Disintegration

The lurking disintegration of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives through the decapitation of three of their least-qualified candidates for Speaker (two who could not garner the required votes from members of their own caucus and one who had to trade his soul for the temporary honor) is not a freakish political weirdism.

The tyranny of a tiny minority of Republican extremists is the culmination of more than a half-century of massive political investments by an exclusive group of radical billionaires and a warning that their very real campaign to shut down the governing of the nation is not some wingnut conspiracy theory.

If one House of Congress does not function, the other is powerless to move forward and the Legislative Branch is hamstrung — laws are not passed, funding is not approved, and the government ceases to function. What is unusual is that the extremist wing of the Republican Party is making no secret of their intentions.

Charlie Koch’s Heritage Foundation published a thousand page blueprint (Project 2025) to place control over the entire Executive Branch in the hands of the next Republican president, sighting the “unitary executive theory” which claims that Article II of the Constitution grants the president absolute power over every policy and decision made by every department in the Executive without regard to the dictums of the other two branches of government.

It calls for an end to the administrative state by dismantling or eviscerating most of the Agencies of the Federal Government, shutting down the IRS to end taxation; dismantling the EPA to end regulation of their industries; disposing of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and any programs that benefit the least among us; and eliminating the independence of the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Energy. (A large share of the funds behind this impending coup come from petroleum and coal industrialists, who will benefit from the elimination of policies reducing greenhouse gas emissions, trashing government efforts to address climate change, and opening vast tracts of federal land for drilling and mining without restriction or oversight.)

The document proposes firing up to fifty-thousand highly-qualified experts (who do the actual work of implementing and fulfilling the machinations that satisfy the intent of the laws passed by Congress and signed by the president) and replacing them with unqualified party loyalists who would implement the will of an all-powerful and unchecked autocrat in the White House.

The last Republican administration stacked the Supreme Court with an extremist supermajority and installed hundreds of fanatical federal judges to life terms, who were “approved and vetted” by the Federalist Society — a radically “conservative” organization run by Leonard Leo, who intends to make every American Institution “Christian”, and sponsored by the same bigoted billionaires behind the campaign to demolish our democracy and abolish the rights of our citizens.

Laws, written since the Civil War — protecting the rights of minorities, of marriage for same-sex and interracial couples, women’s reproductive rights, limiting gun possession, and the right to organize labor unions — have already been rescinded. Legislators in many red states have passed laws granting the ultimate right to decide the outcome of elections to government officials who denied the outcome of the last election. All of this is merely the initial thrust to fulfill the ultimate goal of their agenda — ending government of, by, and for all of the people and replacing it with governing by the dictates of the richest few.

Our tripartite form of government depends on checks and balances between the three branches. It assumes that each will operate as equal and independent entities for the best interests of the nation.

But what happens when a Congress, incapable of functioning, let alone governing, and a “nationalist” Supreme Court — that does not believe in defending the laws written by the people’s representatives or the inviolability of landmark decisions handed down by previous courts — combine to create a unicameral Executive overseen by a Republican president who becomes a “supreme leader” unbound and unrestrained by anyone?