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MAGA Republicans are intent on sabotaging the U.S. economy in a desperate attempt at achieving power. It’s the Capitol siege (Jan. 6) by another angle.

They know they can’t win the ’24 election, especially now after Roe and the epidemic gun violence, and could very well lose every branch of federal government, which would open the door to a Democratic agenda of continued progress and possibly ensure the GOP’s practical extinction. They have to gamble and make their move; it’s now or never. They know the programs and improvements initiated by the Democrats and the Biden administration will come to be recognized by Americans, and they’ll be intent on continuing this progress.

Right now about a third of the electorate are MAGA-leaning Republicans, a third liberal/progressives and a third aren’t paying much attention to politics at all or are cynical opportunists that can go either way. The MAGA Republicans are depending on this latter group to react simply and superficially in blaming government in general for allowing a default on the debt to happen. The Republicans are not really serious about spending cuts being tied to the debt limit. This is just their cover. They did nothing like this through the Trump presidency where the debt increased dramatically. Their real objective is to disrupt (sabotage) the economy, buy time, stall the progress now being made, and use the chaos to devise a targeted distractive strategy of misinformation, using conspiracy theories, blame and scape goating to promote fear and bigotry — immigrants, Chinese, trans, “deep state” and “culture corrupters;” all this to further undermine confidence in the “system” — government and democracy — and hope this will help create an environment where enough people will look to some authority — a strong man to take control and “fix” things — re-enter Trump. This is an assault on democracy in general — a proto-fascist agenda — and a clear and present danger.

Mike Kelly
Albert Lea