Some Plain Speaking-- Please, No More Talk Of A GOP "Split."

Some Plain Speaking-- Please, No More Talk Of A GOP "Split." 

Some among our commentators have unfortunately showed signs of reverting to their childhoods, and are reacting to the SCOTUS ruling as if they were playing "Evil Barbie and Ken Meet The Avengers." These folks, though well intentioned, are engaged in heavy conversations with their imaginary friends, and are unfortunately absent from the real world at this time. They are people who are basically scared sh*tless and have no idea what to do, like the ones that are throwing around Facebook memes about passing laws mandating male vasectomies. Honestly, could they be any more impotent, inane, and disconnected?  

Others (such as pundits who follow polls) are approaching it like sports betting, trying to judge by stats and the lineup cards how to handicap the game and whether to bet the spread. Literally projecting a sports fan's spectator mentality onto our current existential political crisis by speculating on the next elections outcome. Really, is this all we've got? 

And the worst are those who believe the GOP is "split". Split over abortion, split over Trump, split over "business versus religion" and so forth. They speculate on the variety of ways this supposed split can be exploited to turn the next elections against them.  It is as though these "experts" have walked out of a time warp and the last two years have not happened. Or they are retailing "positive spin" being fed to them by the Administration.  It is just so incompetent. Myself, I do believe there is a factional split in the GOP, but of a completely different character. 

There are three distinct groups. There is the hard core MAGA group which are the equivalent of Trump's remote controlled talking heads. Visualize a bunch of little Adolf Hitler ventriloquist dummies sitting on Trump's lap. This is the "Escaped Mental Patient's Caucus" (ie:"Freedom" Caucus) of MTG, Gaetz, Boebert, Jordan, Gosar,  Cawthorn, Johnson, Hawley, Cruz etal. Many of these types have sold their loyalty in exchange for promises of positions, money, and Presidential pardons. 

Then, you have the overwhelmingly larger group which is either being personally blackmailed by Trump with compromising information, or being subjected to violent and continuous death threats from the heavily armed MAGA lunatics who defend January 6th as their "1776". These are the broken shells of human wreckage like Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy over whom Trump has so much leverage that they have devolved into spineless fleshblobs who simply do as they are told, regardless of what they personally stand for, now or ever. 

And there is the third GOP group, which after the November election will consist of two people. Mitt Romney, and Liz Cheney, who had the independence and guts to try to remove Trump from office, and expose his criminal conspiracies. (keeping in mind that on policy, these two courageous Republicans would still send us back to the Dark Ages if they actually had any power in their party at all) These are the small number of people with principles, who can't be blackmailed, have great security, and are themselves powerful members of the establishment. If we are being honest, the small handful of others who openly opposed Trump, voting for Impeachment, are either being purged or retiring, mainly because they can't take the heat of 24/7 security measures for themselves and their families. Any previous McConnell type Trump opponents who remain are now "team players," who gave up.

It must be said that the failure of the first Impeachment in February of 2020 was a decisive turning point in US political history, in which the two party system as we know it died, because one of those parties was subjected to a hostile takeover by a violence-advocating blackmailer who declared war upon any and all in his own orbit who would not swear by a loyalty oath to him personally. That was when the GOP became a fascist cult, and not a political party. 

For those who know their 20th century history, it is reminiscent of the 40 year long reign of terror conducted by racist control freak J. Edgar Hoover, who had possession of an entire basement full of blackmail files which he used to control or destroy the careers of many of America's leaders. Americans were different then, thanks largely to the Depression/Wartime leadership of FDR and his followers, so Hoover's operations did great harm but were not fatal to our Democracy. 

It should be remembered however that Hoover's years long accomplice and confidant, mob lawyer Roy Cohn became Trump's personal lawyer and most important political mentor, along with Hoover's and Cohn's other protégés Richard Nixon, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. Everything Trump does politically is based upon what he learned from the Cohn/Nixon/Hoover period of right-wing racist reaction against civil rights. And there is reason to believe that Trump is in vast possession of similar blackmail capabilities as had Hoover, with his top guy Steve Miller playing the role of his Roy Cohn style henchman today. Much of Trump's blackmail material appears to have been provided by "stay behinds" in the US Intelligence community, and friends high up in the Intelligence services of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey. This is something I'll be writing about soon. 

My point in even writing this is to say that the era of the GOP's modern politics, in which factional groupings formed based on legitimate differences on issues and policies, ceased to exist more than two years ago. Yes, you have a Billionaire corporate group, and a religious fundamentalist theocratic group that are distinct. Both of these groups collaborated to install Trump and were of the belief that he was "theirs". Now the opposite is true, "they are now his." Like Adolf Hitler, Trump has gotten out of the control of his sponsors and cannot be "managed". This is what the majority of deluded doll players and sports nuts posing as journalists and pollsters are completely missing in this context.

What you see now is not conventional politics, it is a Chinese puppet show in which we see only the shadows cast by the small fire behind the curtain, manipulated by puppeteers. What they are saying and doing publicly is not real, though sadly the destructive effects of it are very real for us. 

Which means that the conventional methods of waging electoral type political opposition to the GOP today are simply no longer valid or effective. In half of our States, our Voting Rights have been gutted by the same GOP/SCOTUS apparatus responsible for this monstrous ruling. For example, are Democrats in Florida going to have a huge voter turnout when DeSantis has heavily armed MAGA "election police" at the polls like Stormtroopers during the Nazis Anschluss plebecite in 1938 Austria? You think that their votes will actually be counted Really? In Florida?! Don't tell Floridians that the vote is their remedy, if youve followed anything that has happened in that State for the last 22 years. As we say in Philadelphia, "wake the f**k up, will ya'?" 

You cannot defeat a pseudo-religious fascist cult through traditional electoral politics. When blacks in the South were denied the right to register to vote and terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan, the Civil Rights movement fought for its goals through unconventional means. Likewise, the people of Ukraine today are not waiting for their next election to vote for the Russians to leave. They are fighting in every other way, in the hope that some day they might again have self-determination and free elections. 

We need a non-violent, mass based movement of civil disobedience, boycotts, general strikes, and marches for a start. We need to shut those states down. Let them build their fences and walls to keep us out. There will be mass arrests and casualties. Anyone thinking that this all can be avoided by campaigning with their phones on Tik Tok and using some nifty new App is in a dream world. No, we will need to be physically and mentally present. 

We are there. It is time. Time to stop following people who are scared sh*tless and in denial.