by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
When I’m not writing an allegorical thriller about the Trump Era, I’m reading. A lot of that reading has to do with the novel. But some of that reading is about something I’m very nervous about — how the United States is careening towards a second civil war.
Remember, that second civil war would have already happened but for one thing, or person: Donald Trump. All the conditions were there in 2020 and by only one metric did we not either slip into autocracy or have some sort of civil war — Donald fucking Trump is a fucking idiot.
He was so fucking lazy that the fate of the United States, in a sense, turned on a dime. We faced the precipice and, in an almost cartoonish fashion, we turned around and walked back into an era of democratic norms.
So, in a sense, all my hysterical ranting about Trump was right but for one thing — when push came to shove, Trump was such a lazy fucking moron he simply was not able to do what 99% of the people in the world would do in his position — knock some heads to stay in power.
As such, here we are: we’re a zombie repubic.
We’ve punted the question of “autocracy or civil war” down the road four years. The United States is, on a macro level, extremely unstable right now. There are two historical analogies I could point to. One is 1860.
Imagine if some of the last ditch efforts to stop the civil war worked and they simply punted the crisis down the road four years. That’s what’s going on now.
The other is 1933.
We’re kind of if Hitler lost the election in 1933, but vowed to try again and just kind of lurked around waiting for his opportunity .
But the key thing you have to remember is — there is no narrative to history as its happening. It’s very, very possible that the Bad Guys will win and a lot of people — like me! — will die because we won’t shut up about the tyranny of MAGA. We won’t be around to see the downfall of the GQP because of their excesses.
There is a broader macro geopolitical issue to worry about — a stable United States is the lynchpin of the post-World War 2 Pax America we’ve all come to enjoy for the last 70 years or so.
Should the US implode into civil war or simply become an inward looking MAGA autocracy, well, it won’t be just the United States that’s fucked. And, surreally enough, such a massive clusterfuck might happen just about 100 years from the end of WW2. (And, remember there were about 100 years from the Congress of Vienna to the outbreak of World 1.)
So, I’m thinking maybe no later than the 2036-37 timeframe. (That would be 100 years from when Japan invaded Manchuria.)
Or, put another way — we’re just one election of a Trump-like autocrat away from the end of the post-WW2 era. World War 3 could very well happen and everything will be re-arranged in a rather blood and dramatic fashion.
Good luck.
