Observation 1: Most religions have a great tautological scam going: Faith means believing in God, Jesus, Allah, or another invisible sky wizard even in the absence of evidence. Oh, sure, you can say that your book of faith that was written centuries ago by drunk monks proves some things, but it doesn't, any more than comic books prove the existence of superheroes. And maybe you can point to a miracle or two, but even those are mostly easily debunked. Despite there being no tangible, demonstrative proof that the aforementioned sky wizard is real, people are still willing to fight each other over which sky wizard is bigger and more magical or to use their sky wizard to justify barbaric cruelties.
Yet, as stupid as all that seems, it makes more sense than the millions of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Why? Because you also can't prove that God doesn't exist (yeah, yeah, proving a negative, I know), and that's what gives the faithful cover for their faith. When it comes to the Big Lie, the proof that it wasn't stolen, that there was virtually no voter fraud, that Joe Biden won fair and square and it really wasn't all that close overall doesn't matter at all. Facts, observable and verified and supported by everyone with any authority and/or expertise, are beside the point. Faith in the absence of evidence is one thing. Faith in the face of evidence that clearly demonstrates your faith is a lie is, to put it mildly, fucking frightening and fucking madness.
That's what makes this whole fight against the Cult of the Big Lie so frustrating. It's not like the evidence of a legitimate election is even open for interpretation. To disagree about it is like arguing with someone who looks at an ocean and says it's dry sand. At some point pretty quickly, you wanna say, "Okay, motherfucker, step on in," while you hope they don't drag you with them because they're gonna insist they're walking on solid ground until they drown.
As I've said before, you can't argue with someone who refuses to accept that reality is real. They are, for lack of a more articulate term, sick. Perhaps even actually mentally ill. I don't say that lightly. What else can you say about people who believe a fantasy to the point that they are willing to commit violence over it? The thing is that one day the most fervent are going to want their belief to be put into action. And I think that the full danger is that Democrats are not just underestimating how much Republicanism is about rigging democracy, but they are not getting just how many legitimately sick people there are.
In other words, we are dealing with a Trump-induced hysteria, one that plays into every fear that conservatives, both the craven opportunists and the true believers, have warned their followers about for years, one that takes all their fears of non-whites and socialists (whatever the fuck they think that means) and abortions and non-Christians (because that fucking sky wizard is always in the mix) and LGBTQ people and wraps it in a big package with QAnon bow that says, "Of course they had to destroy the one man who was going to save us all." And, of course, in the face of that, a coup is horribly logical to keep that fantasy of white Christian supremacy alive.
You're not going to solve any of this by trying to play nice. It's not possible. It's the quickest path to letting these fuckers take over without a fight.
Observation 2: If things were reversed, and one day it's pretty likely they will be, and Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, and Democrats were blocking the GOP's agenda that they got elected on from being passed in the Senate, the filibuster would be shitcanned in a heartbeat. Hell, even if Democrats weren't blocking anything, the GOP would shitcan it because that's what dicks do, and the Republican Party right now is just a bag of dicks, more dickish than they've ever been in my lifetime, quite frankly, probably because they used to keeps their dicks in their pants and pretend they were doing things for some demonstrably real reason. Now? Fuck it. They've just got 'em whipped out and they're wavin' them around, daring you to tell 'em to put 'em away.
Yes, it's technically majority control, even if Republicans represent a significantly smaller part of the population, especially in the Senate, than Democrats, and even if the President only wins the electoral college and not the popular vote. Even in that terrifying moment, some on the left are optimists. The elimination of the filibuster would force Republicans to actually vote down bills that are popular. Although, more likely, a GOP Majority Leader just wouldn't bring them up for a vote at all, like what was done during the Obama administration by Mitch McConnell, who has the expression of someone who knows he sharted himself but is hoping there's no leakage.
Even more likely, a GOP congressional majority with a GOP president would immediately pass laws that would shape how the nation votes and assure that Democrats can't win a majority again. Those kinds of laws might include giving state legislatures the right to overturn elections or making it easier for them to do so. It might include stringent i.d. laws and restrictions on how and when people can vote and when they can register and so much more. If you don't believe that fucking up voting would be top of a Republican majority agenda, you have been asleep for the last six years.
And while this is, yes, about Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema's bizarre (and perhaps even suspicious) insistence on preserving the filibuster, which isn't in the Constitution, it's mostly about how far Republicans continue to radicalize, from obstruction to destruction. To tie these both together, I think another huge danger is that Republicans have accepted that they have to do this or unleash a tide of violence. They have no beliefs except staying in power, so, fuck it, take the easiest, shittiest path to it. And once you decide to go down that path, fuck it. You may as well go enthusiastically. And these motherfuckers are skipping gleefully towards an authoritarian future.
