by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
These are times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine would say.
The dead hand of history is well on its way to “sweeping aside the last vestiges of the Republic” as they might say in Star Wars. It’s all because risking things that are important to you in the real world — especially if you’re a member of the existing establishment — isn’t exactly something you feel obliged to do.
As such, definitely seems to me that it’s a foregone conclusion that the United States will be an autocratic managed democracy by the time Trump is sworn in for a second (stolen) term.
I say this because of Trump’s “Spaghetti strategy” for winning re-election — he’s simply going to throw everything he’s got at the wall and see what sticks. So if it’s not fucking with the postal service, it’s fucking with the actual selection of Electors. If it’s not that, then it’s the bullshit Durham Investigation. And, after about a half dozen other things, he’s assuming that the Russians will — as part of a quid pro quo for removing 1/3 of our troops from German — hack directly into our election systems.
So, in a sense, I’ve reached acceptance — there may be moments in the next few months when we think somehow we’re going to escape living in an autocratic state, but in the end, mysteriously, Trump will still be in office.
Autocrats, as they say, never lose.
As I’ve said many times — really, the only person who can change both our fate and that of Trump is, well, Trump. He has the entire edifice of the Republican Party at his disposal. So unless Trump self-owns in a pretty massive way, we’re going to collectively buckle and fall to our knees before Mad King Trump.
Something pretty spectacular would have to change for this not to happen. Something I can’t predict. And I just don’t see it happening.
I keep vacillating wildly between having hope that we might all get woke in time to fix this problem and acceptance that in the end not even Trump’s tendency to self-own would fix the problem.
I don’t know. Surprise me folks.
