There is no bottom. The modern 21st century GOP sinks ever deeper into militant redneckery, and in 2021 it’s worse than ever. And the alarming bit is that there is a common thread. On January 6, they attacked the Capitol in mob force in the belief that somehow they could stop the result of the Presidential election. In some Southern states, they have removed any legal obstacle to carrying concealed weapons. Most of the month of August was spent with crowds shouting down school board meetings and hospital emergency rooms. And then, Texas passed a law that essentially banned abortion, but enjoined the state from enforcing the law – instead empowering anyone else in the state to sue to enforce it.
The Republican party is now organized around the principle that mob rule by whites is the most valid form of government, and that the methods and process of electoral democracy should be subordinate to the demands of white mob rule, empowered by the threat of violence. The number of elected officials threatening a re-run of January 6 should be an alarm bell, as should the frequency with which quotidian local political operations are being disrupted by gangs of hyperactive Fox News consumers. All protected by the most prominent feature of white privilege: freedom from summary justice, the same protection that took Dylan Roof to Burger King but gunned down Elijah McCain and Trayvon Martin. To paraphrase PJ O’Rourke in another era, if this mob were criminals, they’d be poorer and darker skinned.
By contrast, imagine that we knew a batallion of ISIS were coming to attack the US Capitol on the day of the Electoral College vote count. Would they have been allowed to mass together up the street? Would they have been allowed a parade of speakers to agg them on? Would they have been let to fill the steps of the Capitol without resistance? Would they FUCK. The DC National Guard and active-duty military would have turned the west front into a sea of human gazpacho.
The GOP exists to legitimize violence by whites only. It’s past time to call them on it and do whatever is necessary to break it.