This past weekend saw a Substack by Tim Snyder making the rounds on Twitter, with the following paragraphs the most commonly cited:
I have the Cassandra feeling this spring because it is so obvious where all of this is heading. President Trump tells a big lie that elections are rigged. This authorizes him and others to seek power in extra-democratic ways. The lie is institutionalized by state legislation that suppresses voting, and that gives state legislatures themselves the right to decide how to allocate the electoral vote in presidential elections.
The scenario then goes like this. The Republicans win back the House and Senate in 2022, in part thanks to voter suppression. The Republican candidate in 2024 loses the popular vote by several million and the electoral vote by the margin of a few states. State legislatures, claiming fraud, alter the electoral count vote. The House and Senate accept that altered count. The losing candidate becomes the president. We no longer have "democratically elected government." And people are angry.
No one is seeking to hide that this is the plan. It is right there out in the open. The prospective Republican candidates for 2024, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley, are all running on a big lie platform. If your platform is that elections do not work, you are saying that you intend to come to power some other way. The big lie is designed not to win an election, but to discredit one. Any candidate who tells it is alienating most Americans, and preparing a minority for a scenario where fraud is claimed. This is just what Trump tried in 2020, and it led to a coup attempt in January 2021. It will be worse in January 2025.1
As Tim said, no one is denying that this is the plan. And my state is leading the charge against its own citizenry, in both the fight against our rights and the fight against our lives.
They don’t want you to vote:
Worked out by a conference committee after the two chambers passed substantially different pieces of legislation, the final version of Senate Bill 7 takes from both iterations to cut back early voting hours, ban drive-thru voting, further clamp down on voting-by-mail rules and enhance access for partisan poll watchers. It also now includes various additional rule changes that weren’t part of each chamber’s previous debate on the bill, adding new identification requirements for mail-in ballots. Lawmakers are expected to formally sign off on the agreement in the next day and send it to Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature before it becomes law. 2
They don’t care if you die, especially if others profit:
Patrick, who said he will turn 70 next week, said that he did not fear COVID-19, but feared that stay-at-home orders and economic upheaval would destroy the American way of life.
“No one reached out to me and said, 'As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren?' And if that is the exchange, I'm all in,” Patrick said.3
They work to prevent you from caring if others die:
Lawmakers passed bills that, among other things, prohibit so-called vaccine passports, and ban the mandatory closure of churches and gun stores during an emergency declaration.
“Let freedom ring!” state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, tweeted Sunday after the Legislature approved bills that included the ban on government entities and businesses requiring proof of vaccination for products or services.4
All my conscious life I have lived in Slaver states (as I call the South), moving to Atlanta when I was two years old, with stints in TN and TX since my childhood. And it didn’t occur to me until my forties that much of what the Slavers fought for, what *I* fought for, the “freedom” expressed by conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan was merely the freedom to be cruel, to be dominant, to be selfish.
This is the Slaver mentality - Slavers, and the laws in the Slaver states run by them, think people are things to be owned. Agreements don’t mean shit. Cruelty is the measure of a man.
And, let’s not deny reality: the Slavers have attempted to destroy the United States once in their pursuit of evil, an evil for which they never atoned for. And now they’re at it again.
So, fuck these guys. I’m glad I have my daughter in a non-Slaver state (NY), but the question for me is this:
Should I get the hell out while I still can, or should I stay and fight for a non-fascist Texas? What do you think?
https://snyder.substack.com/p/911-and-16
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/29/texas-voting-restrictions-bill/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-suggests-he-other-seniors-willing-n1167341
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/03/texas-pandemic-government-bills/
The question needs to be broader. If you stay, are you willing to commit 90% of your free time to developing,energizing and mobilizing a well oiled machine to educating and empowering voters??
I know of what I speak having contributed 60 hours a week to the cause to flip WI Blue 💙🔵.
We were able to increase the Latinx vote by 25% in the state which was about 20K votes. That's how much Biden won by.
If you have the energy, knowledge, and vision to do so, stay. If not, scramble to the nearest well established blue state you can find. 😊