What Just Happened to American Democracy? Another Insurrection, Only This One Was Successful
Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla
How the GOP’s Lunatics and Fanatics Have Taken American Democracy Back to the Brink of Ruin
by umair haque
They’re describing it, already, as “anarchy.” After fifteen attempts, finally, the GOP elected a Speaker of the House — to non-Americans, a leader of their own party, to govern the House of Representatives, control of which they’d just won. It’s not mere anarchy, though. What just happened is something darker than that: the drama unfolding in Congress? This was the first insurrection of 2023 — and what just happened ensures it won’t be the last one.
Who really rules the GOP — and governs the House now? It’s not Kevin McCarthy, ironically. Now, it’s the lunatics and fanatics which make up the extreme wing of the Republicans. They were Trumpists, but now they’re even further right than Trump, who practically begged them to give in and support McCarthy. They didn’t. Instead, they forced concession after concession from him — and now, they’re poised to be who really rules the House. And with it are going to come two difficult, deadly years for American democracy.
This was an insurrection, by any other name. Of a particular kind — a rare kind. “Insurrection” is an American popular vernacular, so let’s make it a little more formal. Coup. Coup attempts come in many forms — hard, like Jan 6th, soft, like the days that led up to Jan 6th, when Trump’s team bombarded the courts with nuisance lawsuits about voter fraud, and put forth fake slates of electors.
There’s another kind of insurrection, or coup, though. That’s when a party that’s failed at the other forms of a coup…its own fanatics…who still haven’t given up on the idea of having absolute control over democracy…try to take it over…that very party…because that’s the final move of the chess pieces they’ve got. In other words, a factional soft coup. The extremists in the party that’s just failed at its attempts to subvert democracy make one last ditch attempt to do it, because they’re still true believers — in fascism, authoritarianism, theocracy, all the flavors of lunacy. Only now, they mount a coup aimed at their own party.
Because, of course, only by controlling their own party can they can grind the gears of democracy to a halt. That is exactly what just happened to American democracy: it is undergoing a factional soft coup. The GOP’s fanatics and extremists and lunatics — so far right they’ve gone beyond Trump himself, the demagogue who gave birth to them (gross, I know, right?) — have basically taken over their own party.
That’s a profoundly bad outcome for America, and for the world. I’ll explain why, if it’s not already self-evident, but first, what do I mean by “the lunatics now rule the GOP — and the House”?
In exchange for voting him for Speaker, this faction — the hard right half of the “Freedom Caucus,” which, if you’re not American, just means a bloc within the Republican Party — demanded concessions. Of fairly shocking kinds. The kinds of concessions that, well, render democracy nonfunctional, really, to begin with, because if you give crackpots and fanatics concessions like this…what about the rest of us?
These concessions were done in secretive deals, so we won’t really fully know their details for a while — but we already know their contours, and they’re, well, like I said, shocking. Any one of the fanatics — any one of them — has the power to basically call a vote on throwing the Speaker out of his job, anytime. That’s a classic form of political intimidation and grandstanding of course — and given that power, they’ll probably use it regularly. But that’s just theatrics. It’s the substantive concessions which are really concerning. The fanatics gained power over the rules of the House, what kinds of bills make it to the floor, and worst of all, over the US budget itself.
The fanatics have gained extraordinary powers. Superpowers, if you like. When I say “they’ve gained power over” this or that, I don’t mean the kind of power that every member of a Parliament or Congress has or should have, one member one vote. They now appear to wield have effective veto power. As a bloc, and even as individuals. Over things as large…as…the budget of the United States. Whether or not its government goes on functioning. Whether or not it meets its debt repayments. What the rules of the House should be.
So here we have a true worst case scenario, and it’s not “anarchy” in any sense, but something much, much more troubling. The fanatics now have extraordinary powers, which they’re sure to abuse. Worse, not just over America, but over the world.
Fast forward a few months, and it’s time for humdrum functions of government to occur, like debt repayments. The fanatics don’t want it to happen — they throw out some crackpot arguments which make no sense — but basically they just want to burn it all down. The entire global economy goes into a tailspin like the 1930s. America missing a debt payment? LOL — kiss the global banking system goodbye. The shock would last a decade or more. The world’s already on the brink of a recession — at the moment we need as a civilization to invest, right now, transformatively, in post-industrial systems and institutions.
Kiss all that goodbye.
That’s just one small picture of the stakes here. They’re very real, and this situation couldn’t be worse. I really mean that. Why?
Because if you understand the above — this was an insurrection, by any other name — then it’s also different from all the preceding ones. Can you think of how it’s different? It’s very obvious, and when I point it out, it’s going to chill you. January 6th wasn’t successful. The attempts leading up to it weren’t either. But this one was.