ENDGAME
The advantage all terrorist organizations enjoy (if I may use that word) is they need to be successful only once. On two occasions (that we know about) Al Qaeda tried to destroy the World Trade Center. They were successful the second time. They may have been prepared to try 5 or 10 times or more. Who knows? The point is they only had to get it right once. The men and women who safeguard the nation had to be prepared to remain hyper-vigilant a thousand times.
The slender thread by which our republic hung nearly broke during the Trump administration. It was saved from a catastrophic fall on various occasions by a handful of Republicans who decided Trump had gone too far. Republicans of that caliber are becoming increasingly scarce. Every time a relatively old-school Republican retires he or she gets replaced by a wild-eyed, radicalized fanatic. The next time Republicans have the power to destroy the republic they will almost certainly take it. We must deny them that opportunity.
The storied pendulum that’s set to swing in the other direction must be stopped. We cannot afford another Republican administration. If that happens it will be the last time America has fair and free elections.
What we’re seeing on TV these days, the endless parade of Republicans refusing to answer the direct question with a simple yes or no, did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?, is nothing more than a dress rehearsal for the real thing. We will know the real thing is upon us when they all say “No!” Meanwhile they are trying to find the courage to say just that.
It doesn’t seem possible but a scant five or six years ago those same Republicans were calling Donald Trump a charlatan. Today Trump has replaced Jesus Christ as their principal focus of worship and adoration. They will either get full religion or they will be liquidated. That is the current trend and I see absolutely nothing to stop it.
Nor does this trend require a living, breathing Trump on earth, any more than Christianity requires a living, breathing Jesus of Nazareth. Trump may fade, he may die, but the horror he has set in motion, this horror that slouches towards Washington to be born, will be functionally immortal, or at least capable of living to a vast and ancient and awful old age.
It is no longer a party with which we contend, it is an all-devouring monster. A monster of hate. The monster feeds on fear and anger and suspicion and paranoia, which aren’t just its primary harvest but its only harvest. For the first time in history the 2020 Republican convention had no platform. It only had hatred and fear and suspicion and paranoia on offer. It produced nothing good because evil cannot produce good, it doesn’t know how.
The Republican Party isn’t really a party, it’s a terrorist group bent on building a fascistic state, it’s how a democracy commits suicide in public. It devours freedom and kills liberty. It’s ironic, when you think about it, because freedom and liberty are all they ever pretend to care about — the freedom not to wear a mask, the liberty not to be vaccinated, the liberty to open carry murder weapons. In reality there is nothing Republicans hate more than freedom and liberty.
History is replete with examples of what happens when a regime is composed of members as bad as the worst of its followers. It too often means the end of that country’s government as it was previously known. It happened in my lifetime when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile to Tehran as the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. It happened in Uganda when Idi Amin seized power. It happened in 1933 when Hitler was anointed Reich Chancellor by a baffled and outmanoeuvred Hindenburg. There is nothing stopping it happening in America.
Except us. Tyranny cannot triumph if men and women — courageous men and women — rise up to stop it. Ours is the final generation left to fight in this political endgame. It’s up to us to remain vigilant, vocal and voting to stop Republicans from ever making a comeback. We must never, ever, ever give up. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.