The Republican Party has given up on Democracy, it seems to me. They know there are too many instances where they can't persuade and win. So, they have gone full autocratic/authoritarian/fascist. The Supreme Court is on a mission to turn America into a combination White Supremacist Christian Theocracy (no abortion, no birth control, no independent powerful women, no gay sex or gay marriage, no teaching about slavery or the Jim Crow south, etc.) - and a billionaire-controlled Plutocracy (no regulations, no tax audits, no pollution controls, not much in the way of taxes on the billionaires, etc.)
The only way they can get what they demand is to end voting. The only way to do that is to destroy the "democracy machine" - the institutions of democracy - from voting systems, to a free press, to non-gerrymandered states, etc.
Once this democracy-breaking Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights laws the extremist Republican red states enacted dozens of voter suppression laws. Plus, giant corporations were given unparalleled influence over elections with massive inputs of money into elections once the democracy-breaking Supreme Court ruled that corporations were persons.
The former Republican president moved heaven and earth to overturn his loss to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. He has promised, with the full-throated support of his Cult base, to seek revenge on all who oppose his kingly wishes. And his autocratic media leaders make sure his MAGA Cult base never knows the thousands of truths that destroy his lies. They lie. They create the lies. They pound the lies into the cult over and over and over and over....
They know how to do propaganda - they had good teachers - from the Nazis to the Soviets to the Lost Causers to Putin's Russia and dozens of current autocratic nations around the world. The playbook is out in the open and being followed with devastating effect.
They do this firmly believing that they are the good people, the people who are stopping the slide of America into sin and ruin. And they think that since they are on the "side of angels" (and the side of prosperity creating unfettered corporations) they have a duty to keep the sinful and profligate masses from destroying their precious Theocratic and Plutocratic Country. Thus - break democracy. Destroy the country to save the country.
But...
This is America. And America is founded on dream that All People are Created Equal, and people's personal freedoms and rights are sacred. And I believe that dream is more powerful than all the manipulation, and lies, and threats, and corruption, and revenge that the breakers of democracy can manage.
I believe in America.
