Thomas Veil
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- Joined
- Aug 13, 2020
- Posts
- 3,450
The time has come to ask ourselves questions we never wanted to ask. Consider...
So the time has come to ask: if it fails and we are out of all other choices...is it time to start thinking about preserving our democracy through martial law?
I'm not talking about send-out-the-troops-to-storm-people's-homes martial law. I'm talking about Biden simply declaring a suspension of Congress' and the courts' ability to strangle free elections so that no second party ever again has a chance to challenge Republicans. I'm talking about declaring election laws across the nation frozen at where they were in November of 2020; installing election overseers in state offices where there is a question of ultra-partisan Secretaries of State purposely not counting votes correctly; forbidding laws that would allow state legislatures to replace legal electors with their own partisan ones; and apportioning districts in each state according to the census but minimizing or eliminating gerrymandering.
Now, don't think I'm throwing this idea out there lightly. Martial law is deep, deep territory, one which I feel creepy even talking about. But god help us, I can't think of another alternative to losing our democracy altogether.
- Conservatives have been gerrymandering to give themselves unfair advantage in federal elections, a situation that does not look to change anytime soon.
- We have a right wing party that has been getting more radical with each passing month.
- Said party has measurably advanced from spin > outright lies > deep paranoid conspiracies.
- We are now in one of the very few times in US history where a demagogic leader has control of the minds of a sizable portion of the population and is purposefully, even forcefully, feeding that paranoia. History has shown us where that has gone in other countries.
- The guardrails are down. The idea of simply recognizing that you lost an election and waiting for your next opportunity as dictated by law, is simply not accepted by a huge portion of the population.
- Because of this, we have already had one violent insurrection which resulted in deaths and a disruption of certification of the presidential vote.
- Though there was nothing wrong with the last election, Republicans are saying that there was and are using that excuse to conspire to narrow voting rights in a way that all but guarantees them victory from this point on.
- As an insurance policy, they are scheming to place their most radical, most corrupt members in state positions to count the vote, come the 2022 election and beyond.
- This same radical right has used trickery to load federal courts, including the Supreme Court, with judges sympathetic to its views.
- The For the People Act, which is perhaps our last best hope at keeping elections honest, is being strangled by one solitary Democratic senator who will defeat it by resisting changes to the filibuster rules.
So the time has come to ask: if it fails and we are out of all other choices...is it time to start thinking about preserving our democracy through martial law?
I'm not talking about send-out-the-troops-to-storm-people's-homes martial law. I'm talking about Biden simply declaring a suspension of Congress' and the courts' ability to strangle free elections so that no second party ever again has a chance to challenge Republicans. I'm talking about declaring election laws across the nation frozen at where they were in November of 2020; installing election overseers in state offices where there is a question of ultra-partisan Secretaries of State purposely not counting votes correctly; forbidding laws that would allow state legislatures to replace legal electors with their own partisan ones; and apportioning districts in each state according to the census but minimizing or eliminating gerrymandering.
Now, don't think I'm throwing this idea out there lightly. Martial law is deep, deep territory, one which I feel creepy even talking about. But god help us, I can't think of another alternative to losing our democracy altogether.