Warnings about civil war

The NYT writes in an opinion piece:

Barbara F. Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, has interviewed many people who’ve lived through civil wars, and she told me they all say they didn’t see it coming. “They’re all surprised,” she said. “Even when, to somebody who studies it, it’s obvious years beforehand.”

Two books out this month warn that this country is closer to civil war than most Americans understand. In “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” Walter writes, “I’ve seen how civil wars start, and I know the signs that people miss. And I can see those signs emerging here at a surprisingly fast rate.” The Canadian novelist and critic Stephen Marche is more stark in his book, “The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future.” “The United States is coming to an end,” Marche writes. “The question is how.”

In Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Thomas Homer-Dixon, a scholar who studies violent conflict, recently urged the Canadian government to prepare for an American implosion. “By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence,” he wrote. “By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.” As John Harris writes in Politico, “Serious people now invoke ‘Civil War’ not as metaphor but as literal precedent.”

Of course, not all serious people. The Harvard political scientist Josh Kertzer wrote on Twitter that he knows many civil war scholars, and “very few of them think the United States is on the precipice of a civil war.” Yet even some who push back on civil war talk tend to acknowledge what a perilous place America is in. In The Atlantic, Fintan O’Toole, writing about Marche’s book, warns that prophecies of civil war can be self-fulfilling; during the long conflict in Ireland, he says, each side was driven by fear that the other was mobilizing. It’s one thing, he writes, “to acknowledge the real possibility that the U.S. could break apart and could do so violently. It is quite another to frame that possibility as an inevitability.”  

I agree with O’Toole that it’s absurd to treat civil war as a foregone conclusion, but that it now seems distinctly possible is still pretty bad.

As usual, there are different opinions on the situation we are in. Calling a new American civil war inevitable is not credible yet. But we are in a perilous place and our political and social situations appear to be worsening, not stabilizing or getting better. Yes, prophecies of civil war maybe can be self-fulfilling, if that is what happened to Northern Ireland. But warnings short of prophesy can also help waken people to the grave danger that democracy, the rule of law and civil society now face.

Question: Which is the greater danger, warning of the possibility of a civil war or denying it is significantly or distinctly possible? 

Iowa Republican Party kicks press out of state Senate

In another of many signs of neo-fascist Republican hostility toward the press and crackpottery, the Republican Iowa state senate voted to bar journalists from the chamber floor. That ended a 140-year tradition of allowing the press to be present for Senate work. Journalists will be allowed to sit in a public gallery above the floor. As usual, the excuses for this are nonsense. They rely on almost the same sophistication of ‘reasoning’ that accompanies Republican arguments that the 2020 election was stolen, i.e., crackpot. The Washington Post writes:

Republican leaders in the state Senate told journalists last week they will no longer be allowed to work on the chamber floor, a change that breaks with a more than 140-year tradition in the Iowa Capitol. 

The new rule denies reporters access to the press benches near senators’ desks, a proximity current and former statehouse reporters told The Washington Post is crucial for the most accurate and nuanced coverage. The position allows reporters to see and hear everything clearly on the Senate floor and to get real-time answers and clarifications during debates.

“When you take journalists and restrict their access and then you couple that with changes that have occurred in the past couple of years with procedures in Iowa, it makes it that much harder for the public to know what’s going on,” said Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a government transparency watchdog.

In an email to statehouse reporters obtained by The Washington Post, Senate Republican spokesperson Caleb Hunter said the new rule arose from the “evolving nature and definition of ‘media.' ” 

“As nontraditional media outlets proliferate, it creates an increasingly difficult scenario for the Senate, as a governmental entity, to define the criteria of a media outlet,” the email said. Hunter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.  

To critics of the new rule, including members of the Iowa Capitol Press Association and Democrats in the state Senate, the change is little more than a thinly veiled retaliation against news outlets for unflattering coverage of the Republican-controlled legislature. Longtime statehouse reporters also called the justification specious and said there are no instances of nontraditional media causing disruptions.

The Republican excuse seems to indicate that most likely either the Republicans are too inept to recognize legitimate media outlets, or they just do not want transparency as they advance their anti-democratic neo-fascist agenda in Iowa. They can handle disruptive presences by banning them.

Questions: Does the Republican excuse make any sense or carry weight? Why couldn’t any media outlet, traditional, untraditional or otherwise, that caused a disruption be banned (with or without a prior banning warning like Dissident Politics sometimes employs on disruptive miscreants, pissants, insulters and hooligans)? How stupid do Iowa state Senate Republicans think everyone is, or are they just virtue signaling to their significantly deceived, echo-chambered base and do not much care what anyone else thinks?

How congressional Republicans commemorated the 1/6 coup attempt

McConnell instructing his caucus before the impeachment votes

With one single exception, they didn’t commemorate it. All the others ignored it. A few publicly defended it with standard GOP crackpottery.

The NYT writes:

Republicans were nowhere to be found at the Capitol on Thursday as President Biden and Democratic members of Congress commemorated the deadliest attack on the building in centuries, reflecting the Republican Party’s reluctance to acknowledge the Jan. 6 riot or confront its own role in stoking it.

There are currently more than 250 Republican members of Congress — 212 in the House and 50 in the Senate. Not a single one of those senators appeared on the Senate floor ....

And when lawmakers gathered in the House chamber for a moment of silence to commemorate the riot, only two Republicans joined: Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has been ostracized and marginalized by her party for speaking out against Mr. Trump and his election lies, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The only Republican-led event on Thursday to commemorate Jan. 6 was hosted by two lawmakers on the fringes of the party, Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Seeking to deflect blame from Mr. Trump, they held a news conference to elevate unproven conspiracy theories about the origins of the assault on the Capitol.

McConnell commented that Democrats were playing politics and accused them of trying to “exploit this anniversary to advance partisan policy goals that long predated this event.” His comment referred to the possibility that Democrats might waive the filibuster to pass a voting rights law.

The less biased news sources generally assert that many congressional Republicans disliked the coup attempt and would have voted to impeach the ex-president if the Senate vote had been held in secret. Given where we are today, does it matter whether some or even most congressional Republicans are horrified at what the GOP has become and what the ex-president is, i.e., a fascist? They keep their silence and just let the poison flow.

Maybe they think that by staying silent, they can stay in power (get re-elected) and soften the harsh authoritarianism the GOP now openly pursues. The irrationality of that reasoning, assuming any congressional Republican actually thinks that way (which I doubt), is in the fact that so far they have exerted no perceptible softening or pro-democracy influence on GOP legislation, policy goals, rhetoric or tactics. In other words, that line of reasoning is garden variety, self-serving bullshit. They just want to stay in power, regardless of what they have irrationalized themselves into believing or how much damage they help inflict on democracy, the rule of law and civil society. Those Republicans, assuming there are any, are invertebrates.

Questions: Is it reasonable to believe that congressional Republicans who don't oppose the open authoritarianism of the GOP are moral cowards, or since they are merely human and inherently flawed, one cannot reasonably expect anything other than this? If this is the best that can be expected from humans, why aren't the Democrats also on board with GOP authoritarianism and silent support of the 1/6 coup attempt?

in·ver·te·brate

/inˈvərdəbrət,inˈvərdəbrāt/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. an animal lacking a backbone 

An expert explains fascism: Is it relevant or not?

Jason Stanley (philosophy professor at Yale) is an expert on propaganda (book review here) and authoritarianism. In this 10 minute video, he explains how he sees the main traits and tactics that fascism relies on to deceive people and rise to power in democratic nations.

Question: Is Stanley's description of the traits and tactics of fascism close, moderately close or not close to the traits and tactics the modern American Republican Party is using today?