Conservatives Just Want Domination
When will media pundits get that?
Liz Cheney’s ouster from Republican leadership has caused a great deal of gasping from media commentators. “How could they do this? Don’t they understand the poor optics of this? What will their voters say?”
It is an exhausting narrative. Even here on Medium, one of the most popular articles stated “The Republican embrace of Donald Trump is a gift to the Democrats.” The writer seemed to cling to a notion that America is some place where people view political events and narratives and then go home and analyze them.
This simply doesn’t square away with the lived reality most everyday people cope with. How many conservative uncles or relatives are screaming across dinner tables about stolen elections? How many conspiracy theorists are ranting about vaccine microchips? How many people are harassing minorities or service workers while citing clauses of the constitution that don’t exist.
The conservative base doesn’t know who the “number 3” Republican is, and their media outlets certainly aren’t covering it. They’re living in a separate reality where Biden is about to steal their hamburgers. That truth, as painful and dismissive as it might be, is what most people are living with. Mention a fact or study or statistic that goes against their worldview and it’s dismissed as false. Say something affirming and it’s accepted as true. That base level of tribal stupidity is more influential than any policy or speech could ever hope to be.
Now media analysts are stunned to see elected congressman (and I do mean men) stating that the January 6th attack (riot? insurrection?) actually was a peaceful protest. Rep Jody Hice of Georgia (R) stated that “Democrats have put forth a narrative about January 6th that isn’t true.” Rep Andrew Clyde, also a Republican from Georgia, said “if you were watching the footage of January 6th without context, you might think it was a normal tourist visit.”
Again mainstream media pundits gasped, wagging their fingers and warning of a voter-based rebuke of such statements.
What they fail to grasp is that these statements are either warmly accepted by a zealous base or simply left out of the news cycle in right-wing echo chambers. In fact, the further radicalization of the Republican party is a project millions of people have worked and hoped for over a span of decades. They don’t flinch at these statements. They welcome them.
Perhaps most frustrating is the new idea that a group of FORMER Republicans are threatening to attempt the formation of some form of 3rd party. They feign some form of shock, as if it’s impossible to imagine how this happened to a party they once took such pride and joy in identifying with.
Yet this moment of fascist rhetoric didn’t simply appear from nowhere. It’s the result of decades of racist dog-whistles, Tea party rallying, Republican primary fights, and so much more.
Beyond that, far more likely to affect the outcome of the elections than speeches and expectable rhetoric is the hundreds of voter suppression laws sweeping across State legislatures. It’s hard not to remember the images of hours long lines that appear every 2 years at election time. And now that problem, already pushing the Democracy to its edge, is ripe for further exploitation. Between suppression and Gerrymandering, the latter perhaps the most blatant rejection of voter will allowed in the legal framework of the US, threaten to hand majority control to a party that harnesses a minority of the country’s support.
And where are these former Republicans threatening a third party in references to this effort? Where is Liz Cheney to comment on the craving up of districts to give Jim Jordan, former Pedophile cover-up artist, his literally snake-shaped seat in Congress? Where is the “logical” conservative outrage at the ongoing investigation into Matt Gaetz’s sex trafficking charges? (And where is the Q crowd for this one?) Where is the centrist rejection of Marjory Taylor Greene constantly harassing fellow members of Congress with insane lies and bat-shit yelling we’d expect from a viral Youtube video as opposed to the halls of US government?
The fact of the matter is that conservative voters live in their own world. It’s one where the election was stolen (which 70% of Republican voters believe based on public polling.) It’s one where racism is over, climate change doesn’t exist, and evil Biden wants to take your patriotic American meat. It’s one where January 6th, wrapped in hundreds of MAGA flags, was either overblown, or a secret Antifa plot. It’s one where Democrats are pedophiles even while their own party is literally being investigated for sex with minors. It’s one where anything Trump agrees with is right, anything he doesn’t like is wrong, and any further thought is simply unnecessary.
The US now stands at the precipice of true authoritarianism. If Republicans re-take the House in 2022 based on voter suppression and Gerrymandering, and are able to hold it through 2024 through the same means, that would result in their having the ability to refuse to certify a presidential election. And of course it would stop the Biden Administration’s agenda in its track for the 2 years they did have to publicly acknowledge his presidency. That is an unprecedented situation. It is not two-sided. It is one party radicalizing in the hopes of gaining and maintaining power through un-democratic means, and it is supported by the majority of their voting base.
So please, spare us the shocked reactions. Spare us the narrative that Republicans will have an epiphany about the core-values of American Democracy. There is no evidence to show that this is going to happen. Beyond that, every possible fragment of audible and visible evidence point to the exact opposite. It is not from no-where, it is the result of decades of work by people who do, in fact, know what they’re doing. They are not engaging in “good-faith” if they’re simultaneously trying to deny Biden’s presidency is legitimate and defending violent actors of January 6th.
And if Democracts don’t understand this soon, if they don’t rapidly push through voting-rights legislation to ensure some basic level of fairness in the American system, then we will all suffer for it in ways that are beyond our current imagination.
