Republicans are getting their cheap thrills today, but there's hell to pay tomorrow.

[bigtree]

___In the latter half of the 1860s, Congress passed a series of acts designed to address the question of rights, as well as how the Southern states would be governed. These acts included the act creating the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and several Reconstruction Acts. The Reconstruction Acts established military rule over Southern states until new governments could be formed.
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/civil-war-and-reconstruction-1861-1877/reconstruction-and-rights/

The Reconstruction Act of 1867 placed Southern governments under military rule. The South was divided into five military districts, each run by a general in the U.S. Army. The five districts were Virginia; North and South Carolina; Georgia, Alabama, and Florida; Mississippi and Arkansas; and Texas and Louisiana. Tennessee was the only prior Confederate state that was not placed under military rule because Tennessee had many Union supporters during the war. Around 200,000 troops were placed in the South to enforce military rule.

What I'm waiting for is the realization by these republican majority states, that a Democratic president could find any number of reasons to invade and occupy southern and red cities under the same pretext that republicans manage to get away with, with the goal of defending American rights like protecting the vote; protecting access to reproductive health; protecting those exercising their right to protest.

The precedent being set by Trump's political exercise of his assumed authority to deploy troops against Americans should be a wake up call to republicans who believe their states are safe from government interference in the abusive and repressive laws they pass; laws a regulations which a Democratic president might not agree with and seek to halt or control using the force of our nation's military troops to either intimidate or impede state actions.

Republicans are simply allowing Trump to pave a roadmap for Democrats to advantage in nullifying any power or authority a republican majority acting today might assume will be the law of the land, having undermined themselves when their political opposition assumes and exercises power exclusively on behalf of their own party and their own preogatives.

They're getting their cheap thrills today, with hell to pay tomorrow. They are threatening democracy, itself, so it should stand to reason for them that their future out-of-power holds nothing but the righteousness of Democrats and Americans advantaging those same levers of control republicans are allowing Trump to use today, wielding those same autocratic allowances in the effort to restore our nation by crushing the republican political machine that is now threatening us all.

[WestMichRad]

1. They have no intention of relinquishing power.

So the “hell to pay” is just an abstraction.

[bigtree]

2. that doesn't mean they won't be made to

...the abstraction is the assumption that a second-term president can stop the transfer of power.

I can assert that democracy will stand just as assuredly as those who insist it won't; and I can point to states that are constitutionally charged with elections who will defend it against efforts of the executive.

Get out the vote in the midterms. Cynicism is a luxury.

[WestMichRad]

3. I hope you're right!

Am not confident… but hopeful.