Weekend Reading: How it Ends

These threads were once looser and less connected. Unfettered and unlimited military-style weapons available nearly without constraint. An extremist Republican Party that was out of step with western world norms long before Trump.  Active attempts to undermine even the most facile tenants of representative democracy, like voting.  You could always squint and see how these threads might intertwine, but that line is now in focus: It’s a country teetering towards disaster.  Three different pieces this week show the incredibly dangerous direction the United States is heading.

In the NYT ‘Its Own Domestic Army’: How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants helps us imagine a future in which the Republican Party looks more like Hezbollah than it does the British, Australian or Canadian Conservatives.  A parliamentary faction with the support of domestic armed insurgents operating outside but intertwined with the Nations official miliary.  

In 538 Perry Bacon Jr. chimes in with In America’s ‘Uncivil War,’ Republicans Are The Aggressors

In America’s uncivil war, both sides may hate the other, but one side — conservatives and Republicans — is more hostile and aggressive, increasingly willing to engage in anti-democratic and even violent attacks on their perceived enemies.

The Republican Party Is Radicalizing Against Democracy: The GOP is moderating on policy questions, even as it grows more dangerous on core questions of democracy and the rule of law.

In what was one of the most upsetting things I’ve read in this horrific moment in history, Christopher Kitchen dives into the right wing fever dream of exterminating their political opponents. What the Far-Right Fascination With Pinochet’s Death Squads Should Tell Us

For the more visual learners among us: The Trump years revealed a dark truth: The Republican Party is no longer committed to democracy. These charts tell the story.

Photo by Brendan Beale on Unsplash