Noam Chomsky: GOP Soft Coup Still Underway

The noted US intellectual Noam Chomsky regards the Republican Party as no longer an authentic political party and it is now laying the groundwork for the success of a coup next time, whatever the electoral outcome may be, C.J. Polychroniou reported for Truthout.

Photo Insert: A caricature of defeated Former President Donald Trump and former House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

Chomsky notes that Associated Press (AP) describes how the GOP is carrying out a “slow-motion insurrection” and has become “an anti-democratic force,” something that has not happened before in American politics. A few weeks earlier, Barton Gellman outlined the plans in detail in The Atlantic.

Election subversion is not merely a threat. It’s happening in the “soft coup” that is underway right now. What was progressive in the 18th century is by now so antiquated that if the US were to apply for membership in the European Union (EU), it would probably be rejected as not satisfying democratic norms. That raises questions that merit more attention than they receive.

With all due respect for the Founders, one question — raised by Thomas Jefferson in his own terms — is why we should revere the sentiments of a group of wealthy white male 18th-century slaveowners, particularly now that the amendment system has succumbed to the deep flaws of the formal political system.

No less curious are the doctrines of originalism/textualism that call on us to decipher their pronouncements with little regard to social and economic conditions as a decisive guide to judicial action. Looking at our political culture from a distance, there is a lot that would seem passing strange.

Chomsky says what Trumpism and white supremacist ideology tell us is that the limited political democracy in the US that still exists is hanging by a delicate thread. If political institutions — more generally, intertwined socio-economic-political institutions — can yield a President Trump, they are infected with profound malignancies.

A moment’s reflection shows that the malignancies are so profound that they are driving organized human society to suicide, and not in the distant future, with Trump and his acolytes and apologists enthusiastically in the lead. By now it takes real literary talent to exaggerate.

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