Rock Bottom
Amidst the to and fro on tariffs, the horrors of kidnapping and renditions, and the continuous and rapid disintegration of the Constitutional order, the people who actually care about this country have already started asking what the breaking point could be. As the federal Republican trifecta has consistently demonstrated over the last three months, no one is going to challenge, stymie, or stop any of Trump’s impulses—so we are relying on an internal party collapse or elected Republicans cracking under the weight of their own mistakes. For our part, some of us patriots imagine it will be when the “scaled back” tariffs nonetheless punch a hole through the chest of the U.S. economy. Some think donor backlash or town hall discontent will turn the tide. Others believe that infighting and factionalism could pry a handful of marginal members loose.
Would that it were so easy.
The Republican Party is no longer motivated by policy objectives; they are not swayed or moved by constituents; even as far as donors go, it is a matter of matching means with willpower—few of the donor class have the capacity, charisma, or interest to serve as candidates themselves. Instead, the entire political apparatus of the GOP is draped around ideology. And that means it is impervious to reason.
I’ve said it before and I’m sure I will have to say it again: Ideologues are people who get the same answer no matter the equation. Everything they do is reasoned backwards from the result they want. It is why “originalist” legal theory almost never cites actual written records or texts from the founding period, but always assumes the preferences of the officials at the time by stuffing the desired result into the empty space of what hasn’t been researched. It is why facts, numbers, and figures on any given policy doesn’t change their approach—why they’re ok with more failed pregnancies, dead birthing parents, and even more miscarriages and abortions in their effort to institute “pro-life” policy. And importantly, it is why as bad as things get in the next few weeks and months, Republicans will not bail on the regime until it is far too late.
What it feels like, looking up at where we need to go
As ideologues, Republican representatives will simply refuse to believe that their plans aren’t working. Trump himself is entirely delusional—deep in his Mad King era. And GOP voters? They’ve spent years immersed in propaganda and programming, have grown socially isolated from people who would challenge them, and have never cultivated (or have entirely abandoned) the critical thinking skills necessary to extricate themselves from the circumstances they’ve forced us into. Even if it were possible to chip away at all of the entrenched fallacies wrapped around the Republican Party, there is the very simple reality that people just don’t like to learn that they’re wrong.
This is Wile E. Coyote going over the cliff into open air and making it the better part of a mile before looking down. This is years of defying political gravity, to the point where dropping is sure to burn them up in the atmosphere. This isn’t an ego death that can be processed and overcome; this is an ego cataclysm so devastating that it is like the psychological equivalent to the Black Plague. Even vague awareness of the consequences to accepting fault would be enough to prevent anyone from acknowledging that fault is possible. Better to die in the delusion of righteousness than live with the catastrophic reality.
Or: Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.
The anguish that liberals and patriots express is only more incentive for Republicans to hold on: First, because they want us to hurt and suffer, and next, because they delight in the feeling of superiority it gives them, no matter what it costs. The psychological value of making us hurt—especially those of us who are marginalized—is the lodestone of the conservative identity. Around an ideology of supremacy, the degradation of the inferior is the purest ideal. Even if they can’t feed their kids, even if the land is ravaged and hope is scant, even if it costs their own lives, these people will happily accept the misery as long as they can believe we are more miserable.
But one doesn’t have to take my word for it to know it’s true: We’ve witnessed this exact dynamic play out on U.S. soil before. What else but the conceit of supremacist ideology could have convinced a collection of states with a fraction of the population, manufacturing, logistics, and resources to rebel against a national compact that was deliberately tilted in their favor, while fighting to keep as much as a third of their population subdued in bondage at the same time? Even more outrageous is that—had they not seceded—the pro-slavery coalition would have had majorities in Congress after the 1860 elections. They literally gave away the power to forestall the crisis they created. And after they committed to this absurd course of action—while claiming the right to federal lands, no less!—nothing convinced them to give up until they were obliterated.
The Confederacy never worked out how to function as an actual government because that was not its purpose. It was a vehicle for ideology end to end, and everything about it was wrapped in the notion that it was a worse sin to live in peace with those who rejected slavery than to perish in war fighting to keep millions in chains. This ideology was so powerful that nothing could induce them back. The Emancipation Proclamation was a promise—after a year and a half of bloody warfare—that southern territories could continue slavery if they came back to the Union before January 1, 1863, and not only did not a single Confederate state take up the offer, every single one doubled down on the rebellion. In the summer of 1863, on the 87th birthday of the Revolution, military success for the Confederacy became impossible. The Union would take control of the Mississippi River by breaking Vicksburg, and Lee’s plan to threaten Washington D.C. from the north was crushed at Gettysburg—and nearly cost him his army.
They would fight for almost two more years.
All of this is to say, that if past is prologue, there is no chance whatsoever that Republicans will break just because the economy is in freefall or they’ve had some rough town hall events. They will keep going until it becomes clear that there simply is no winning condition, and then they will sabotage any effort to force them to acknowledge the loss. What condition the country will be in by then is anyone’s guess, but if the Civil War is any indication: Bad. Real bad.
That said, this process can be sped up and thus shorten the period of devastation that we are inevitably entering. It requires a posture that has not been seen in politics for decades, and that the Democratic Party has all but abandoned: relentless opposition. Bar, stymie, stall, breach, bristle, break, delay, and deny: These are the efforts we will have to take up as the people in order to give our republic a chance to survive. The point is to push Republicans to the brink—and over. Because our best chance is not that Republicans hit rock bottom; it is that they shatter when they do.
