Seeding & fertilizing fascist roots. That's what the Republicans are doing.
The GOP will miss no opportunity to scare Americans into thinking life is terrible, and then they will use all their might to stop the government from bettering our lives.
Here is the cold upper Midwest we hardy souls are used to difficult conditions. We bundle ourselves up and head out to shovel snow or slush our way onto a bus. We check up on our neighbors. In Chicago, where I am, we do all this despite the post-COVID hike in violence. A challenge is just a challenge, and there’s work to be done and people to look after. That’s who we are.
Over in Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer never slowed down, even when a Maga militia was hunting her. On this side of the great lake, in Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers never paused, even when the MAGA legislature created a bogus commission to pretend the state’s election did not count. Both governors won re-election because they showed that democracy is a vital force that, by peaceful means, makes our lives better.
Enter the MAGA majority in the U.S. House. Over the course of 18 votes, Speaker McCarthy slid towards the speakership, winning it only when, according to Rep. Matt Gaetz, there was literally nothing else he could give away to the crazy caucus.
These are not folks who trudge out into the cold to check on their neighbors. And they are certainly not about to focus on making our lives better.
Instead, they are going to work hard, I’ll give them that, work hard to convince Americans that our government is our enemy, that it is a place of hidden evil, that only by shutting it down can they effectively govern. Meanwhile, they will be trying to reward their wealthiest funders with tax dodges, regulatory holes, and monopolist legislation.
These guys are telling ordinary Americans whose income tax is paid every two weeks by payroll deduction that the IRS is coming after them. It is a lie they spread to justify gutting the agency. Why do that?
Remember Donald Trump said he couldn’t release his taxes because he was being audited? He was lying. The big, complicated returns, the ones where folks like Mr. Trump hire big law firms to hide their taxable income, those are the returns that the IRS would like to audit but cannot. Never mind that understaffed agency cannot process the simple returns of ordinary Americans in a timely manner, and that we have to wait, sometimes for months, for our refunds. And let’s be clear- those refunds are the overpayments in taxes you made. They aren’t a gift. This is your money. But the understaffed IRS, with the ancient systems and broken technology, cannot return your money in a timely manner.
Source: CNN
The GOP wants to defund the IRS and send its auditors home, telling Americans that they are a threat.
To whom? Not to you. Not to me. Not to anyone earning less than $400 thousand. If they get their way, the income inequality problem in our country will grow, the powerful will not be asked to pay their fair share, and discontent will grow.
And the IRS thing, that’s only a little example. Here’s a bigger one.
Speaker McCarthy and the GOP House are walking America into a default on our debt. As part of his pact with the MAGA crowd, McCarthy promised to hold the debt ceiling hostage to the MAGA crowd’s radical agenda. The consequences of such a decision are truly catastrophic for our economy, for the global economy, and will permanently damage our nation, ending the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency, lifting the price of everything for everyone.
But as I’ve said, and as FDR warned us in November of 1938, the root of fascism is discontent, and its fertilizer is a democratic government that cannot better our lives. We must understand this because it is the key that unlocks the MAGA secret.
All the so-called oversight hearings, the ones that should hold an administration to account, are now hearings designed to convince Americans that our government is a danger. They’ve stood up a committee on the weaponization of government. Red meat, that is, for every militia that goes into the woods each weekend pretending to protect us from, I don’t know, having to get a vaccine. They will yell and scream and find monsters under every bed, and miss no opportunity to scare Americans into thinking life is terrible, and then they will use all their might to stop the government from bettering our lives. These are two sides of the same totalitarian coin.
For the first time in our history, a Majority in the US House, the people’s house, wants Democracy to fail.
January 6th was a battle, but the insurrection continues. And we must be ready for the fight.
Happily, here in the upper Midwest, we don’t get intimidated. We get to work.