This is the blog of an old, retired soldier, born and reared in the rural South, educated all over, now retired in the rural South.
This blog will provide clear, irrefutable evidence that our Constitutional Republic is in danger. The danger we face today is far more deadly than that we faced in the Civil War. During the Civil War, the South simply wanted to go their own way. Today’s clear and present danger is the Republican Party that seeks not to go their own way, but, instead, to destroy all the norms that have guided this nation since our founding and to replace our Constitutional Republican with an autocratic, fascist regime.
The hope of many conservative critics of Donald Trump was that soon after his defeat, and especially in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party would snap back into its former shape. The Trump presidency would end up being no more than an ugly parenthesis. The GOP would distance itself from Trump and Trumpism, and become a normal party once again.
But that dream soon died. The Trump presidency might have been the first act in a longer and even darker political drama, in which the Republican Party is becoming more radicalized. How long this will last is an open question; whether it is happening is not.
The radicalization manifests in myriad ways, most notably in Trump’s enduring popularity among Republicans. Trump’s loyalists have launched ferocious attacks against Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him for his role in the insurrection, even as national Republicans eagerly position themselves as his heir. Right-wing media display growing fanaticism, while public-opinion polls show GOP voters embracing Trump’s lie that the election was stolen from him. The Republican Party’s illiberalism, its barely disguised nativism, and its white identity politics are resonating with extremist groups.