I don’t think there will be a single clear headline that says “it’s over, we’re like Russia now.” Or a clear name change “Welcome to the USRA!” Then on the other hand, name changes are cool now, right?

But it appears to have pretty much happened. The only thing remaining is they need to close the “voting loophole” before midterms. And it appears they’re on track to do that.

The current bill, the “SAVE Act”, which suggests you’ll need to have documentation to vote that matches your current name will eliminate a large swath of female voters. And if you look at how Trump/MAGA/GOP did with just males it was a very solid win if not an actual landslide.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act was first introduced last year as President Trump and his allies focused on the baseless narrative that noncitizens presented a major threat to the 2024 election. 

Like most GOP initiatives, the name says exactly the opposite of what it does. Kinda like Citizens United that gives political power to corporations. Or Right to Work which just means you can’t have unions to protect your rights. This will effectively strip many women of the right to vote unless they undertake the onerous (and sometimes costly) task of getting documentation for their name change or a copy of their marriage certificate.

Everyone agrees that “voting security” is good, and the MAGA types will heartily applaud it, but there’s no real justification for it and it adds a ton of red tape.

After that we’ll continue to have pretend elections where we elect our same leaders again and again. There will continue to be a few sparks from Democrats but there’s no sign there’s going to be any large scale coordination. They will go gently into the night.

After this initial pivot of stripping DEI and non-hetero folks of their rights it will be more of a slow frog-in-boiling-water metamorphosis where we, in the name of patriotism, slowly become more homogenous.

Why did this happen? Well hindsight is 20/20 and blame lands on Biden for not getting out of the way to allow the Democrats to mount a real offense, and the GOP senators who silently let it happen. Fox and the GOP did a great job of just repeating ad infinitum how bad Biden was (and then Kamala) with no actual evidence. But they didn’t need it. GOP voters just took it under advisement that there couldn’t be any good in this horrible, horrible Democratic party, and even if they didn’t like Trump they had to vote for him because, yuck, the alternative was going to destroy America.

Oh they did run the poopie outta that clip of Kamala saying that the government should pay for surgery for transgender prison inmates. The Democratic party never met a disenfranchised splinter they didn’t want to help so they end up not being able to help anyone.

But none of that matters now. Today’s senators will probably get written into the history books as the folks who, in the name of patriotism, did the Right Thing. Should I take faxxus down? I really don’t want to get “disappeared.”