Keep going back to the thought that given a choice between sacrificing conservatism or democracy, the GOP will sacrifice democracy. Demographics is against them. The electoral system, senate structure, all just buy time. The choice is inevitable. A question of when, not if.
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So some in the GOP will no doubt be thinking: why not force it now while we still have power. I’m guessing there’s enough room in the electoral vote process for endless procedural fuckery by willing collaborators.
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If I had to guess, a third of GOP is behind him and will lie, cheat and break laws for him. Another third would do everything except break laws. Norms and conventions will be zero protection from them. The final third has some sort of idealistic faith but no spine and will cave.
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There is an unexamined assumption that the US state is not capturable this way, but then nobody has really tried to capture it. The conceit that the constitution is divinely perfect makes me suspect the thing is just a pile of exploits just waiting to be hacked.
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Another holy cow assumption is that the US military is somehow incorruptible in this department. Again, I don’t share the faith. Nixon tried to court them for a coup and failed but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. He’s managed to corrupt pockets of domestic forces already.
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The entire narrative that this is just a childish tantrum that will resolve itself if we just patiently wait it out is built on a house of cards. I’m sure Biden has a much stronger legal team, but the other side has all the levers of incumbency.
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It’s depressing that the *best* case explanation here is simply buying more time to steal stuff, run grifts for a few weeks longer, etc. The worst case is an unintentional unraveling. It doesn’t have to be intended and cunningly schemed to go badly. Improv under chaos is enough.
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This sort of faith assumes clean fights. The way it would actually work is: he does something sketchy, crowd gathers that one side calls peaceful protests and the other labels terrorism. Cops give way to NG, and then regular military. Ends with tanks on the streets.
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Replying to @vgr
Likeliest outcome re: military is "we're not taking a side here, fight amongst yourselves we're just going to prevent anyone storming the capitol." Taking a side by default because backing the incumbent sounds like neutrality/noninterference at every step of the way.
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The BLM protests over the summer provided a nice dry run for a whole class of unraveling excuses. Throw in a few false flags and the situation gets much more programmable than people think.
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