Republicans throw in for their thuggish leader

I usually don't do alarmist, but this take on the Barr hearing from Michael Tomasky seems true.

... if we didn’t before, we see now with a new and oddly liberating clarity where this is headed. It’s 18 months until Election Day. They may well be the most consequential and frightening stretch in the history of the country, or at least since Reconstruction.

This racket known as a political party [the GOP] will try to pervert the law in ways we’ve never seen. Reverse the meaning of every word we know. Trump is screaming that he’s the victim of a “coup.” What he is doing, of course, is perpetrating a coup, against the Constitution, with the eager help of Barr and Graham and all the rest of them. Trump is an idiot, but on some intuitive level, he’s a smart man, smart enough to know that to get away with staging a coup, the very first thing you have to do is to accuse your opponents of trying to stage one.

Barr and Graham and Mitch McConnell and everyone else around knows that they’ve thrown in, and having thrown in, they can’t throw out. Survival will require every kind of lie you can imagine, especially and exactly the lie of accusing their foes of that which they are doing themselves. And before this is over, they’re all going to be in on it.

The entire Republican Party has put allegiance to its mob boss ahead of country or common decency.

The prescription remains what it has been since November 2016:

• Create friction in any arena we can, because we don't know what will be efficacious. Who knew that #MeToo could become a force in the context of blatant misogyny unleashed? Who knew that climate crisis could inspire a vision of a Green New Deal?

• Help everyone find the role that suits individual hopes and needs. We don't all have to adopt the same forms of resistance, but we all have to do something. There's no sitting this moment out.

• We have proved that when something closer to everyone votes, we win. We have to keep doing elections, strategically.

• Unity counts. Circular firing squads serve our enemies. Just don't go there.

• Kindness counts. People are being crushed. Leaders are imperfect. Cut individuals some slack ... and keep on on keeping on.