The reality is very simple: The Republican Party is no longer participating in democracy. They're running a series of ops against every election cycle, predicated on the notion that only their power is legitimate.

This isn't a failed coup. This is a *continuous* coup that stretches back years. It includes Gingrich's scorched earth methods, Bush v Gore, the politicizing of the Bush DoJ, the judicial obstructionism and nullification of the McConnell Senate, and the entire Trump presidency.
It includes decades of tortured racist gerrymandering and disenfranchisement, Citizens United, the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, PACs, and deliberately colluding with foreign powers.

This isn't a failed coup. This is a *continuous* coup that stretches back years.
The Republican Party is not participating in democracy. They are quite obviously an organization dedicated to the destruction and overthrow of the government of the U.S. as we know it, and should be treated as such.

There are no legitimate Republican office-holders.
I think there's a distinction to be made. Democrats are often weak/ineffective, and many are complicit because they're those things by choice—but institutionally they aren't authoritarian, and they aren't fascist. They're a corporatist conservative party. https://t.co/2jqG1yVoDv
Basically the Democrats are what the media-writ-large pretends Republicans are. They have a left-leaning wing the media-writ-large pretends is a far-left flank of the Democratic party, a party they also pretend is, on average, at least as far left as its most far-left members.
We'd have far less problems if the Democrats were what the Republicans are always saying they are.

But the Republicans are a far-right party of authoritarian extremists, who are actively demolishing democracy.

More from A.R. Moxon

Observe: the lie that "government" is a monolithic entity, from which we are somehow separate.

Government is how we organize, manage and maintain our society, but to acknowledge that is to acknowledge society, and one's responsibility to organize, manage, and maintain it.


Government didn't close churches. Churches closed because people with something more than a childishly selfish view of the world understood their responsibility to the shared life of a society, and government is how that understanding was operationalized and delivered.

Nor does government militarize police. The police is militarized because people with a fearful, hateful or selfish view of the world understand a militarized police will operationalize & deliver that fear, hate, and greed through the mechanism of government.

Government is *us*.

Those who now align with a party actively working to dissolve and demolish democracy in our country do so not because they don't understand this, but because they do.

Democracy allows people they fear and hate to be government with them.

So they hate democracy, and government.

People who align with a party standing in the way of any solution, any maintenance, any governance, do so not because they don't understand this, but because they do.

Better to die of sickness, disease, and neglect than allow those they hate and fear to be government with them.
Imagine if Christians actually had to live according to their Bibles.


Imagine if Christians actually sacrificed themselves for the good of those they considered their enemies, with no thought of any recompense or reward, but only to honor the essential humanity of all people.

Imagine if Christians sold all their possessions and gave it to the poor.

Imagine if they relentlessly stood up for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

Imagine if they worshipped a God whose response to political power was to reject it.

Or cancelled all debt owed them?

Imagine if the primary orientation of Christians was what others needed, not what they deserved.

Imagine Christians with no interest in protecting what they had.

Imagine Christians who made room for other beliefs, and honored the truths they found there.

Imagine Christians who saved their forgiveness and mercy for others, rather than saving it for themselves.

Whose empathy went first to the abused, not the abuser.

Who didn't see tax as theft; who didn't need to control distribution of public good to the deserving.
Bullshit.

I have family members all the way up the Fox News Facebook misinformation hole, and they didn’t get vaccinated because they felt respected; they got vaccinated because their children told them they wouldn’t get to see their grandchildren until they got vaccinated.


3 observations:

People don't tend to change their worldviews from a place of comfort.

When selfish assholes decide to behave like selfish assholes, the problem isn't that others aren't coddling their feelings enough.

Selfish assholes aren't everyone else's job to fix.

Selfish assholes would love for you to *think* they are everybody else's job to fix.

It puts them at the center and in control.

That means when they act like a selfish asshole, it's *your* fault. You should have been more persuasive. Daddy hits you because you made him angry.

Truth is, vaccine resistors are behaving this way because their feelings ARE being respected.

Malicious media entities created self-feeding networks that reassure selfish assholes they can be selfish assholes and still be respected.

Antvax, racist, sexist, all are welcome.

The way you make a selfish asshole stop being a selfish asshole is well known.

You draw a clear boundary and then you enforce that boundary. You tell them that their bullshit won't be tolerated, and then you don't tolerate their bullshit.

I think we all know that, actually.

More from Politics

1/ Imagine that as soon as the referendum result the EU announced that it was looking forward to the end of free movement of UK citizens in the EU


2/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those retired Brits in the EU27 could go home

3/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those Brits in the EU could stop driving down wages, taking jobs and stop sending benefits back to the UK

4/ Imagine if the EU said it was looking to use UK citizens as “bargaining chips” to get a better trade deal

5/ Imagine if the EU told UK citizens in the EU27 that they could no longer rely on established legal rights and they would have to apply for a new status which they have to pay for for less rights

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.