If you were not watching too closely, an amazing thing happened the other day. The former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, went on Fox News and proclaimed that members of the January 6 Committee would be going to jail in the eventuality of a takeover by the GOP of one or both chambers of Congress later on this year.
Gingrich didn’t enumerate any crimes which he believed that anyone on the J6 Committee have committed. Evidently, criminal activity is not necessary for a person to be incarcerated these days. Gingrich was, in essence, threatening an authoritarian takeover wherein political enemies would be imprisoned for just that, for being political enemies.
Gingrich was basically saying that a takeover of one or both chambers of Congress this fall would amount to authoritarian rule in this country — and he seemed perfectly fine with that, as did the Fox News host he made the comment to.
Take a look at this video from Lincoln Project and then read the roll out of a Twitter thread that Wilson posted on January 24.
And maybe you better pull down your copy of Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here” as well.
Twitter thread roll out.
“He’s right. He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. We’ve been warning you all along that this election isn’t about BBB or prescription drugs or guns or climate or anything else in the policy domain. It’s about the emergent authoritarian state shambling its way toward the end of small-d democratic politics.
“Speaker Jordan (and no, Kevin, he didn’t take your deal and he is going to shank you) and the MAGAe will comprise a clear majority of the GOP caucus in 2022 and they are Trump’s political vergeltungswaffe. They don’t care about policy. They care about power.
“On the first day of the new GOP’s reign, the impeachment of Joe Biden begins. The endless Benghazi 2.0 investigations begin. Expect weeks to TV on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Expect endless hearings on the BLM and the imaginary Antifa threat.
“You know why.
“They’re doing a few things. First, the purpose of terror is to terrorize. They want the Democrats on defense and the Democrats, being Democrats, will fall into the trap, day one. They’ll try the shame the GOP out of it and we know how well that’ll work.
“Next, pleasing their god-king. He demands they ‘investigate’ the Big Lie and they will create a wave of scandals where none exists because the purpose of the Big Lie is corrode and undermine faith in elections.
“Undermining faith in elections is central. Because if the election of 2020 is illegitimate to their base, anything goes.
“I warned in 2019 that they’d mainstream political violence because the acquisition and retention of political power is the only ideological underpinning.
“They’ve kept the old GOP brand — low taxes, individual liberty, blah blah blah — but the new GOP is nationalist, populist, and increasingly fascist.
“McCarthy and McConnell are still playing the old game of Washington and their corporate donors are flooding them with cash. Little do those corporations understand that in the New Order, they’ll either toe the line politically or they’ll be punished for it. Bannon came right out and said, “We’re going to nationalize the social media companies.”
“Hawley, Marco, JD, Cruz, et al are pushing that Overton window hard. They’ll turn the power of the state into regulating business and enterprise to serve their ideological vision…and it’ll work.
“Why is Facebook a fetid hellhole? Because Zuck didn’t want Trump to regulate him. Iterate, widely.
“And yes, they’ll try to put their opponents in jail. Yes, they’ll use the full power of the state to do what they can’t do at the ballot box. Stop thinking this is about anything else but alloyed fascism.
“And they’ll be abetted by the “conservative” media apparat desperately trying to fit grand and petit authoritarianism into a Burkean frame — and a mainstream media caught up in access to power and Washington’s dumb old game.
“End.”
This is how it is. The “game” has changed. The “game” changed the minute Trump got on the GOP ticket. The GOP blew up the democratic two party system then and there. They put a freak on their ticket just to see how it would fly. And we have seen how it flew.
It stops here. Or democracy does.
We face an uphill battle in November. Make no mistake about that. The House races are taking place in insanely gerrymandered districts due to the 2020 census. There is a razor thin majority in the Senate, if you grant for the sake of argument that there is any Democratic majority at all, and many of those races are hotly contended. We are up to our ass in alligators. And with the tribal tom toms pounding like this in January, the handwriting is on the wall.
Regarding those corporate mega donors here’s something to keep in mind: In Putin’s Russia he has the control he does because of his networks of oligarchs. They live fabulous lives with all the wealth they need to set up their loved ones for their own lives. Either in Russia or abroad if they so choose. Yes, serving Putin to keep him in power comes with some strings but the payoff is well worth it. And we have a plutocrat class in this country already. Turning them into American oligarchs would be child’s play for a ruthless enough person and when it comes down to it they are all about the money. This is the richest country on earth and there’s a shitload of it to go around when you consider keeping less than a hundred American oligarchs fat and happy enough to accept the new order is a small price for the Trump family to pay. As for the GOP itself they will get their own spoils, although it will turn out not to be as much as they’d imagined but by the time the realization sets in that they are on the outside looking in and that few if any of them will make it into that top tier it will be too late. Only a few people in the GOP seem to get this, or at least are willing to put up a fight. There surely are a significant number who see the potential disaster coming and don’t want to go over the cliff but they are either to scared to speak up or simply don’t care about their kids and grandkids enough to do anything. The “I got mine – YOU go fuck off if you couldn’t get your own” mentality is widespread with conservatives.
“Conservatives” don’t have the capacity or empathy to understand anything until it affects them. Like the anti-gay congressman who only accepts them when he discovers his son is gay or the congressman who is vehemently opposed to disaster relief for everyone until he needs it for his state. The only thing they want to conserve is their own power. We need to brand them w/some more illustrative moniker like plutocrats.
Well I guess no one told that idiot that you don’t use a flag for clothing and you don’t let a flag touch the ground. Of course he never respected the office why would he respect our flag. Glad Rick Wilson was on the job.