No Kidding!

I think anyone who is not a MAGA knows this, it is only those with their heads stuck in the sand don’t

Opinion: Here’s how we know the Republican Party has become an autocratic movement 

Los Angles Times

By Stuart Stevens

October 8, 2023

It’s often said that Donald Trump has a cultlike following. But that’s far too benign.

“Star Wars” has a cultlike following. Taylor Swift has her cult of “Swifties.” A political organization that has no platform other than loyalty to the leader is not a cult, it’s an autocratic movement.

The tragicomic chaos in the House in the last week is the natural result of a political party that has lived under Trump’s thumb. It should end any pretense that the current Republican Party is a serious governing party.

As Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”: “Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise. The totalitarian movements, each in its own way, have done their utmost to get rid of the party programs which specified concrete content and which they inherited from earlier, non‑totalitarian stages of development.”

They even gave a golden idol to their cult leader! They think everyone is against them, the government agencies, the courts, elected leaders, everyone!

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Republican governors who were pro-choice governed states with a larger collective population than the Republican antiabortion governors. Bill Weld of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania’s Tom Ridge, Arnold Schwarzenegger in California and New York’s George Pataki all were proudly pro-choice.

Today, there are no Republican governors who support abortion rights, and many are actively working to criminalize abortions in their states. The Republican Party three decades ago was overwhelmingly a white-dominated party, but it allowed for at least some dissent and disagreement.

They are all locked in goose-step behind their golden idol.

What’s unfolding in the Republican Party is an inevitable step in the cycle of authoritarian movements. What once was deemed sufficiently pure is judged to be inadequate and in need of purging.

The New Republican Party, it is our way or the highway.

None of us can choose history, but history can choose us. The fate of the American experiment is in our hands. America or Trump? The next 13 months will decide our future.