It is said that one of the key conditions of authoritarianism is that of the one-party rule. Historically, that means the elimination of any other political party in that country or region. This was the case in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and also during the totality of the Soviet Union. They simply outlawed any political party other than their own. You had no choice in those regimes. It was either support their party unconditionally or you ended up in prison or dead.
But the condition of one-party rule does not have to mean there is only one political party. In fact, it could easily be said that America has been under a one-party rule for quite some time, and I do not mean just during the four-year reign of a certain narcissist crime lord who found himself elected President of the United States.
How can this happen? Simple. When you have one party wielding so much power and control in government that nothing can be done without that party’s approval, even if that party is not actually sitting in the seats of power.
This was certainly the case during much of President Barack Obama’s eight years in office. Even though he was able to get key parts of his agenda passed in the first two years under Democratic control, the remaining six years were stymied in political sabotage by the then-GOP-controlled Congress. Bills would be filibustered into oblivion, the government shut down repeatedly, judicial appointments would be kept empty, even a seat in the United States Supreme Court was intentionally kept vacant in 2016 because of one person… the then-majority leader of the United States Senate. One party, controlling one-third of the government, was able to halt all government activity.
And then, when that same party took control of the White House, they moved like gangbusters to fill every vacancy and pass almost everything in their agenda, even going so far as to bypass any traditional means to stop or slow down their progress such as filibusters or quorum rules. The very parliamentary tools they previously used with glee when they were the “minority”, they brazenly bypassed with sheer psychopathic arrogance when they were in the majority. Even the promises that they made on their very careers in 2016 concerning said Supreme Court vacancy they arrogantly reneged on just four years later to rush through a third justice of their own choosing.
What used to be the “GOP” – or, fraudulently, “Republicans” – have clearly become fascistic authoritarians in the recent years, especially during the reign of their cult-leader con artist, Narcissist Donald Trump. One party, able to either speed through or shut down legislative and government activity depending on simply their partisan whims. That is the very definition of one-party control.
But something strange happened in 2020… Americans were sick and tired of the party that has now become the Trump/Q Party. And they came out in force to vote. Even during a deadly global pandemic, people showed up in record numbers and waiting in long lines to vote, and to vote against the Trump/Q Party.
In November, more voters voted for Joe Biden than for Narcissist Trump. And, unlike 2016, they also voted for Biden in just enough states to ensure an Electoral College victory. And then in January, voters in this commentator’s home state of Georgia voted for Democrats to fill both seats of the U.S. Senate, giving the slight majority to the Dems.
Narcissist Trump lost. He lost. And he lost in states that he thought he would prevail in, including Georgia. States that have a strong Trump/Q Party control of in their state governments.
As a student of history (and we should all be) and a political cynic, I knew what would come next… revenge. Trump/Q fanatics would carry out payback for all of us “uppity” people daring to vote against them and against their self-serving messiah.
Even before his loss was official, Narcissist Trump set the stage for his false victimhood status. “Fraud!” The claim he was making as far back as 2016 was “voter fraud”. The supposed “biggest case of voter fraud in human history”.
Funny thing this “fraud”… when the narcissist won in 2016, all the claims of foreign collusion and meddling were immediately dismissed. Even when he openly challenged foreign governments to meddle in the election, he then turned around and said “no collusion”. Because, you know, he won. He won by what he would gradually call the “greatest margin ever”. But… when he lost in 2020 by the same margin, he not only claimed that the election was full of “fraud”, but that he actually “won”.
And isn’t it strange that it was only the presidential election that “fraud” happened? Not the House or Senate races. Not the state or local elections. All of those Trump/Q Party people who got elected or re-elected supposedly did so fair and square on that same day by those same voters using those same machines... but not their messiah. Only he was supposedly “cheated”.
*Only* him.
That’s not how fraudulent elections work!
“Fraud” was the big lie spread by the cult-followers. “Fraud” was the big lie spread through the narcissist’s myrmidons and enablers and propagandists, even though not one case of it was proven in the trials that they demanded. It was “there”, they claimed, but could not prove it to a judge. Not one. Not even to the judges that were hand-picked and sworn in by the Trump/Q Party. “Fraud” was even the claim they made to justify a bloody insurrection on January 6th.
A big lie that was just that. A lie.
But it’s also that lie that is rallying the revenge in state and local legislatures. Just like “fraud” was the rallying cry for Dems to change election laws in Florida after the 2000 Fiasco, “fraud” is the rallying cry used now for over 250 bills to change the law in state and local elections across the country.
The first shot was made here in Georgia... because, of course, it’s where Biden’s victory was clinched, first in the Electoral College and then in the Senate. And also because Georgia’s elected grifters and shysters get their legislative BS done at the start of the year.
Among the various changes – which targeted the ways African-Americans in the state voted this past year – was one very tyrannical change. It gives the Trump/Q Party in Georgia’s legislature the power to override both the Georgia Secretary of State and those of the various counties when it came to elections.
Think about that. Your vote – no matter how long you waited to vote, no matter how legitimate it was – could be negated at the whim of the one-party-dominant state legislature. If this was put in effect a year earlier, Biden’s win in Georgia would have been negated, because the narcissist would have demanded that 11-thousand-plus votes he wanted and would have gotten it from the ass-kissing members of the state legislature instead of being denied by the Secretary of State (who, by the way, voted for the narcissist).
Yes, this law also stinks of racism and white supremacy, because that’s the Trump/Q base, and also because Biden’s victory came from a certain demographic that voted in ways that they never did before. The fact that lily-white male Trump/Q Party supporters surrounded the Trump-kissing governor for the signing with a painting of a slavery-era plantation in the background, and an African-American female state legislator being forcibly removed in handcuffs by equally lily-white male State Police officers just puts the hood on the whole Klan imagery.
But let’s get brutally honest here... even without the white supremacist overtones, this law is tyrannical and the very opposite of anything that America is supposed to represent both here and around the world.
We invaded Panama in 1989 because their criminal dictator negated the will of the people! Manuel Noriega lost his election and he enacted a coup and threw the true winners in prison. And he claimed “fraud” as well. We had to invade that country because of his criminal acts and restore the rightly elected leaders! And here we are in Georgia with a dominant political party codifying that very crime today! And with other states to follow. And all based on that same lie of “fraud”.
The Trumpians are claiming that this law provides “election security”. They’re even claiming that it “expands voting rights”! What a load of Orwellian blackwhite bull! The only “security” it provides is their own entrenched dominance. The only “rights” they expand upon is their delusional “right” to maintain power at all costs.
The truth is that the Trump/Q people are in the minority in America, and they know it. And that terrifies them. They lost the White House and the U.S. Senate because people voted in record numbers, and more of those people voted against them than for them.
And now businesses are speaking out against this law as it is being challenged in the courts. Major League Baseball pulled the All-Star Game and the Baseball Draft out of Georgia. Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines also condemned the law... albeit too late. The Trump/Q thugs are now demanding payback for that as well.
This commentator says... break them.
If this is the hill that they want to rhetorically die on, then so be it. This is not the first or the last battle, but the first in over two-hundred, all on this very same cause based on this very same big lie. A lie that says that the sore loser “won” in an election that was supposedly “fair” and “true” for every other race... except for just this one.
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