How Republicans Killed American Democracy

The Republican project to destroy Democracy and the world order started long before Trump came on the scene

As President Trump hit Davos this week to saber rattle Europe over Greenland and ICE continues its military occupation of Minnesota, it appears that the United States as we know it is on the brink of extinction.

The president's threats against this country's closest allies threaten to undo the post-WWII world order that had brought historic wealth and economic growth and stability in North American and Europe. Annexing Greenland would essentially end NATO, and cut the European Union loose from its previously close relationship with the United States.

The move would be a tremendous gift to both Russia and China and it's likely the American dollar would stop being the currency of the world. At home, the regime has openly declared its intent to revoke birthright citizenship in the United States in a Supreme Court case, while also insisting that ICE has the legal right to detain US citizens who an agent believes violated the law.

While this is going on, Trump and his corrupt Department of Justice is going around accusing any Democrat who opposes him of phony charges.

It's hard to ignore where this is all inevitably going: if birthright citizenship is revoked, ICE will be empowered to revoke the citizenship of any American deemed an enemy of the Republican party. Resist ICE in the street? Get deported to a third world country with loose laws on slavery. Publicly criticize Trump over Greenland? Boom, no longer a citizen, no longer have the right to vote or even leave the country.

Register to vote as a Democrat? You're risking your right to be a free and equal citizen of the country.

It's all truly terrifying and we are fast approaching the fight or flight stage of national collapse. I would argue that ICE's actions in Minnesota and other blue states already constitute a declaration of civil war, but that is just my opinion, do with it what you will.

Through it all though, it's important to acknowledge that this hasn't just sprung out of the mind of Donald Trump this year. This project of unmaking America, and by extension, the established liberal world order, has been a conservative goal for decades.

On the international front, conservatives have long distrusted international organizations like the United Nations, or the International Criminal Court, claiming that these organizations are active threats to American sovereignty.

The conservative animus towards NATO is a more recent development that can, at least partially be attributed to Trump. Trump's friendly relationship with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has done more to destabilize American standing with allies than almost anything else, but we also cannot ignore the Russian bot farms that are constantly spreading bullshit and division across American conservative online spaces.

Nor can we ignore the Russian financial support for American conservative media. In 2024, Tenet Media, home of Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin, was found to have taken millions in illegal funding from Russian sources. It's no wonder conservatives want to blow up NATO and boost Russian standing in the world.

Domestically, the roots of today's legal insurrection against the constitution runs deep. The concept of the "unitary executive" was born from the conservative mind. This theory calls for giving ever more power to the president and the American executive branch at the expense of Congress and the judicial branch.

Though the idea dates back to the Watergate era, it came to the fore policywise under George W. Bush, who used the post 9/11 panic to push through the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act. Both massively expanded executive power under the guise of protecting America from terrorism. Dozens of agencies were created, including ICE, and so the American police state was born.

US surveillance law was turned upside down and vast swaths of constitutional protections were tossed out in the interests of security.

Before 9/11 and the Patriot Act, it was rare to see a police officer carrying an assault rifle, unless you were witnessing a SWAT operation. After its passage, it became normal to see NYPD patrolling tourist attractions while decked out like a soldier. Now we have fully armed ICE thugs roaming Minneapolis looking for Brown people to kidnap.

None of this would be possible without the conservative remake of the federal judiciary and the legally bereft conservative-controlled Supreme Court. Turns out when you stack SCOTUS with Republican party hacks, bad things happen. But the court remake didn't start with Trump, it started in earnest under Mitch McConnell's Senate leadership. McConnell did everything in his power to turn the judicial branch away from interpreting law and towards turning the law into whatever Republicans say it is.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is the Republican attack on our free and fair elections, which again, didn't start under Trump. The first big wave of electoral attacks began during Obama's first term when Republicans swept into office in 2010 on the back of a popular revolt against the first Black president's leadership.

That happened to be a census year, which meant that Republicans across the country were given free reign to redraw election district maps, often for the first time ever. Several states that were formerly swing states, like Missouri, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, have seen the Republican party take a chokehold over the state legislature ever since. The Wisconsin and North Carolina gerrymanders were so bad that Democrats would often find themselves having to carry voter sentiment by 5-10 percent just to break even on statehouse seats.

But it's not just gerrymandering, it's Republican restrictions on voting. You already need an ID just to register to vote, but Republicans across the country began requiring ID just to vote, and then began to restrict the IDs required to those more likely to be held by Republican voters. One of the first to go was a student ID, since students are more likely to vote Democrat.

No ID, no vote.

This effort has been expanded in recent years with Trump attacking mail in ballots. Republicans claim there is massive fraud, and yet even Trump's regime isn't prosecuting people for voter fraud. There is some voter fraud of course, but it's mostly been Republican officials getting caught voting in multipole places under the false notion that everyone is cheating.

This was Republicans not just tilting the election map in its favor, but tilting the electorate itself in its favor, with the bonus of making it harder for Democrats to win statewide governor and Senate races. Somehow none of this is ever mentioned in the Beltway-brained access-chasing horserace circlejerk reporting from mainstream media.

It's often said that the US is a center right country. I disagree, I think it is a center left country under conservative occupation and election manipulation.

Under the Republican party, the United States has seen executive power expanded to unsustainable levels, the judiciary turned into a de facto Republican party operation, and the legislative branch hollowed out by Republican election manipulation.

There were certainly things Democrats could have done along the way to avoid getting to this place and in many cases a lot Democrats supported this Republican process. But the government we find ourselves with today, where the executive branch is the most corrupt it's been in US history, and the judicial branch acting as a partner in the looting of the nation, and the legislative branch powerless to stop any of it, was created by Republicans.

I don't know what the future holds for us all. Maybe we all die from a French nuclear strike over Greenland, or maybe the dollar and our economy collapse permanently, or maybe the American police state finally completes its takeover of America.

Regardless of how it all turns out, I will remember who did this to us. And it wasn't just Trump, he's just the Republican president who came along and figured out how to exploit what had already been built.

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