As the Maria Butina case demonstrates, the phenomena of the GOP’s possession by authoritarian tendencies is a direct result of the toxic influence of plutocrats and corporations.
For decades now, corporations have been recruiting and cultivating pliable ignoramuses, rabble-rousing cranks, and useful boobs to run for office on local, state, and the national level. (Democrats may apply, but they too often succumb to “special interest” loyalties to sketchy fringe groups like workers, students, minorities, consumers, poor people, parents, teachers, the elderly, children, and voters who try to stay informed about things like war, peace, nuclear weapons, pollution, climate change, politics, and corruption.)
Now this corporately fed confederacy of dunces is being swayed and laid by perky little minxes with Russian accents while Putin learns to play certain strings inserted by ALEC and the NRA into the otherwise limp limbs of these dimwitted dime store solons.
There is what the crafty ones refer to as "blowback".
In the meantime, our most dynamic corporations are converging their interests with the Beijing Politburo, and there are seemingly too many communist, fascist, and capitalist plots for any diligent conspiracy buff to keep up with.
In the short term, we wonder if there is any residual heart or spine left in the GOP.
Paul Simon strums and sings at the same time:
“Hey Hey Hey, Willard Rominey! The nation turns it anxious eyes to you. What will you do?
Boob Oopy Do, Ole Mitt Rominey. D’ya think you’ll do the Mormon thing to do?”
Woo Woo Woo???”
It's not impossible that the afterglow of Poppy's send-off might still ignite a gritty fire in the heart of some relatively grift free patrician like Mitt, former comandante of my old commonwealth. "God Save It" pipes up ol' Charlie Pierce! He has a legitimate grudge stemming from his Waldorf mortification, a reputation for a capitalist version of probity that has survived many hard-fought political campaigns, and a family reputation for putting principle before party which he inherited from his dad.
But whether Republicans can save themselves or be swept into the ashcan of defunct parties to mingle there with the Federalists, the Whigs, and their kindred Know Nothings (the alternative is too gruesome), the danger of a globalized fascism is immanent, transcending as it does any individual conspiracy, but being driven instead dynamics of greed, competition, and power that predate, and may yet survive, capitalism.
Let us hope a new generation of Americans, critically supporting a new generation of politicians and lawmakers, will soon dedicate themselves to a more basic and clear-eyed vision of economic democracy.