 So we have officially reached the point where the Republican Party has shifted so far to the right that they are now explicitly authoritarian and to be clear I'm not calling them authoritarian to insult them or to be hyperbolic I am saying that they have literally devolved into a despotic illiberal political organization that doesn't even pretend to care about small d democratic values and they've been heading this way for quite some time So the trajectory isn't necessarily new But it just really feels like they've reached the point of no return And there's a couple of examples that demonstrate why I think this is actually the case Ross story reports quote Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives have introduced a resolution that would seek to declare former president Donald Trump the winner of the 2024 presidential election regardless of what the voters decide reported KPNX's bram resnick The resolution would not carry any force of law because it is not a bill noted resnick However, it is in response to rulings in Colorado and Maine disqualifying the former president from the ballot under the Insurrection Clause of the 14th amendment it will be reviewed by the House Election Committee on Wednesday now KPNX reporter Bram resnick shared two paragraphs from the text of this resolution to kind of explain their rationale for this undemocratic move and Here's what it says so the idea is to change the manner of the presidential election by appointing the 11 Presidential electors to the Republican primary winner to offset the removal of a Republican candidate from the ballot in Colorado and Maine And appoint the state's 11 electors to quote protect the presidential election from another Maladministered and illegally run election so since the last election was rigged and There's already another effort underway by Democrats to rig the next election by removing Trump from primary ballots We have no choice but to offset the Democratic Party's election rigging by rigging the election ourselves By preemptively declaring Trump the winner regardless of how people in our state vote Just give the Republican nominee all of our state's electoral votes Because we have to because that's how you combat rigging in other words We say that Democrats are rigging the election. So guess what we get to do it, too Isn't that convenient? It doesn't matter that they've presented absolutely Zero evidence for their claims that the election was rigged It doesn't matter that the Supreme Court isn't going to let Trump be removed from the ballot Even though he did violate the Insurrection Clause of the US Constitution They say it's rigged and it doesn't matter what the Supreme Court does Democrats are rigging So we have to manufacture the outcome to make it less rigged somehow That's their logic literally now thankfully as the article points it out This resolution has no weight behind it But the sentiment should horrify everyone because when elected officials are saying we don't care about Democratic outcomes. That's that's that's a really bad sign to put it mildly But the Republican Party isn't just rejecting democracy under the pretense of unrigging rigged elections like true autocrats They're also going to great lengths to dehumanize their political opponents For example, North Carolina's Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, who's now running for governor Floated the idea of arresting trans people for simply using the bathroom that he thinks they shouldn't be using In this state How very Christian of him and I say this because this man is a fundamentalist Christian who literally believes that God put him On this planet to go after LGBTQ plus people specifically very sane But I mean regardless if he wants them to or not trans people exist and they will continue to exist So this begs the question if he wants to ban them from using bathrooms Where exactly are they supposed to go if they have to go to the bathroom? Well, here's his solution to that I Just find a corner and shit in the street, I guess That's what he is saying about fellow Americans somebody who wants to be in a position of immense power He wants to be the governor of an entire state Let that sink in and I know that we're all kind of desensitized to Republican cruelty because we see it so much But this should never be something that is normal to us or feels normal to us because it's not but as cruel as he is You might actually think that he's compassionate compared to Lake County GOP chair and Florida congressional candidate Anthony Sabatini who recommended that climate activists be hanged and added quote then display their lifeless bodies as a warning to others and he said this in response to them pouring red powder on a Display and as the Midas touch reports This isn't the first time that Sabatini has called for violence He previously called for a man cursing to be shot and killed and I'm sure that you'll be surprised to learn that this man considers himself to be pro-life Yeah, it's like a sick joke But I mean this rhetoric isn't surprising considering the fact that the total humiliation and Dehumanization of one's political opponents is a core feature of fascism and since the opponent has been deemed the enemy Well ruthlessly crushing them or expelling them and even killing them in some instances Maybe justified, but it's not just these fringe kooks who are saying this in an ominous truth social post Trump declared But 2024 is their final battle and promised quote to drive out the globalists cast out the communists Marxists and fascists and no he's not referring to his own party. He's ironically calling leftists Fascists which is interesting and he's also going to quote liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all So in essence he is promising to crush any and everyone that he deems the enemy now You might not think much of this initially because it's Trump and he's always saying stupid shit and talking shit And even if he's elected again, the president doesn't have unlimited power We still have constitutional protections regardless of how tyrannical he becomes But the problem is that we're in an era where the institutions that previously protected our civil rights and civil liberties are being eroded Right and Trump wants to further erode those institutions that protect us from tyrants like him He's already embraced project 2025 and plans to dismantle the administrative state and assume total control of all of the executive branch Meaning that all of the checks and balances and independent agencies that held him back the last time he was president Are not going to be there if he gets a second term and he's already floated the idea of suspending the Constitution But he really doesn't need to do that even if he wants to crush his opposition He's already planning to use the insurrection act to send us troops to violently quash any rebellions against him and as he continues to signal his intent to abuse power and become a dictator His rhetoric is also getting increasingly hit larry him He's now talking about how immigrants are poisoning the blood of our nation and that wouldn't be so Alarming if Americans actually took these warning signs seriously and thought hey even if I'm a supporter of this presidential candidate That's a little bit too far, but they're not doing that They're not seeing the red flags and worse they love his hit larry and rhetoric raw story reports more than a third of the former president's 2020 voters 35 percent agree that immigrants are quote poisoning the blood of the country according to a survey By University of Massachusetts Amherst poll while just 32 percent of Trump voters and 37 percent of Republicans Disagreed with the Nazi slogan reported Rolling Stone There is a significant market for openly authoritarian ideologies in the United States said UMass Amherst political science professor Jesse Rhodes who oversaw the poll quote It would be naive to think that these ideas will eventually just wither away on their own and that's the real concern right because even if Trump Is defeated in November this fascist sentiment isn't just going to go away But I'm not saying that Trump is definitely going to be the next Hitler But what I am saying is that we're seeing a lot of warning signs suggesting that our democracy is in grave danger This authoritarian shift isn't exclusive to Trump by the way I mean DeSantis's tactics mirror that of Hungarian fascist Victor Orban and More of the Christian nationalists that control states across this country are promoting the idea of banning LGBTQ propaganda Which is pretty much akin to the one that we've seen in Russia and on top of that We've also seen this attempt to normalize Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet by some on the right For example, a Republican congressman Mike Collins responded to a picture of an undocumented immigrant flipping off the camera by saying We could buy him a ticket on Pinochet air for a free helicopter ride back Which is a quote-unquote joke made by far-right militias like the proud boys and the oath keepers in reference to Pinochet's program of Extermination as the intercept points out now Patrick Eiber of the New Republic explains Collins probably considers his statement a joke intended to communicate his views of migrants And it is best not to overreact to behavior that is designed to provoke But this post also reflects the mainstreaming of authoritarianism in the GOP since at least 2016 members of the proud boys the extremist group that Trump told to stand back and stand by in the event He lost the 2020 election have worn shirts with slogans like Pinochet did nothing wrong or Pinochet's helicopter rides Now a Republican in Congress is repeating them now for those unaware Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile during the 1973 coup backed by guess who The United States government and the country's president at the time of the coup was Salvador Allende who was a socialist now Pinochet went on to crack down on socialists. He disappeared people gave them helicopter rides as my Collins pointed out and For that reason the fascists have really admired him because they want to do what Pinochet did and it's not lost on me That Trump is vowing to cast out socialists, right now That doesn't necessarily mean that Trump is going to be the next Pinochet I think that the modern-day Republican Party is an amalgamation of fascist Authoritarians from all over the world throughout history and even though he might not necessarily take things as far as other dictators I think he's made it pretty clear by this point that the United States will never be the same again if he's elected I mean we're all frogs in a pot and he's turning the simmer into a boil and we're barely noticing it Right some of us are sounding the alarm and saying hey It's getting pretty hot in here But I think a lot of us are kind of sleepwalking into a dictatorship and don't even realize it now The thought of the United States becoming a dictatorship seems inconceivable and even hyperbolic to a lot of people watching because if you've grown up in The United States like me Democracy is the only form of governance that we've known that doesn't necessarily mean that our democracy is perfect I would even argue that our democracy doesn't meet the necessary criteria required for democracies right now but there is a clear difference between a broken democracy and Over-authoritarianism and most of us probably won't even notice the differences until it's too late and Comparative political scientists are going to tell you that the breakdown of democracy is inevitable Statistically if you look around the world most democracies fail at some point now That doesn't mean that American democracy is doomed to fail soon or even within our lifetimes But it means that it's possible It's not out of the realm of possibility and right now the conditions are set and when we're this close to the edge I think we'd be foolish to pretend like everything is fine It's very sad