Democracy has Fallen in Georgia

The authoritarianism of the republican party crossed into some form of Christian fascism in the wake of the 1/6 coup attempt by the ex-president and a mob of traitors. Most or all of the fascist GOP (FGOP) leadership fell in line with the big lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Although a few voters left the party after the 1/6 coup attempt, most rank and file republican voters were in accord with the big lie and falsely believed the lie was reality and reality was a lie.

After the election, the ex-president make voter suppression his main target for FGOP policy. In turn, the FGOP has responded enthusiastically to the demagogue's desire to rig future state elections so that their candidates always win, even when they clearly lose the vote. Georgia is the first state to give state FGOP officials the power to legally void a vote and award the win to the republican. The FGOP in Georgia has given the tyrant demagogue exactly what he wanted. Georgia is well on the way to true fascism. Other FGOP-controlled states can reasonably be expected to follow suit in the coming months.

Some people saw this coming and tried to warn us

Some people with experience in the fall of democracy to a tyrant demagogue saw the danger the ex-president presented to American democracy. Years earlier, reporter Masha Gessen had witnessed the fall of Russian democracy to the tyrant Putin. She wrote this in 2016 a day after the election and Clinton had conceded. This was what Gessen wished Clinton had said in her concession speech, but did not say. Gessen was prescient:

“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”

 
That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said on Wednesday [in her concession speech to the ex-president].

Like most Americans, Clinton did not see the looming fascist danger in the ex-president or the republican party. Some, maybe most, Americans today still do not see it. Polling in Georgia indicates that about 75% of people there oppose various provisions that the FGOP has put into law. That suggests that even some republican voters are uneasy with the transition from democracy to tyranny. Disregard for public opinion, along with contempt for elections and voter's wishes, are clear signs of the new American fascism. They have been signs of fascism ever since it was invented.

The Georgia situation

The New York Times comments on the situation in Georgia:

Georgia Republicans on Thursday passed a sweeping law to restrict voting access in the state, introducing more rigid voter identification requirements for absentee balloting, limiting drop boxes and expanding the Legislature’s power over elections. The new measures make Georgia the first major battleground to overhaul its election system since the turmoil of last year’s presidential contest.

The legislation, which followed Democratic victories that flipped the state at the presidential and Senate levels, comes amid a national movement among Republican-controlled state legislatures to mount the most extensive contraction of voting access in generations. Seeking to appease a conservative base that remains incensed about the results of the 2020 election, Republicans have already passed a similar law in Iowa, and are moving forward with efforts to restrict voting in states including Arizona, Florida and Texas.

Mr. Biden joined Georgia Democrats on Thursday in denouncing efforts to limit voting, calling Republicans’ push around the country “the most pernicious thing.”

“This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle,” he said at his first formal news conference since taking office.

Though the law is less stringent than the initial iterations of the bill, it introduces a raft of new restrictions for voting and elections in the state, including limiting drop boxes, stripping the secretary of state of some of his authority, imposing new oversight of county election boards, restricting who can vote with provisional ballots, and making it a crime to offer food or water to voters waiting in lines. The law also requires runoff elections to be held four weeks after the original vote, instead of the current nine weeks. (emphasis added)

Think of that a moment. It was an intentional distraction from the fact that republicans can now overturn election votes they don't like, i.e., when a democrat wins, but the FGOP actually had the astounding arrogance and hate in it to make it a crime to provide food or water to voters. Those are people standing for hours in lines the FGOP intentionally created to keep people from voting. If that isn't some form of fascism, what is it? It isn't democracy, that's for sure.

American democracy is clearly under a major, sustained direct attack by a radical extremist FGOP. The coming fights over protecting voter rights in the Senate will be bitter and brimming with hate and lust for vengeance, regardless of the outcome. At present, it looks like the GOP will be able to block any meaningful defense of democracy, which will be free to fall in the states the ex-president needs to be elected in 2024. All the demagogue tyrant needs is three or four more states to fall and that will be the end of American democracy and the American experiment for the foreseeable future, maybe forever. 

Those fights could come down to one or two radical conservative democratic Senators, Joe Manchin (WV) and possibly Krysten Sinema (AZ) who oppose moving forward with voter protection without significant GOP Senate support. There is no reason to think that even a few, if any, FGOP senators have any interest in protecting voter rights when their party leadership and its cult leader (the ex-president) is hell-bent on rigging elections as Georgia has now done.

It is deeply sad to see how easily democracy can fall under pressure from a corrupt, mendacious tyrant demagogue flying on the back of the dark free speech dragon. Gessen could see just how fragile democracy was. And, she could clearly see the danger of a demagogue tyrant for what it was and still is. 

Has America learned its lesson? Are we really going to let our country slide into a full-blown fascist demagogic tyranny? Is fascism inevitable because democracy is so fragile? Or, is this just a kerfuffle in a teapot or whatever kerfuffles happen in?