Perhaps the relevant analogy is not Germany in the 1930s; perhaps it is South Africa in 1948. Historian Timothy Burke (Swarthmore) makes an interesting case for another rather dreadful scenario. An excerpt:
"The current leadership of the Republican Party strikes me as being equally capable of sustaining a long-term authoritarian 'emergency' whose ultimate fate is certain but whose misery could be horribly prolonged. The speeches at the Republican Convention, most especially those by Giulani, Miller and Cheney, made it clear that the current leadership of the Republican Party is rolling the dice and going for broke. They’re not going to compromise here and bend there, acknowledge dissent on some points or soften their policies where prudent. They’re pushing a total, rigid program of social and political transformation that serves the needs and desires of a sizeable minority of Americans and imposes their authority over the will of the majority. Like the National Party in South Africa, they may be able to accomplish this by taking advantage of the peculiarities of American electoral politics—and like the National Party, they may have both the will and the methods to permanently alter the structure of American constitutional democracy so as to lock their control of the government for as long a perpetuity as they can manage."
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