I really feel the important part of this trial is whether at the end he’s barred from the ballots. If he’s allowed to run it doesn’t really matter who wins. His candidacy alone would show the rule of law and democracy has failed. That’s the final, dim hope i cling to, that he will be barred from running. If he isn’t, and runs? Thats when i will know for sure it is already as you said, that fascism is already here and democracy is dead.
Even if he’s barred, I don’t imagine anyone winning the GOP primary without a pledge to pardon him once elected. Beyond that, it seems that people really do not want to consider the very real possibility of a coup or jail break. Every time these fucks escalate there’s a chorus of wilfully ignorant liberals bleating about “who could have seen this coming???” and every time there have been people like me begging them to take the threat seriously and to stop imagining there will be some moment when they finally see reason and accept defeat. The democratic strategy for opposing fascism seems to be just never losing another election, and somehow think throwing their most vulnerable constituents under the bus and catering to republicans and the mythical undecided voter is going to grow their lead enough to make that happen.
I’m saying all this not to frighten people but to try to wake them up to the reality of the threat we face, because right now we’re sleepwalking into fascists seizing power.
I agree. As one of the Democrats left behind in their rightward lurching i feel (quite painfully, tbh) how the party seems more interested in bringing moderate Republicans into the fold more than they want folks like me who have been here all along. Their practice of giving money to Republican extremists with the express purpose of running against them in the general tells me they wish to use fascism to their benefit rather than stomp it out as they claim.
