The Republican Party’s NPC Problem — and Ours | The Ezra Klein Show

From the accompanying opinion piece in the NYTimes:

A few years back, the online right became enamored of a new epithet for liberals: “NPC,” short for “nonplayer character.” The term was lifted from video games, where “NPC” refers to the computer-controlled characters that populate the game while you, the live player, make decisions. NPCs don’t have minds of their own. They’re automatons. They do as they’re told.

“NPC” quickly became a favored dismissal for all those liberals with their Black Lives Matter and #MeToo hashtags, their Ukrainian flag icons, their “they/them” pronouns and antiracism reading groups. Liberals, in this story, thought what they were allowed to think, said what they were allowed to say. You might have seen the memes — featureless gray faces, sometimes surrounded by liberal icons. Elon Musk loved posting them.

Like any good insult, the NPC meme served a dual purpose. It contained a kernel of truth about its target. We liberals can be conformist. We can be too afraid to offend. We can be overly deferential to institutions.

Later:

A January poll by CBS and YouGov found that 54 percent of Democrats wanted their congressional representatives to work with the Trump administration and 46 percent wanted relentless opposition. One month later, only 35 percent of Democrats wanted cooperation, and 65 percent wanted all-out opposition. That’s a lot of political capital the Trump administration burned in just one month. And for what? [...] Trump and his team would have tried to go through Congress. They could have crafted much larger reforms using a wider set of powers, and they wouldn’t be facing down the courts.

But they didn’t want policy. They didn’t want to go line by line through U.S.A.I.D. and figure out what worked and what didn’t. [...] They wanted power. They are trying to remake our system of government, not our laws. They have identified a weak point in that system, and they are driving a flaming Cybertruck through it.

That weak point is Congress. And the reason Trump and his administration might succeed in taking its power is that they have turned congressional Republicans into NPCs.

There's more, at the link or in the video.