A Totalitarian Moment?

Democrats Attempt to Vilify and Expel Political Opponents

I am loathe to write anything to do with January 6th.  So if you are tired of hearing about that date, please bear with me.  Trust that, if it weren’t the Feast of Epiphany, I would be tired and fed up with January 6th as well.  But the conduct of those trying to make political hay of January 6th raise too many alarms for me to be quiet.

I could focus on Biden’s speech.  It was chilling.  It sickened me to see a U. S. President vilify his political opponents like a totalitarian dictator just as it sickened me last year to see him vilify the unvaccinated.  He ranted about who was supposedly un-American.  He has become un-American.

But I will focus on an action begun a year ago that is almost as chilling but has not gotten nearly as much attention.  From The Hill:

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) has introduced a resolution to have the Republican members of the House who supported contesting battleground states' electors in Wednesday's joint session of Congress be investigated and potentially removed from office.

Her House Resolution 25 resolves that “the Committee on Ethics shall investigate, and issue a report on, whether any and all actions taken by Members of the 117th Congress who sought to overturn the 2020 Presidential election violated their oath of office to uphold the Constitution or the Rules of the House of Representatives, and should face sanction, including removal from the House of Representatives.”

It should be noted that, in her world, insisting that the 2020 election results be accurate and not fraudulent was seeking “to overturn the 2020 Presidential election.”  (Never mind that, with much less justification, Democrats have challenged every Presidential election they have lost in this millennium.)  So in the unlikely event her resolution passes, the 126 or so House Republicans who supported a lawsuit to insist that the final and binding results be accurate would be in danger of expulsion.

Now to be fair, I should point out that Cori Bush has a reputation for being both stupidly extreme and extremely stupid.  Though only in her first term, this reputation already is well earned. She excels even most Democrats in that regard. It is quite impressive. For example:

So we should not judge Democrats in Congress merely by her actions.

At the same time, she is far from alone in pushing this resolution.  As of this writing, it has 54 co-sponsors.  And there are numerous cheerleaders outside of Congress, including Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post a year ago and now John Nichols of The Nation.

A newer variation of this proposal, pushed by Democrat lawyer Marc Elias, would instead prevent the 126 Republicans from running again.  And there are efforts to prevent Trump from running again as well.  The sham impeachments were only the beginning of those.

All this reminds me too much of what I wrote in Totalitarian Moments III at Stand Firm, part of a Totalitarian Moments series I wrote in 2020 and early 2021.  Then I recalled Communist efforts to expel political opponents from the 1945 Hungarian Parliament on specious pretexts.  Having succeeding in so doing, the Communists rigged the next election and those following, descending Hungary further into totalitarian darkness.

And, yes, Democrats seem to be trying to make election rigging permanent, too, with their John Lewis Voting Rights Act, multiple lawsuits and other efforts.  I am no mind reader, but if core Democrats do not have the totalitarian attitude that the election of political opponents should either be prevented through rigged elections or overturned as soon as possible, well, they sure aren’t acting like it.  Instead, they treat those insisting on free, fair, and clean elections like criminals to be banished.  And so trying to control who is allowed to win elections and retain offices won in elections is straight out of the totalitarian playbook.

I do not want to exaggerate the danger.  House Res 25 is unlikely to pass.  The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is more of a danger though still unlikely to pass.  But face it.  Democrats have a troubling totalitarian streak particularly in dealing with political opponents.  And many of them just could not resist the temptation of January 6th giving them a pretext to act out on that streak.  Biden’s speech and Cori Bush’s Resolution 25 excel in that regard and are far from isolated.

And if my saying so upsets you, maybe you should encourage Democrats to get a grip and prove my concerns overwrought and wrong, to respect the American values of political freedom. Perhaps a landslide election defeat or two might so encourage them? Instead, Democrats keep proving me right. Really they keep proving me more than right by acting more like totalitarians than even I expect.

Yeah, I’m getting tired of that, too.  I hope the country is as well.