Opinion The real motivation behind GOP calls to prosecute Democrats

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Following Donald Trump's conviction in a Manhattan courthouse last week on 34 felony counts, some Republican leaders are advocating to fight fire with fire. The problem with that strategy, of course, is that you risk burning down the entire system.

Trump supporters have been calling for extreme retaliation. The GOP strategy represents a warped and dark vision of our legal system that undermines the rule of law.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio announced that he will demand Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about “the unprecedented political prosecution” of Trump. Jordan has also suggested cutting funding from the FBI and federal and state prosecutors who are “involved in lawfare,” a new favorite watchword on the right that describes the weaponization of the rule of law.

These calls for revenge are not simply about punishment. Some go further by calling for prosecutors to turn the tables and target Democrats with presumably unjust criminal charges.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-real-motivation-behind-gop-172237221.html

[GreenWave]

1. And yet they let a private citizen dictate their every move.

[Arne]

2. Throw it back with lawfair.

[Irish_Dem]

3. The point is to terrorize any one who might hold Trump and the GOP accountable.

It is to instill fear and bully everyone into silence.

[wnylib]

4. Timothy Snyder says in his book titled On Tyranny

that people should not back down when wannabe tyrants try to intimidate the general population with threats. If you start censoring your speech and actions because you anticipate retaliation based on intimidating threats, you hand them a win. You become complicit with their fear tactics.

If they actually gain the power to carry out their threats and start doing it, then you need to be prudent about what you do and say publicly, but only to specific actions. You still should not give in to thinking, "I can't say or do this or that because that's what they will go after next." Continue to live and act on whatever freedoms you still have.

If you anticipate what they will do next or how they will retaliate, then look for their weak spots and decide how to subvert them.

These threats by MAGAs are intended to intimidate prosecutors, judges, and juries. So the appropriate thing to do is to continue with investigations and trials when and where they are warranted.

These threats should backfire. Instead of making society afraid to hold MAGA criminals accountable, we should take the threats as a warning to never let MAGAs have enough power to follow through with their threats. Don't worry right now in this moment about the chaos and destruction of the judicial system that their threats would bring. If they ever gain political power under Trump again, they will destroy it all anyway. So stand up to them while we can and do what we need to do.

[lees1975]

5. We need to be fighting back.

With claws out.

Emails should be bombarding Speaker Johnson, calling out his remarks supporting unlawful behavior, and attacking him in every way possible for his ignorance and stupidity when it comes to seeking revenge. They're desperate, and he needs to feel that to the bitter end.

I'm also emailing to Democrats, encouraging them to smash into this rhetoric with their own, getting as much media attention as they can and keep calling out how the Republicans are perverting the justice system and are simply angry because they've been so stupid in putting up a felon as their party nominee.

All this shrieking tells me one thing, and that's the GOP knows for certain that this is going to kill what little chance Trump had for winning the election. Look how they are working to rig the vote and the election.

[usonian]

6. It's because it was what they did through many attorneys general.

Every accusation is a confession.

[lees1975]

7. There are multiple news sources reporting on this, MSNBC is doing so in a reliable way.

This isn't the first time this kind of retaliatory political rhetoric has been used, but this is pretty extensive, and it ought to be ringing alarm bells, because it describes a systematic undermining of the Constitution that appears to have been carefully studied. It's like someone sat down and figured out how to game the system on the premise that guilt can be established by political power alone, and the actual commission of crimes is not a requirement to initiate prosecution.

That premise, of course, is what the extremist right wants people to think when it comes to Trump, not that he is responsible for his own prosecution because he committed crimes that caused it, but that he should be let off the hook because holding him accountable is political, not patriotic.

That's the whole basis that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis used when they subverted the Weimar Republic and took over Germany. They left the Constitution in place until they had completely taken over by simply re-defining its terms and terrorizing those who were responsible for justice. Once they were in control, they simply ignored the Constitution and ruled under a declared state of emergency.

The fledgling German courts and legal system, in the 1930's, was not mature enough or had enough experience to stop it by an appeal to the traditional values of the Republic's founders, because the Republic was only a couple of decades old, and was still struggling for acceptance in a nation that had been forced into unity in 1871. There were all kinds of divisions to exploit.

The question is whether, at this point, American patriotism and the strength of the founder's vision and values that have held this country together for 240 years will be enough to save it by smashing this movement, and gaining enough electoral support at the voting booth to pound Trump and the MAGA cult into the ground. Because that's what it's going to take.