It is quite extraordinary how the Republican party seems determined to tear down institutions that have long been seen as fundamental to the smooth functioning of democratic societies.
The most recent and extreme has been the attack on the entire judiciary system in the US in the wake of the many charges that have been leveled against serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT). He has lost defamation suits brought against him by E. Jean Carroll, business fraud suit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and the falsifying business records to further his election campaign brought by Manhattan district Attorney Alvin Bragg. He further faces charges of election interference in Georgia brought by Fulton Country district attorney Fani Willis, and two sets of charges involving the possession of classified documents brought by the special prosecutor Jack Smith.
All these cases were brought by separate judicial systems acting independently of each other with only the ones brought by Smith being under the umbrella of of the federal department of justice. And yet, SSACFT has falsely claimed that all of them form part of a coordinated deep state conspiracy masterminded by Joe Biden, George Soros, the Democratic party and who knows who else. The toadies in the Republican party who should, and undoubtedly do, know better have repeated this lie, despite the damage done to people’s faith in the judicial system. They also conveniently ignore that fact that Joe Biden, the supposed evil genius behind this coordinated judicial attack on Republicans, has not been able to stop his own son from being prosecuted on federal gun charges and that a Democratic senator Robert Menendez and his wife and a Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife are being charged with corruption.
I myself am very critical of many aspects of the US judicial system, especially in the way it treats poor people, people of color, minorities, and other marginalized groups. But those are systemic problems stemming from the racist, class, and other longstanding biases of US history and society. That kind of critique is quite different from arguing that the system is a conspiracy hatched that is targeting particular political opponents. Not that that does not happen. In the days when J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI, that body regularly targeted people and groups who were in the civil rights and Vietnam protest war movements. But there was solid evidence for that behavior in the COINTELPRO documents that came to light. The GOP has as yet not produced any evidence in the current instances.
That is not the only major institution that the GOP targets. We see that in their efforts to please their business allies, they are attacking science and scientists working for agencies such as the NIH, FDA, EPA and elsewhere who are charged with protecting the public health and who are warning of the dangers of climate change and the pollution of our air and water and food by businesses.
They are also attacking public health authorities because they dislike the measures put in place to safeguard people’s health such as those taken during the covid-19 pandemic. While there are legitimate grounds for disagreement as to the extent to which measures such as distancing and closures were necessary, those are disagreements arising from the fact that scientists were reacting to a dangerous and novel pandemic and were trying to figure things out as they went along. Mistakes were bound to occur. But as a result of the GOP attacks, confidence in science has decreased.among Republicans.
We also see attacks on schools and universities and public libraries, accusing them of pursuing liberal ideological agendas. And of course there are the attacks on the election system.
The problem for Republicans is that the real world creates facts that work against them and so they are trying to create an alternate reality in which facts do not matter and only the vehemence of one’s opinion does. Republicans are playing a very dangerous game in order to gain a short term advantage, because once trust in institutions is destroyed, it is very hard to build it back up again.
For people who wave the flag and claim to love the US, they sure seem to hate the US. When was the last time repubs had a leader who was even remotely an intellectually serious person?
If they admit of those cases at all, it is only to gloat that those people must be incredibly corrupt if even the Joe-diciary is after them.
There’s also the projection aspect, of course… Trump has already flat-out admitted that he plans on staffing the Department of Justice with toadies who will quite happily pursue cases against his political opponents. He may claim that it’s retaliation against the so-called conspiracy against him (whether or not he really believes that is an open question, since he’s been high on his own bullshit long enough to be only loosely informed by reality) but there’s little doubt that he plans on building up an actual conspiracy even further if he get the chance.
>> The problem for Republicans is that the real world creates facts that work against them and so they are trying to create an alternate reality in which facts do not matter and only the vehemence of one’s opinion does. <<
I would say the real world creates facts that work against any and every political party or movement. Humans are messy creatures, and even in times and places where the overall case is clear (such as the case for ending South African apartheid) there will be some facts that are problematic for the side with the otherwise winning case. With apartheid there were threats against government officials who feared that after a change to a demographic government their lives would be put at risk since the threats and bad feeling would still, presumably, exist, and "equal" protection of people living under unequal threat might not be the just approach. Mandela's government overcame that particular objection through taking such facts seriously and admitting that the broad principles of equality for which they fought must sometimes give way in smaller, specific fights to allow other principles (a right to life, and a right to a government that defends one's right to life) that are equally important to be equally expressed.
I bring this up not to weaken the case against the GOP, but because I think it's useful to have models of political parties reasonably grappling with inconvenient facts.
Marriage equality, for instance, was an issue where the facts were clear long before the law and yet Democrats resisted. The argument then was, I think, largely disingenuous but occasionally quite honest: the facts about the public impact of queer marriage are one thing, but the facts about the popularity of queer marriage were something else, and if the Dems acted too quickly they would lose power and that would be worse for queer people than having some wishy-washy Dems in office twiddling their thumbs waiting for popular opinion to align with the sociological science.
Today we see similar reticence to act on climate change. Some facts — like the cost of transition to a carbon free energy economy — are indeed inconvenient for Dems. But other facts — like the much greater cost of doing nothing — do support the energy transition that Dems claim to favour. In the end the popularity of the transition matters to Dems because they are fundamentally a democratic party (small "d" on purpose). The fact that we don't have time to wait isn't ignored, exactly, but it takes a back seat to facts about vote counting.
The most disturbing thing about the GOP's tendency to disregard facts, then, might actually be how they disregard facts about democracy. I haven't studied this area, but I wouldn't be surprised if a war on facts is a necessary precursor to moving a democratic state towards totalitarian government.
Your last sentence may be based on an erroneous assumption. What if Republican leadership’s plan is long term and is meant to destroy those existing institutions. In a large portion of the population of the USA the fact that Barack Obama was elected twice is evidence that the current system must be changed. In a way their worldview was shattered and since the rest of us do not want to coddle their feelings of hurt and disgust, to placate them in agreeing to their changes, then the institutions that led to President Barack HUSSEIN Obama must be destroyed. In their view those institutions let the down and are irredeemably broken, and if there is money to be made in tearing them asunder, so much the better.
@#4 Crip Dyke
“I haven’t studied this area, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a war on facts is a necessary precursor to moving a democratic state towards totalitarian government.”
If a fundamental feature of totalitarianism is the desire to control all aspects of society, including religion, art, literature, and sexuality, then ISTM axiomatic that a regime would have to hide the true facts of the society it wants to control. Very few people are happy to be dictated to concerning these aspects of their lives, so the only way to avoid a revolution is to tell everyone that only a small number of people disagree with the leaders, when in fact it is usually a large majority that is malcontented. So, for a dictator to assume and stay in power, truth is the first thing that MUST be dispensed with.
Crip Dyke @ # 4: … I wouldn’t be surprised if a war on facts is a necessary precursor to moving a democratic state towards totalitarian government.
— Hannah Arendt
Not sure how prevalent this is but some of it feels a bit to me like thinking they’re the smartest people in the room. That definitely seemed the case with people like Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan. Cantor only got his wake-up call when he was chucked by the wayside and Ryan later dropped out to avoid a similar fate. The current crop who replaced them seem to think the same way. Even delusional weirdos like Greene, Boeburt, and Gates seem pretty desperate to find reasons they can sneer at other people and look down on them.
When you lie to people you supposedly represent all the time about easily fact-checked things, then it seems like it would be kind of easy to assume you’re a lot smarter than they are. I think their constituents aren’t quite as gullible as they appear though, and it’s more likely to be tribalism in action. But if you’re unwilling to look very closely when someone lies to you just because you like them then the end result isn’t much different from being very gullible.
And as far as who to blame for the deep state conspiracy, it’s obviously Skittles. Too damn many gay rainbows for too many decades. Obviously a farsighted plant to ruin childhoods of 80’s kids. Or maybe Reese’s Pieces. 80’s kids would know those are pro illegal alien and that’s definitely a no-go now. Or maybe you could go for Weird Al’s Foil instead. Probably best, it’s at least entertaining.
@lanir, 8, the only problem I have with your argument is that Skittles were available as early as the 1970s, so the conspiracy goes deeper than we thought! I just checked Wikipedia, and Skittles were created in England in 1974 and imported to the USA around 1978, so it’s a multi-national conspiracy. Probably involving the Rothschilds and the Illuminati. And the little green lizard men--have you noticed that there are green Skittles? PROOF YES PROOF!
(/s in case anyone was wondering)
If he had been acquited, the evidence would have been that Hunter Biden was acquited.
If there had been a mistrial, the evidence would have been the mistrial.
If the trial had not taken place, the evidence would be that the trial had not taken place.
But since he was convicted, the evidence is that Hunter Biden was convicted! (As a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family.)