promote democracy, equality, and freedom is a major one as America looks to its future, and as we near the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026!
–According to the Strauss–Howe generational theory of history, each generational persona unleashes a new era (called a turning) lasting around 20–25 years, in which a new social, political, and economic climate (mood) exists. They are part of a larger cyclical “saeculum” (a long human life, which usually spans between 80 and 100 years, although some saecula have lasted longer). The theory states that a crisis recurs in American history after every saeculum, which is followed by a recovery (high). During this recovery, institutions and communitarian values are strong.
So if we manage to survive this GQP assault on our democracy, we should enjoy a recovery (a turning), a restoration and renewal of American democracy in which our democratic institutions and communitarian values are restored for a period lasting around 20–25 years (a generation).
But our first order of business is crushing the anti-democracy MAGA/QAnon enemies of democracy and forcing them to wander in the political wilderness for a generation.