As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin (when she's right, she's right, k?) points out it's not "polarization" in politics that's the threat to our democracy (as puerile media sometimes claim), it's Republican radicalization:
Only one party conducts fake election audits, habitually relies on conspiracy theories and wants to limit access to the ballot. A recent study from the libertarian think tank R Street found: “In Republican states, legislation tended to scale back the availability of mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes and to provide more uniform, if not shorter, early voting windows. Meanwhile, in Democratic states, legislators sought to increase the availability of early voting not only by expanded voting windows but also by instating universal vote-by-mail.”
Only one party overwhelmingly refused to participate in a bipartisan investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Only one party tolerates and defends House members who resort to violent imagery and harass fellow lawmakers. Talk of “secession” comes from only one party. Only one party is turning a vigilante who killed two people and seriously injured another into a folk hero. Only one party rises in defense of parents publicly threatening school boards. Only one party has taken to defending book-banning and book-burning. Governors of only one party are suing private companies and localities that follow coronavirus guidelines.
Only one party has a media machine that propagates misinformation (from conspiracy theories about the death of a young Democratic National Committee staffer to the blatant lies about Dominion Voting Systems) and foments racism with a steady diet of “replacement theory” rants and hyperventilation about immigrants. Only one party pounds away at the already debunked connection between crime and immigrants solely for the purpose of enraging and scaring voters.
Also, only one party has an "intellectual" structure that promotes extremist, radical views contrary to core American values. Coup planner John Eastman's Claremont Institute is just one example, as Vox's Zach Beauchamp reveals:
The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank in California, is dedicated to developing a more highbrow version of Carlson’s worldview — one in which American institutions and even citizens are the right’s enemy. Claremont is undoubtedly the most radically pro-Trump of any major right-wing intellectual institution, its thinkers willing to defend both his presidency and his false claims of a stolen election.
Claremont’s output in the past year or two has been astonishingly radical, all but openly calling for regime change and rebellion.
In a May Claremont podcast, Hillsdale College lecturer and former Trump administration official Michael Anton chatted with entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin — a self-described monarchist who wants to appoint a Silicon Valley CEO king of America — about their shared desire to topple what Anton terms the American “regime,” a government Yarvin characterizes in the podcast as a “theocratic oligarchy” controlled by a cadre of progressive “priests.”
During the episode, Yarvin muses about how an American strongman — whom he alternatively calls “Caesar” and, more honestly, “Trump” — could seize authoritarian control of the US government by turning the National Guard and FBI into his personal stormtroopers.
The vast majority of Americans, we'd wager, are completely unaware of the Christo- fascist underpinning of the rotted out Republican Party. But it's right there, out in the open, every day.
The Hill published a piece on President Biden's Build Back Better by four descendants of people involved in crafting and implementing FDR's New Deal: James Roosevelt, Jr., Henry Scott Wallace, June Hopkins and Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall. They say Biden wants and needs to do big things to address big problems, just like FDR:
Candidate Biden couldn’t have been clearer about his New Deal-scale ambitions, and he proceeded to win by seven million votes. Though a few cautious members of his party may now be getting nervous, the fact is, we are still in a New Deal moment. We still have a health crisis and accompanying economic crisis, with a climate crisis and a democracy crisis thrown in for good measure.
The American people didn’t just vote for a bland “return to normalcy” (the campaign slogan of Warren Harding in 1920, whose presidency is memorable only for its corruption). They voted for, and deserve, big bold action that will improve their daily lives.
And history shows, this boldness will be rewarded. FDR’s leadership to rebuild the U.S. economy, create jobs and improve Americans’ economic security earned him victory in his first midterm election, adding seats in both the House and Senate — an extremely rare occurrence.
Democrats have a window that may be closing faster than anyone anticipated. Doing the right thing -- "getting stuff done" -- may be one way to keep that window open longer and the fascists at bay.
To complete your morning (and then some) reading, check out Infidel 753's link round- up to interesting (largely non- political) posts from around the Internet.
