Unfortunately, today’s Republican Party is doubling down on Trumpism, devoted to retaining/regaining power at all costs, including shredding the Constitution, trampling societal norms, and invoking violence against fellow citizens. Just this week, the Republican Party and its leadership presented three more threats to the future of our democratic republic.

First, the Republican Party’s functional head and his acolytes ignore and repeatedly attempt to subvert the rule of law. As Trump claimed a fictitious “envoy ambassador” to Kosovo, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows have defied congressional subpoenas to appear before the House Jan 6 committee. On Friday, Bannon was criminally indicted by a federal grand jury, the first such case since 1983. The Republican leadership and most of the rank-and-file have been silent or opposed to enforcing congressional subpoenas.

Book banning and burning is a sporadic tool of censorship in American local government, dating back to colonial times. Of course, book burning became especially notorious in Hitler’s fascist Germany, and was a major theme in Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel,Fahrenheit 451 (itself banned in some school districts). This week, members of the Spotsylvania County, VA, school board called for public burning of books they deemed offensive. Again, no Republican has publicly objected to this fraught symbolic erasure of literature (functionally useless with access to the internet) even as they whine about “cancel culture.”

Finally, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) posted a poorly edited anime segment on his Twitter feed, showing himself as a “hero” murdering a character with the face of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking a Joe Biden character. Outrage at this display of violence was met with dissembling from Gosar and—predictably—crickets from the Republican leadership. Democrats introduced a resolution of censure on Friday in response.

Ignoring Constitutional powers, advocating censorship through book burning, and invoking violence against elected officials have all been met with silence from its leadership as the Republican Party continues to sink to new lows.

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