The Slow Moving Coup Video: Why People Are Shocked by Bill Maher's Revelations and What We Need to Do
Greetings to everyone at Substack. I’m Julie Hotard, Ph.D. This is my first blog post here.
The Shocking Revelations
Bill Maher put out a video on Friday, October 8th. It shocked some people. It’s part of his show from that evening.
I disagree with Maher on many things, even within this same show—where he also said Dems shouldn’t enforce subpoenas because Republicans might do it too when they get control. Republicans will do anything that they think will increase their power—whether Dems have done it before or not. I think Dems have to learn to hold Republicans accountable, or else they’ll keep breaking laws and figuring they’ll always get away with it.
In the video above, however, Maher is totally right. He discussed the Eastman memo plan—a plan for overturning the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. Maher also described Republican actions to affect future elections: Purging of GOP state legislatures and state election systems. Republicans are getting rid of officials who don’t support Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen.
It is shocking for those of us who are fond of democracy. There’s a lot going on. Here’s a concise tweet thread, listing the main problems. It’s from Judd Legum who writes the Popular Information newsletter about power and politics.
These actions are being taken in a lot of states at once. Here’s an example from Michigan.
Michigan Republicans replace local election officials in ‘unprecedented’ trend
And here’s another example, from Texas.
This quote from the above article about Texas, describes the situation and the risks.
“ ‘She is not the first and won’t be the last professional election official to have to leave this profession because of the toll it is taking, the bullies and liars who are slandering these professionals,” said Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who helped oversee voting rights enforcement under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. “We are losing a generation of professional expertise. We are only beginning to feel the effects.’
“Though experts say it is difficult to determine how many elections officials have left their positions nationally, states like Pennsylvania and Ohio have seen numerous departures. According to the AP, about a third of Pennsylvania’s county election officials have left in the last year and a half; in Ohio, one in four directors or deputy auditors of elections have left in the southwestern part of the state, according to The New York Times.”
And finally, I’ll add just one more thing to this list of revelations—the voter suppression laws roundup.
Voting Laws Roundup: 19 states have enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote.
The Mainstream Media Problem
One reason people were surprised by Maher’s revelations is: Mainstream media should have put the Eastman memo story on their front pages for days on end, and had TV hosts discuss it at length. Instead, most barely covered it.
Why? It’s because mainstream media—both in contents and omissions— are Right Wing biased. They’re not as Right Wing biased as Right Wing media, but still biased.
You can easily notice the bias in Afghanistan withdrawal coverage. It’s been constant fault finding with Biden—with most TV and newspaper interviews being given to Biden-bashing Right Wingers who’ve been constantly wrong about Afghanistan for the past 20 years.
If you are on Twitter, you often see Right Wing biased headlines posted. There are also clips from Right Wing biased mainstream TV shows. Here are some people who posted these: @froomkin @ ericboehlert @jayrosen_nyu @mattnegrin and others.
The examples are helpful for those of us who contact media to ask them to correct their bias and do their job—reporting news to us—the public—accurately and fairly.
For more information on media bias and what we can do about that, here’s my essay on it.
Why Mainstream Media Are So Right Wing Biased and How to Change That
There’s so much going on now. It’s like a never-ending series of political tornados. Even people who have their own areas of political activism, often don’t know about the destruction the Right Wing is doing in other areas. There are not enough hours in a day to keep track.
It’s good to be aware, but there’s no need to be overwhelmed. The work of saving democracy can be divided up among many people.
What to Do about It
Keeping track of all of this destruction and making plans to stop it—that needs to be somebody’s job. In fact the jobs need to be spread among many people in many large organizations.
We have some of these already. For example, Democracy Docket, at https://www.democracydocket.com/ is doing a fine job bringing lawsuits against states enacting illegal voter suppression laws.
But we need a lot more pro-democracy organizations like this, to work in different areas. The GOP has a large number of highly focused, organized, well funded organizations supporting them, some of which are described in Jane Mayer’s book. Pro-democracy forces need to become just as well supported.
Nancy MacLean also wrote on this subject.
I have a solution for how to get pro-democracy forces organized, so the pro-democracy side can effectively fight against anti-democracy forces. It’s in an essay below.
What can you do? Please feel free to print out and snail mail my article below to all the liberal philanthropists and liberal nonprofit organizations you can—with a cover letter asking them to consider funding and organizing such efforts.
Open Letter to Liberal Donors: Please Donate to Create Missing Liberal Institutions
Thanks.
By the way, on October 8th, I was interviewed on a radio program, the Jimmy Malone show on iHeart radio. My interview is at the end of this recording below, starting around 1:53:30 or so, on this tape that runs for 2 hours and 7 minutes.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1248-the-jimmy-malone-show-80324653/
I’m looking forward to writing more on Substack and finding out more about how it works in the future.
Sayonara for now.