Already Republicans are portraying 7% inflation and gas prices over $3 per gallon as an unprecedented disaster and utter ruin. Now imagine how they will respond to all the possible results of economic warfare with Russia, or even just some of them.
Sweeping Republican landslides in 2022, with capture of the electoral machinery. Republican victory in 2024, either by Trump himself or someone as much like him as possible. And that not be so bad if nothing more were at stake that ordinary partisan politics -- defeat, yes, but with the proviso that no defeat is permanent, and that you can always live to fight another day. But today's Republican Party has clearly given up on democratic politics and fancies itself as entitled to a monopoly on political power. Give the Republicans a landslide now and expect them to entrench a one-party system like Mexico in the heyday of the PRI.
Presumably the end game of our sanctions is to bring down Putin. I am skeptical that that will happen, or, if it does, that we will like his successor any better. But the real fear that haunts me is that, in seeking to topple Putin, we topple our own democracy instead.
And now you know why it is hard for me to think about anything but the Ukrainian crisis.
No comments:
Post a Comment