It finally came clear to me, what to do about the MAGAs. We contend with authoritarians. Authoritarians obey their authorities unquestioningly. We cannot reason with the authoritarian mindset. Authoritarians respond only to authority.
It is therefore necessary to supplant what their authorities. The ideal would be for Jesus to come and tell the evangelical nationalists to shut the fuck up. That it’s His way or the highway, and they are through making a hash of what He had said. They and their lying ways are finished. If you want to call yourself a Christian, then you had damn well better act like a Christian.
Jesus does not seem to be showing up to do the job.
Okay, then. It’s up to us. Let us then be the authority. We must draw the line. We must no longer tolerate their insanities. We must make it clear what genuine authority says, and that what it says goes.
No half-measures allowed: Seditionists in the congress must be kicked out. Self-admitted nazis must be denied the vote, at least until they get themselves straightened out. Why should an avowed opponent of our goverment be allowed to vote within that government?
If they really want a revolution, let them live with the risks of a true revolution, let them live with the full consequences of breaking the current law. That’s what our so-vaunted forefathers did to found this nation. If they really mean what they say, they must do no less.
No one who reached his or her office because of gerrymandering may be allowed to retain that office. Gerrymandering is illegal. It doesn’t matter that illegally appointed justices of the courts, Supreme or otherwise, endorse the illegality. It is nevertheless illegal.
Southern baptist preachers cannot be allowed to preach insurrection under the false color of religious faith. What they preach is not the faith of any religion, but hatred and violence and sedition. So some of them really believe what they say. So what? Some people still believe the Earth is only 6000 years old. They’re wrong. Who says so? We say so, and the law says so.
On whose authority are these measures to be undertaken? On the authority of the constitution. Not what home-grown Nazis say the constitution says, but what it actually says. OUR authority. WE are the authority. Threats of violence and murder are not free speech, and will not henceforward be treated as free speech, but will be responded to with every possible legal and punitive measure.
We have allowed people who do not respect the necessities of free speech and the rights of others to spout their venom and practice their mayhem as if their hatreds were merely opinions, the equal of the opinions of those who practice lawful, constitutional democracy. But they are not.
The success of people who clearly contravene the free and lawful practice of democracy is that we have let them get away with perverting the meaning of the constitution and of the laws. We need not define our authority according to their spurious pretensions. We need only obey our own laws.
Their success owes to our failure of nerve.
We cannot convert authoritarians with reason. We must simply replace their spurious “authority” with the real thing. With the constitution, and the rule of law. With our democracy. They are NOT permitted to threaten or violate it.