Brynn Tannehill - American Fascism: How the GOP Is Subverting Democracy

AMERICAN FASCISM

Brynn Tannehill

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American Fascism Copyright 2021 Brynn Tannehill. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9982521-8-6

AMERICAN FASCISM

How the GOP is Subverting Democracy

Brynn Tannehill

Dedication

To Paul Lowes: You put up with me all the way through high school and mentored me through my capstone paper on late-stage politics in the Weimar Republic. This book, almost 30 years later, wouldnt have been possible without you. Its one of the great regrets in my life that you didnt have the opportunity to read what you inspired.

To Monica Roberts: You were never afraid to say it like it is, call a fool for what he was, or speak truth to power. I hope this carries on the tradition in a way you would have found pleasing.

Table of Contents

Tables

We cannot get out. The end comes soon. We hear drums, drums in the deep. They are coming.

J.R.R. Tolkien

I ve always had an interest in how democracies collapse. In high school and college, I wrote my capstone papers on how the political infighting between center, left, and communist parties in the Weimar Republic paved the way for its downfall. I spent the middle part of my military career desperately trying to prop up weak democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan against theocratic, totalitarian insurgencies. My post-graduate work used econometrics to build models to predict which countries in Africa were most likely to descend into civil war and genocide. I wanted to be able to allow people to see the very earliest quantitative signs of things going sideways.

Then, in 2015, Trump ran for office. Like most Americans I initially treated it like a joke. I thought that the Republican Party (GOP) was committing suicide, and that this was the last gasp of the Tea Party. But then, something he said during his speeches pricked up my ears. Trump kept repeating the phrase, One people, under one God, saluting one flag. I had heard this phrase before, but it wasnt in English.

This was way too close to the mottoes of both the Second and Third Reich for my comfort: Ein Reich. Ein Volk. Ein Gott. (One nation. One people. One God.), and Ein Volk, Ein Reich. Ein Fhrer! (One people. One Nation. One Leader!), respectively.

This is when I began to hit the panic button, when few others were. I had seen this before, and it didnt end well. Everyone could see that this was a right-wing populist candidacy, but there was always the assumption that things would be fine, because this is America. There were so many excuses: Trump cant win. Were not that stupid, as a country and as a people. The system will prevent him from doing too much harm even if he is elected. The courts. The federal bureaucracy. The Republican establishment. The norms of our institutions and our democracy. The constitution itself.

Just days before the 2016 election on Halloween, I had one of the most memorable and eye-opening conversations of my life. I was attending a behind-thescenes meeting for LGBTQ leaders, and the topic of discussion was what we were going to focus on going forward and how we were going to do it. Most of the folks were leaders of grassroots movements; I was brought on board as a futurist and opposition analyst who mostly hung out in the back with the senior legal analyst to temper peoples enthusiasm with unpleasant realities.

As the day went by, I realized something; everything we discussed was predicated on Hillary Clinton winning the White House. During a break, I took one of the conference organizers aside. So what are we going to do if Trump wins? I asked.

Hes not gonna win, he replied confidently.

Yeah, but suppose he does? Theres a chance. What are we going to do then? Were in deep trouble, and all this I gestured around the room, doesnt happen. Whats the plan?

I dont know. I guess well figure it out when it happens, my friend replied.

This answer wasnt reassuring and, as someone who had studied military history, it was a poor strategy. The late-19th century French military philosophy of debrouillez-vous (well muddle through somehow) is generally looked back upon as precisely how not to plan for conflict. And, in fact, neither the LGBTQ community nor Democratic leadership ever came up with an effective answer for how to deal with Trump and the GOPs autocratic attempt.

As the initial shock in the days after the 2016 election wore off, I was filled with a cold dread. I knew this was going to be bad. The only thing limiting how bad it would be over the next four to eight years was how far into authoritarianism the GOP would be willing to go and how fast. A few people who studied democratic decline understood precisely how dangerous right-wing, theocratic, nationalist populist movements are. As a member of one of the groups this movement actively despises, the danger was far more than academic. I wrote this in the week following the election:

People want to know why the hell Im so scared as a transgender person after the election of Donald Trump. Why the hell Im updating my passport. Why my wife is renewing her Canadian passport and getting citizenship papers lined up for our three kids. Were consolidating 401ks, and establishing lists using historical analogies on what events trigger our departure, and how quickly those contingency plans would have to be implemented to get out of Dodge on a moments notice

In case you hadnt noticed, we are now a nation with one political party controlling virtually everything. The White House. The U.S. Senate. The Supreme Court (especially after Trumps nominees are confirmed). The U.S. House of Representatives. Thirty-three of the fifty Governors Mansions, and 67 of 98 State Legislative Chambers.

The system is rigged, but not the way Donald Trump claimed. Due to gerrymandering, most state legislatures are unwinnable to Democrats. And in most of these states where Republicans control the legislature, the demise of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) means that voter suppression laws will skew gubernatorial, Presidential, and Senatorial races further to the right.

It wont get better either. A Supreme Court full of little Scalias will not strike down gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, or any of the million legalistic or bean-counting ways Republicans can use to ensure that they never leave power. In 2018, 25 seats held by Democrats will be up for election, and only eight are held by Republicans. In 2020 when they conduct the census, and districts are drawn up for the 2022 election, two-thirds of the states will still likely have Republican majorities across all three branches, and the gerrymandering situation is likely to get even worse.

It is no coincidence that Clinton underperformed in the polls so badly in the first election since the VRA was struck down. Its also part of the Democratic death spiral we have entered. As demographics get worse and worse for Republicans, the more they will suppress the vote and rig districts. In turn, elected officials will look less and less like the people in their states and represent their interests less and less. For elected Republicans, as a result of gerrymandering, there is also a perverse incentive to ignore people in your state who arent just like you: white, Christian and straight.