If you're just gonna ignore every point I make and instead respond with boiler plate MSNBC talking points about the dangers of the Republican party then this convo really isn't worth having.

The point you seem to be missing is if I agree with you that the GOP represents such a threat then democracy is already effectively dead and not even worth fighting for at this point. I can easily bite both of those bullets but I'm not sure it actually takes you where you want because you refuse to even try to second guess your instinct to always try to go harder than the other side out of pure spite.

Ah faux revolutionary LARP of MSNBC. I'm sorry if you think the Dems going a bit hard in the paint is the same thing as a fascist party who wants to ram through a Christian nationalist theocracy and edge themselves closer and closer to killing minorities then you've watched one too many movies where the love interest tells the hero not to kill the villain cause then they'll be just like them.

If you're worried about the fabric of society being destroyed then you might want to rip the bandaid off sooner rather than later before the problem gets worse. Arresting the Republicans in Congress who backed Stop the Steal and charging them with sedition is a hell of a step but it'll be a lot shorter a step than whatever will be necessary 5, 10, or 20 years from now.

Personally I think you guys should just give up pretending you're living in a democracy any more, and choose which dictatorship you'd rather live under.

I was going to say plutocracy, not that we're any better. I don't know what we have, but I'm not convinced it's democracy at the moment.

We have an idiocracy, but at least we accept what we are, a bunch of know-nothing drunks trying to run a country while taking all the kickbacks we can get our greasy little hands on.

Speaking of, has anyone seen the movie Idiocracy? That's pretty much where the US is right now and believe me, it's not as funny as the movie.

Go away. Bate'n.

Yeah well tbh my problem isn't even that you're suggesting the Dems go too hard it's that you won't even engage with the hypothetical surrounding your proposed solution. You just sorta shrug any suggestions of what the implications are off and resort back to waxing poetic about how dangerous the GOP is as if that justifies any and everything in response.

But I do think there's a pragmatic choice to make when considering whether you actually want to protect democracy (at least to the extent it currently exists). If such is your goal, then that goal does in some sense limit what you can do. If, on the other hand, you just want to destroy the GOP and take the reigns in a sort of one party state then that's a different approach where more authoritarian measures don't necessarily detract from or contradict with your broader goals.

Another thing to remember is it's really not just a few bad apples in Congress, it's like a sizable portion of the country that supported Jan 6 outright and an even larger portion that would've probably have gotten on board if it was successful. Clearly this divide which is growing poses a serious threat to the stability of the country but it's not at all clear to me what the best course of action is or even whether any goal to save the country should include this idea of saving the current system of democracy.

The idea that half the country are basically Nazis that can't be negotiated with means that giving these people rights and the ability to vote only poses a threat with no benefit.

But yeah, I do think it's obvious the Dems can potentially gain a lot of political leverage from this current situation if they play their cards right and that should include trying to nail at least Trump to the wall and anyone else they can get on actual charges. But to say they arrest anyone who is even perceived as being sympathetic or in support of Jan 6 is definitely drifting into a much more authoritarian direction that would very likely change the country in an unalterable manner.

The Republicans are the ones who put us in this place where the party either needs to be gutted or we just roll the dice and hope they never get enough power to push us over the brink, so if arresting a significant percentage of Rs in Congress requires extralegal action that couldn't be justified under normal circumstances then that's a decision the Republicans forced upon the rest of us. If this needs to end in Reconstruction 2.0 for swaths of the entire country then I say we should've done it right the first time.