Way back in 2013, President Barack Obama attended a roundtable on gun control and admitted that he was "constrained" by the Constitution in what he could do about it. Obama was right: American citizens are born with certain rights as enumerated in the Constitution, and the Constitution "constrains" the government from taking them away. If only it weren't for that darned Constitution, Obama could have banned guns.
Brynn Tannehill has a piece in The New Republic headlined "The Polls Prove It: Many Republicans Love Fascism," which echoes the same frustration that Obama did. Tannehill believes that the Democratic Party is "center-left" and is also too weak to do anything about the creeping fascism of the far-right Republican Party. Why? Because they're bound by the Constitution.
Tannehill writes:
Trump has referred to his opponents as “vermin” who are trying to “destroy America and to destroy the American dream,” and claimed that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our nation.” The Hitlerian overtones have not gone unnoticed. And yet, the man who promises to be a dictator on “day one” leads the GOP primary by 50 points. How could this be? The horrifying conclusion is that there is plenty of appetite within the party for this sort of rhetoric and it doesn’t turn many people off.
…
In my own experience as an analyst in U.S. Central Command who studied insurgency, I estimated that you only needed 10 to 15 percent of the population to be supportive of the insurgents to get a situation like what I saw in Iraq in 2005–2006. In short, you don’t need all that many people dedicated to dictatorship, theocracy, or any other awful possibility to absolutely collapse a country into barbarism. (I have few other words for the horrors I saw committed by insurgents in Iraq over that time period.)
Which leaves us where we are today. One party is dedicated to bringing about a dictatorship that plans to seize power for “a generation or two,” purging society of the enemies that are purportedly destroying the nation from within. The other party is a vaguely center-left coalition, too weak to bring about effective change because the country’s Constitution and societal fragmentation make it politically and legally impossible.
So if Donald Trump is elected by the people, our republic will turn into a dictatorship, and the Constitution makes it politically and legally impossible for these center-left Democrats to stop it.
"Trump voters are literal fascists bent on a dictatorship so they can purge the country of their enemies"
— Pavlos Papadopoulos (@pleonidasp) January 8, 2024
"Unfortunately, it's impossible for us to stop them via legal and political memes"
What is the unstated conclusion of this argument?https://t.co/s1QgRgiQOe pic.twitter.com/31nSibRI9F
And the winner is:
— Pavlos Papadopoulos (@pleonidasp) January 8, 2024
"Treat them like insurgents in occupied territory" pic.twitter.com/Zoi7xgrgTN
I was going to link to a "conservative" version of this same tic—a military/natsec/intelligence state-adjacent author urging that Americans be treated like enemies in the GWOT—but The Washington Examiner seems to have deleted it.
— Pavlos Papadopoulos (@pleonidasp) January 8, 2024
Here's the archive.https://t.co/kb1LfUtqYU
I am once again asking you to realize that the biggest downside to American Empire is that it empowers the security state to treat Deplorable-Americans as imperial subjects at best, domestic terrorists at worst
— Pavlos Papadopoulos (@pleonidasp) January 8, 2024
When they say they consider you a fascist, and a threat to the country, and compare you to terrorists ... and when their argument is accepted and promoted by the stenographers of the national-security state ... at what point ought you be a wee bit worried?https://t.co/RAJS1el5UM pic.twitter.com/ATNz4FZKZl
— Pavlos Papadopoulos (@pleonidasp) January 8, 2024
She even wrote a book about it that got rave reviews:
You can buy my latest book, "American Fascism: How the GOP is Subverting Democracy" from my publisher or Amazon in hard copy or Kindle. Check out the raves for it!https://t.co/EEZ4V6M5UF pic.twitter.com/Vm06mT6QzD
— Brynn Tannehill (@BrynnTannehill) August 26, 2021
This part is 100% accurate, but they have the two parties swapped. 🙃 pic.twitter.com/y6nNBSXFRJ
— Marsupial Gamer (@Marsupial_Gamer) January 8, 2024
Umm you have that reversed. 😂
— 🇺🇸 2-A Patriot (@aristacatpetsit) January 8, 2024
I think you know that though.
Oh, so Trump is going to pick up where Biden has left off. Damn dude. That finger is pointing back at you. SMH
— MtDewHigh (@JohnDoe71397417) January 8, 2024
Dude, put the bong down. I mean, we want revenge, but that will come from prosecutions of traitors-unlike the biden regimes persecution of trump and Jan 6 trespassers. But trust me, it will all be done on a constitutional basis.
— Matthew S Harrison (@MatthewSHarriso) January 8, 2024
Questioning:
— BigC (@BigCFinancial) January 8, 2024
•Election integrity
•Covid origins or "vaccine" safety/effectiveness, use of masks, lockdowns
•Public education materials/methods
•Russian Collusion/Hunter's laptop
•Ukraine spending/lack of audit
All can deem one an "insurgent" or "insurrectionist"
Reads like the conclusion for that writer will be sending us all to concentration camps for the greater good because if you like Trump that means you are an enemy of the state. Is that what he is saying or am I missing something
— Lifestoserious (@MyOpinionsOnly_) January 8, 2024
Meanwhile, the current president is using his Justice Department to try to get his opponent kicked off the ballot and signing executive orders that fly in the face of Supreme Court rulings. Is she actually cool with the way things are under Joe Biden?
***
Join the conversation as a VIP Member