Greg Sargent wonders why Democrats are not relentlessly hammering Republicans on the Jan. 6th insurrection. “Democrats” is perhaps overly broad. One Democrat is building a campaign around it: Abby Finkenauer. The former congresswoman is running for U.S. Senate in Iowa against 87-year-old Chuck Grassley:
Finkenauer regularly discusses the Capitol riot in highly personal terms. As she told the Des Moines Register, on Jan. 6 she watched her “former colleagues and my friends get attacked,” with the result that “the world changed and so did I.” And during her announcement video, she ripped Republicans: “Since the Capitol was attacked, they turned their backs on democracy, and on us.”
The collapse of Afghanistan allows Republicans to turn their back on their failed domestic insurrection, too. There’s nothing the GOP enjoys more than a twofer. The Taliban sweep of Afghanistan allows Republicans to blame Joe Biden for the messy situation overseas while stoking the hot fires of their base’s xenophobia at home. Wait. It’s a threefer. The human tragedy in Afghanistan has virtually obliterated talk of the Trump/MAGA coup attempt in January, speaking of overthrowing governments.
If nothing else, the takeover of the Afghan government should remind us of what a successful insurrection by fundamentalists looks like. In fact, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan should sound a warning klaxon for Americans. The Taliban minority hate democracy and pluralism the way Republicans and their fundamentalists allies do here. The religions are different; the fundamentalism is the same. Fundamentalism is the same everywhere. As are bullies with guns.
Ponder, American women, what a fundamentalist takeover of our government might mean for your constitutional rights and bodily autonomy. (I don’t have to paint a picture.)
Ponder, American minorities, what restoring Republican control of Congress will mean for your being treated, even in theory, as political equals with a voice in your destiny. Not to mention what it means for your holding any political power to back that up that voice.
Ponder, Americans not in thrall to Trumpism, the further erosion of control over your schools and your cities when authoritarians have gerrymandered not just Congress, but state governments to lock in their rule the way Confederates did for 100 years after losing the Civil War.
Wrapped in the stars and stripes, forces that have already rejected democracy in the world’s most enduring one find inspiration in the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. That should give us all pause and set our jaws firmly to see the American Taliban soundly defeated.
“Not too many Democrats have talked about the violence and its rupturing of our illusions about democracy in such human terms,” Sargent writes of Finkenauer. “You’d think Democrats could make them pay a political price for it.”
If Democrats don’t, the Trump insurrection will disappear down the memory hole, and perhaps this democracy, too, will “die slowly in history.”