Stop The Revolution

All revolutions are impossible until they happen. Then they become inevitable.

— Albert “Albie” Louis Sachs

It has been quite a long time since I have written in this space. The reasons for it are many, but primarily it is because I find the current state of our nation to be so perilous that I seriously wonder if our course can be corrected to avoid the shoals. It is overwhelming. One hardly knows where to start. Seemingly everyday we are bombarded with bad news.

• Despite over 705,000 Americans (that is roughly 1 out of every 468 of us) dying from COVID-19 we still have millions of yahoos that deny the efficacy of vaccines and violently protest having to wear a mask.
• The Supreme Court allowed the implementation of a Texas law that monetizes vigilantism. The ability to spy on your neighbor and earn 10,000 dollars for doing so comes on top of a “gun rights” law that allows anyone to carry a weapon without a license, training, background check or any other common sense limitation.
• State legislatures in several states are banning the teaching of “critical race theory” — a concept that they do not understand. They only want to teach the “positive” aspects of American history and not “embarrass” or “traumatize” students by also including such upsetting facts that the Founding Fathers included many slave owners, there was a Civil War fought over slavery as an institution and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Black Americans for decades. The term “in Order to form a more perfect Union” (striving for, not already in place) and Lincoln’s “that this nation — under God — shall have a new birth of freedom” (we need to do better and live up to “all men are created equal”) apparently does not mean anything to those pushing the legislation. Probably because they never got a good education, so their legacy is to pass down their ignorance.

Unfortunately, I could go on and on. Our country is doing some really bonkers things. Almost everything pales in comparison to the real threat to our future. Our democracy and the future of our Republic is under attack. Not from a foreign enemy or an outside terrorist threat. It is under attack by one of the two major political parties crucial to the functioning of our democracy. Republicans have become a direct threat to our democratic future. Only one party — Democrats — is interested in governing. The other is hell-bent on upending our traditions and norms in the pursuit of absolute power. This is both exceedingly sad and completely distressing. I don’t write these words carelessly. It is not about policy or “politics as usual” or differences in opinion or differing outlooks on what is good for our future. The majority of Republican elected officials at all levels of government are working day and night to subvert our elections and to solidify their control over the country. I am not sure we have ever faced this development — certainly not since the Civil War.

On one level, Senator Mitch McConnell (R?-KY), in lock step with his caucus, is willing to destroy the US economy and seriously damage the world’s economy for a short term political gain in the 2022 elections. Despite voting 32 times — and three times under the ex-president with the Democrat’s support — to extend the country’s debt limit, he suddenly decides it’s a Democrat problem rather than a national problem. The debt limit (as anachronistic as it is) allows the government to pay the bills for what was already spent, not future spending. The ex-president ran up an additional 7.8 billion dollar tab on top of the national debt in four years and now the Republicans say it is the Democrat’s problem. Today a temporary truce to extend the issue until December was agreed upon, but this is going to come up again. More to the point, every single Republican in Congress voted against raising the limit knowing the consequences. And for the first time that I know about, they did not just vote against it, they invoked the filibuster, making it almost impossible to overcome. Don’t talk to me about any “moderates” in their caucus.

(Footnote: Contrary to popular myth and propaganda, every single Republican president since 1960, except for Richard Nixon, added to the national debt. Every single Democrat president since 1960, except for Barack Obama, lowered the national debt. In today’s world, as we well know, facts don’t matter anymore.)

All of this takes a back seat to the real battle underway. I am sad to report that, understandably or not given all that individuals and families are dealing with today, most Americans are blissfully unaware that their ability to elect their government representatives is slipping away. States are enacting laws that suppress the vote — especially for the poor and minorities — and rigging the certification of the results if the suppression does not work.

This is all part of a larger plan.

For months after the 2020 election I thought that the loser of that election was a whiny complainer that could not face reality. As more and more information becomes available, I realize just how close we came to his pulling off a coup and that in fact, even as he complains about 2020, it really isn’t about that election anymore. He and his cohorts are laying the ground work to successfully steal the election in 2024. It’s no longer about the past, it is about the future. If the ex-president doesn’t run, or cannot run because he is in jail, then someone like him will use the tactics, techniques and procedures that are being put into place now to make sure that a Republican is named president (whether actually elected or not). Democrats won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. Think about that. Only President George H.W. Bush won the popular vote in 2004 by about 3 million votes. (Remember that President Joe Biden won the popular vote by about 7 million and many express the opinion that the other guy “barely” lost.) The Republicans know that it will only get harder for them to win a national election, therefore, they are working hard to ensure that they can overcome their deficit in, you know, actual votes.+

We do not yet know everything involving the 2020 election shenanigans and the events surrounding the 6 January assault on the Capitol in an attempted coup. It appears that the then president did everything in his power to stay in office. Basically, without going into every detail, he had a three part plan. The big picture plan was:

• Get state officials to change the official vote counts. Famously, the ex-president or his flunkies badgered officials in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and elsewhere to change the votes or to decertify the results in order to allow “alternate” presidential electors to be counted.
• Throw the election certification in Congress to the House of Representatives to resolve — where under the rules of one state one vote he would have prevailed. How to do this was specifically spelled out in the “Eastman memo” which was written by a legal adviser to the president and provided a six step plan on how to declare the 2020 election results as invalid and thereby give the Vice President the opportunity to declare the incumbent the winner. Constitutional scholars deride the legal reasoning in the memo, but the fact remains that despite the perception that they were “winging it”, there was an actual plan. It also appears that Vice President Pence is not quite the hero that many made him out to be on 7 January. In fact, it appears that he looked for a way to satisfy his boss and throw the election his way until it became apparent that there just was no way that he could reasonably do so. But imagine the chaos had he tried, especially as the majority of the Sedition Caucus in the Congress voted to invalidate the results.
• Send hooligans, miscreants, ignoramuses, and staunch supporters to the Capitol to overthrow the government on 6 January. The full story of how this came to be will be uncovered in future months but already roughly 600 people have been arrested with many in jail and others awaiting trial. So far they have all been “soldiers” in the coup. I cannot wait until some of the “colonels” and “generals” (in the Congress and the White House and the campaign) get to do the perp walk. All involved need to be held accountable.

They had a plan. As I wrote in this space often last year, they told us what the plan was. They just failed to execute it because a few state and local officials — of both parties — refused to go along. What to do? Put people in place for the next time that will go along. This is the purpose behind the candidacy of numerous state and local officials throughout the country and the changes to laws in numerous states as to who can certify election results. If all else fails, states such as Arizona, the legislature reserves unto themselves the ability to over-ride the announced results and send the “approved” slate of electors to the Congress — regardless of the popular vote. This is the purpose of all the sham audits now taking place, along with the rallies, statements and other popular messaging. They are indoctrinating voters into the belief that they cannot trust the system, therefore we will decide for you what the results are. They are laying the groundwork to overturn the next election.

Many of us may think “impossible.” It cannot happen here. Too many safeguards are in place. It did not work in 2020 so why would it work in the future? Because of what I explained above, which is only the tip of the iceberg of the efforts underway to ensure that the next election results in the Republican candidate’s victory. Period.

Many comparisons are being made to Hungary, Turkey, and other “western” NATO democratic countries. All of them claim to be democracies, but in fact, their leaders have stacked the deck so heavily in every area of the society that the rules preclude anyone from winning an election that the controlling powers do not want to win. Likewise, the 6 January coup attempt is alternately compared to Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 or the Russian Revolution of 1905. Both failures. Both were effectively “dress rehearsals” for later successful government take-overs.

I am more fascinated by a possible comparison to Uruguay in 1973, which in some ways was reflective of events throughout Latin America in the years before and after. I was briefly in the country just before the pandemic and had the opportunity to visit a museum dedicated to the nation’s long legacy of democracy and democratically elected presidents. Knowing the basic history of South American military dictatorships, I asked our guide whether or not such a thing occurred in Uruguay, since it wasn’t mentioned in the museum. The answer was “yes.” But they do not like to talk about it and consider it an anomaly. When I asked why it did happen, the short answer — my interpretation, not a direct quote although some of the same words were used — was that “everyone” was afraid that the “socialists” and “communists” would take over and there would be a dictatorship. The same justification for coups given throughout much of South America in that period. So, a right wing military dictatorship was better than a socialist government, or so they thought.

I think of that every time I hear Senator McConnell, or the former guy, or any number of Republican Senators and Representatives give prepared remarks excoriating the “socialist Democrats” and the “communist Democrats.” Over and over and over. Of course some call Democrats “fascists” and “communists” in the same phrase, but they cannot help it if they are ignorant. More to the point, thanks to their repetitive accusations, millions of people think that the Biden Administration is socialist, or worse, communist and is the equivalent of an autocracy because, after all, aren’t all socialists and communists dictators? Couple that barrage of propaganda with the Big Lie that the election was stolen and it is not hard to understand why our democracy is in trouble. Millions of people believe it. Earlier this year the American Enterprise Institute did a survey where one in three Americans believe that force is justified to “save our way of life.” Roughly two-thirds of Republicans in that same poll believe that the 2020 election had wide spread voter fraud.

If you want to understand what has happened and is happening, I recommend that you read Robert Kagan’s essay “Our Constitutional Crisis Is Already Here.” It is sobering to say the least.

There is a way out. Several bills passed by the House and pending in the Senate will give fundamental base lines for voting rights and the conduct of national elections across the 50 states. Again, the entire Republican caucus opposes these laws. Once again, as I have said before, if there is nothing else worth getting rid of the filibuster, this is it. At least for bills relating to basic voting rights.

If we lose our ability to participate in our democracy, we lose our country. There is nothing else more important. Not infrastructure, not budgets, not tax cuts or increases, nothing else can be accomplished unless we have free and fair elections where everyone that can vote is able to do so.

A revolution is underway. Republicans have become a subversive operation in the thrall of one man who strives mightily to be our first autocrat, king, or strongman. Pick your euphemism. He wants to gain unfettered power. Only we, the people, can stop the revolution.