The Republican Rubber Stamp:

By Rob C.

Art by Jim Morin

TL;DR: The U.S. Senate has officially abdicated its constitutional duty, refusing to place a single leash on the President’s illegal oil heist in Venezuela. While “Squeaker of the House” Mike Johnson polishes the boots of the new regime, the “Vampire of Santa Monica High,” Stephen Miller, is openly quoting the fascist playbook on national television. From the “iron laws of strength” to Mussolini’s “imperial vitality,” the rhetoric of 1930s Europe has been rebranded for the MAGA era. As the body count rises in American cities and our military becomes a private security force for corporate resource theft, we are running out of time to stand up before the “Orange Julius Caesar” closes the doors of the Republic for good.

If you were holding your breath waiting for the Republican-controlled Senate to rediscover its spine and put a stop to Trump’s illegal war for Venezuelan oil, I hope you have an excellent life insurance policy. This week, our “deliberative body” effectively transformed into the official rubber stamp for a military campaign that violates every international treaty we’ve ever signed and every constitutional limit on executive power. The “checks and balances” we were taught about in civics class have been replaced by “checks and bank balances,” as the GOP caucus decides that fascism is perfectly acceptable as long as it comes with a side of deregulated crude.

The capitulation is total, and it is led by men who have traded their souls for a seat at the foot of the throne. Take “Squeaker of the House” Mike Johnson, a man who performs a very convincing impression of a pious constitutionalist while acting as the primary bootlicker for a fascist coup. Then there is the “Vampire of Santa Monica High,” Stephen Miller, who recently took to the airwaves to drop the mask entirely. On January 5th, Miller told Jake Tapper that the world is “governed by strength... by force... by power,” calling these the “iron laws of the world.” It was a chilling performance, primarily because we’ve heard this specific remix before.

To understand where Miller is getting his liner notes, you only have to look at the “greatest hits” of the 20th century’s most notorious monsters. Adolf Hitler famously wrote in Mein Kampf that “He who would live must fight... permanent struggle is the law of life.” Not to be outdone, Benito Mussolini wrote in The Doctrine of Fascism that the imperialistic spirit is a “manifestation of vitality” and that the state “expresses the will to exercise power.” Miller isn’t just “talking tough”; he is translating the foundational texts of European fascism into modern American English. He is telling us, quite clearly, that if you aren’t the one holding the gun or the oil drill, you don’t have a “right to exist.”

This “vitality” is currently being manifested in the streets of Caracas, where our military is busy seizing the land and treasure of another nation, and in our own neighborhoods, where Trump’s Secret Police are amassing a body count under the banner of “absolute immunity.” While the “Orange Julius Caesar” demands the imprisonment of his political “enemies” and wages a relentless war on independent media, his lackeys in the Senate stand by and watch the clock run out on our democracy. They are banking on the hope that the public will be too distracted by the spectacle—or too terrified of the ICE thugs knocking on doors—to notice that the Republic is being liquidated.

We are reaching the point of no return. History is littered with the corpses of nations that thought they could “wait out” a dictator or that their institutions were too strong to fail. Our institutions are currently being used as the scaffolding for a corporate-sponsored autocracy. If we do not stand up and speak out now—if we do not demand an end to this lawless expansion of power and the return of our stolen resources—the “iron laws” Stephen Miller loves so much will be the only laws left. Democracy is for sale, and the current administration is looking for a quick closing.

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— Robert Cain, author of Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.