29 January 2025

This is how democracy dies

It appears there's pretty good basis for optimism that through special elections it will be possible to take Democratic control of the House before the next General Election, maybe even as soon as this year. The real problem is that there's also every indication that the Trump presidency, including his far-right technocrats, aren't that worried. They obviously intend to govern more or less without Congress. They will simply issue edicts. Their model, explicitly, is the Kafkaesque "illiberal democracy" (actually non-democracy) of Viktor Orban in Hungary. 

Already, they have illegally usurped the power of appropriation and civil service protections; even attempting to fire federal commisioners without any statutory authority at all (EEOC most recently). And until people in their own party start developing the courage to say 'No! You cannot do this!'... they will do it, and we, the people, who did not vote for this (even most of those of us who voted for him), will be powerless to stop them. This is how democracy dies, and we cannot ignore it. There will be many ordeals, many tests, and if the already established tendency to simply hunker down and ignore what is happening continues, we will fail them. If we fail to resist, even at great cost to ourselves, dictatorship will succeed. We are warned. We cannot claim ignorance.

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