The USA is declining and decomposing and the Republican party have zoomed in on the sole agents and catalysts of these alarming processes: the Democrats and their democracy. The GOP also brandish a prescription for healing: the 2nd American Revolution.
The Republicans – a party dedicated to the interests of the rich and mighty – claim counterfactually (aka lie) that they are on the side of the Common Man who has been callously betrayed by the elites, especially by the bicoastal progressive-liberal intellectuals. Democracy is, therefore, a ruse and benefits only corrupt politicians in the swamp.
Even worse: the Democrats and their allied eggheads are hellbent on imposing values that are anti-American and on coercing the populace to conform by suborning and weaponizing the institutions of the state.
The problem is, sigh the exasperated Conservatives, that the godless Democrats are bad faith Americans: they loathe, hate, and detest the USA. In short: they are traitors. They are also opportunistic and, therefore, amoral, immoral, antisocial, and criminal, insist the Republicans.
It is a curious inversion. The GOP have appropriated the traditional playbook of the Democratic Party: championing the Average Joe and the rights and interests of minorities, not least by way of trade protectionism.
The gulf is unbridgeable and the parties are irreconcilable. The national consensus has all but disintegrated, carrying with it any solidarity left. The areas of contention are vast: from family values to immigration and from the role of the Federal government to the place of the USA in a globalized, multipolar world.
The truth is that the Republicans welcome authoritarianism as a way out of the quagmire: a one-party system, the leadership of the Democratic Party incarcerated, and docile, subservient institutions at the disposable of the Fuhrer. The role models are such paragons of good governance and patriotism as Putin, Orban, and Netanyahu, not to mention Hitler.
The 2nd American Revolution and MAGA are reminiscent of other transitions from democracy to autocracy in history: from the Weimar Republic to Nazism and when Republican Rome became imperial, for instance.
Universal franchise is, indeed, a flawed idea because it invariably gives rise to demagogues and tyrants in semi-structured ochlocracies (mob-rule). But the alternative is no better, especially when the would-be dictator is someone like Donald Trump.
