Month: April 2021

We Have To Take MAGA’s Glorification Of Political Violence Seriously


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate violence. I hate guns. So, MAGA’s growing obsession with the glorification of political violence is surreal to me. But it’s something we have to take seriously — they are. The thing we have to be aware of is the fucked up fascist shit MAGA pulled in 2020 will be a quantum leap worse in 2024. Given four more years to stew in their fetid fascist juices, it’s easy to imagine the 2024 election being so rife with political violence that it’s not free and fair.

And if that doesn’t happen, the period between Election Night 2024 and January 20, 2025 may be simply one huge attempt on the part of every elected Republican official to ensure that Biden isn’t sworn in again. That may, in fact, be the whole point of the 2024 Republican Party — nullify any presidential election result they don’t like. They will have no other policies other than that and embracing political violence.

It’s very possible that Tucker Carlson or Lara Trump may win fair and square and we’ll simply slide into autocracy with a whimper not a bang. If that happens, then we will never have another free and fair election. Putin’s Russia is already beloved by MAGA Republicans. It’s easy to see his style of governance coming to the United States in some form.

The media will be purged. The ICE infrastructure will be weaponized. All the things that Trump wasn’t able to follow through with, his MAGA successor will be able to complete. There will be a moment in time when the Republican president will have hard power and the center-Left leaning media will have soft power and there will be some sort of truce.

For the average person, there won’t be much of a difference in everyday life. That is, of course, until suddenly all the late night TV hosts are abruptly changed and CNN is sold to Fox. Then there will be reports of people being pushed out of windows and, strangely enough, there won’t be any follow up.

It will only get worse from that point.

Republicans will never leave office and American will grow more and more inward looking, ignorant and poor.

Or there’s a civil war and we start running around murdering each other for political reasons. Ugh.

You Can Feel The Historical Forces Aligning To Cause Either A Second American Civil War Or Decent Into Autocracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s rare that you can actually see, first hand, significant macro historical forces at work. But that’s what we got right now in the United States. The crux of the issue, as is explicated in Ezra Klein’s “Why Were’ Polarized,” is white people are beginning to wake up to the looming inevitability of them being in the minority and a sizable portion of them don’t like it one bit.

All the fucked up shit going on in the United States spring from that fact. Everything from the fight over immigration (brown people scary!) to abortion (make more white babies!) to you name it comes from not “economic anxiety” but regular old racism.

There’s no such thing as reveled truth and I can’t predict the future, but I am enough of a student of history to know the America we have known for about 240 years simply isn’t going to make it through the passions of another presidential cycle. Or, if it does, it will only happen at the cost of a great amount of blood and treasure. Nothing short of a Third American Covenant [first: 1776 second: 1865)] will save our sorry asses at this point.

In other words — a civil war.

But that’s not the only option. We could just shrug when MAGA Republicans refuse to certify Joe Biden’s reelection and in January 2025 and that’s it. We’ll be run by hateful MAGA cocksuckers for decades to come. They will slowly at first, then faster and faster begin to crack down their pet peeves about modern America until they transform us in to Trumplandia.

But 2024 is it. That year will be make or break. But there won’t be any middle ground. The time for compromise will be over. You will have to pick a side, one way or another, no matter what the outcome is. And it will be existential. If there’s a civil war, then your personal safety will be decided by your politics. If its autocracy, then you either become a Good American or you get pushed out a window by a weaponized ICE agent.

As I keep saying, I have no idea what to tell you about how to prepare for this epic clusterfuck. I would suggest you get out of the country if that’s an option. But if it’s not, then make sure your personal politics align with the state you live in.

There are plenty of things that could happen that could punt this particular problem down the road. It happened in 2020, it could happen again. But Republicans are so far into fascism at this point that either they provoke significant political violence or they win and snuff out our liberties once and for all.

MAGA already glorifies political violence and it’s only going to get worse. But I have said over and over again, they are making a serious mistake on a strategic level by being so fucking bloodthirsty. If they were just patient and played by the rules, they could get everything they wanted in a peaceful manner. The entire system is already rigged in their favor in various ways. It’s when they overreach and steal the 2024 election in an extremely brazen fashion that the country will grow extremely unstable.

But, who knows. We might just shrug and let MAGA end our liberal democracy without any conflict at all.

The Novel Is Getting Significantly Better


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After about roughly three or so years of hard work, the novel I’m developing and writing is getting much, much better. Some of this is coming from simply improving my storytelling ability through brute force and some of it is coming from the reading that I’m finally managed to get around to.

But I’m still only on a first draft.

Yet, I have put my self on a pretty tight deadline, so I should be finished with the first draft of the first of two books in a few months. The story is set near the end of “the before times” right before COVID struck the US, but I think that by the time I finally get around to trying to sell it that people will be thinking about politics again so there will be an audience.

The story is meant to be very, very “of the moment” to the point that it plays with some of the era’s political tropes for the purposes of the plot. One my biggest problems is I’m just not a very dark person and there are some very serious issues that I have to address without in any way cracking wise.

But I’ve improved so much since I started this journey that I know if I just keep plugging along that I will continue to get better and better. One thing I’ve learned is don’t be too quick to assume you can’t figure out a problem in a story. It helps, sometimes, to just distract yourself for a few days and come back to the work with fresh eyes.

It used to be that the whole thing would collapse at least one a week — sometimes once a day! — and I would have to rework everything. This happened in large part because I have very high standards for myself and I just did not know storytelling structure well enough to build a framework to support the kind of story I wanted to seriously tell.

But I’m finally here.

Now, I just have to put the hard work into it. I have to stop navel gazing so conspicuously and gratuitously and actually do the work necessary to finish not one but two books. (The first book ends in a cliffhanger.)

I have a pretty good system established for going from development to writing but it’s so thorough that it can slow me down at times. But anyway, I hope to get a lot of writing done over the next few days.

Imagining Life In America During The Second Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because the United States is so big and diverse, there really isn’t one simple answer to what life will be like should we descend into civil war instead of autocracy at some point in 2024-2025. So, let’s pick my home state of Virginia and imagine what life will be like in, say, spring 2025 as the civil war started between election night 2024 and January 20th, 2025 rumbles on.

I believe Virginia would be one of the first states to sort its internal political differences out via armed conflict. So, probably what would happen is the conservative portions of the state would simply not recognize any outcome other than a MAGA victory and attempt to join forces with other MAGA parts of the country doing the same thing. But there’s a problem — they just don’t have the numbers.

They may have a lot of guns they want to fuck, but when you’re dealing with armed conflict it’s about population and economy. Being heavily armed helps, but won’t help you in the long run. It’s easy to imagine that once MAGA portions of Virginia essentially secede from the state that they will assemble some sort of organize militia and also be helped by MAGA cocksuckers from other states. This will lead to a very bloody war as the two sides try to figure out who will control the geopolitical entity known as “Virginia.”

This initial situation will lead to a radicalization on both sides. The media will be seized, purged and controlled and any man of fighting age my be impressed into service whether they like it or not. I generally think the Blue parts of Virginia would win such a struggle, but not after significant blood loss. So, let’s say by spring 2025 that particular situation has been settled and Virginia is firmly in the Blue camp.

What might shock us the most is how many political refugees Virginia would be home to and how bad the economy would be. There’s also a slight chance that the environment might be suffering the effects of a Little Death associated with a number of limited nuclear exchanges around the world since the United States imply was not around to prevent different countries from pulling the trigger.

But one upside — though bought with tragedy — would be a lot of political issues would magically be fixed because Virginia (and Blue America) could simply pass the legislation they wanted to because MAGA Republicans weren’t running around being crybabies.

And, yet, there would be some surreal aspects to all of this. Specifically, I’m thinking of how Blue political refugees from Red States might begin to repopulate the now-vacant parts of Red Virginia. This kind of shit happened all the time in Europe after WW2, but for Americans it would be totally alien. This would lead to a disconcerting re-arrangement of Virginia’s demographics.

As I’ve said before, a lot would depend on California. If California stays and fights during any Second American Civil War, then there’s a good chance Blue States would win. But this would not only drag out the war, but make it far more deadly because Red States would probably grow more and more desperate and probably seize WMD.

Then you have the whole issue of growing number of cities across the United States being vaporized, which would only make the two sides more radical and extreme. I generally like Blue States would win but their victory would not be a straight line. It could be that there would be a period of significant balkanization before we managed to put the country back together. Maybe via a Constitutional Convention of some sort?

But if Red States won, I suspect things would get pretty dark pretty quick for states like Virginia. There would be some sort of MAGA Reconstruction that disenfranchised minorities en mass and there would be the creation of an extensive secret police. A lot of people would just flee the country.

A new global era would begin, with American ideas spread across the globe and present everywhere…but America.

Enjoy This Peace & Quiet While You Can, Civil War Or Autocracy Arrives In 2024-2025


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that the shock is beginning to wear off for MAGA cocksuckers, they are beginning to plot their return to power. It seems their first goal is to eschew policy goals altogether and to wrap themselves up in the Big Lie of “cancel culture.” Using that to gin up the base, they will win back Congress in 2022 and use THAT as a springboard to nullify any election result in 2024 that doesn’t help them.

As such, 2024-2025 is it. We either shrug and become a Russian-style managed democracy or we take up arms and start murdering each other for political reasons.

It’s easy to imagine a scenario whereby Republicans, once they regain control of Congress in 2022, keep in 2024 and if they can’t strangle Biden’s re-election using voter suppression or highjacking local election boards, simply refuse to certify his Electors in early January 2025. Every step along the way, MAGA will be so astonishingly brazen that the likelihood of political violence will grow and grow until they finally we either have a civil war or we give up and turn into an honest-to-God autocracy.

So, in a sense, we’re going to solve the pressing structural issues of the day that we keep punting down the road one way or another in the 2024-2025 timeframe. Either we solve them threw violence or we solve them politically via an autocracy that does whatever the fuck it wants relative to the existential, abstract fears of MAGA whites you are afraid of being in the minority and women with sexual agency.

As I keep saying, I’m not smart enough to tell you what to do about any of this. I hate guns and violence, so my advice is you either get out of the country while you still can or move to a state whose politics fits your own. But even then, you’re going to have to make a choice at some point.

If there’s a civil war, you’re going to have to make some huge sacrifices so your side can win the war. If there’s an autocracy, you’re going to have to either be a “Good American” who follows the rules or risk your entire life being ruined not from some abstract “cancel culture” but because ICE agent thugs will either push you out a window or throw you in an ICE camp for speaking out against the party line.

I honestly have no idea which direction America is going to pick in 2024-2025, but I do know it will pick a direction.

The Macro Trends Hurtling America Towards Civil War Or Autocracy In 2025


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here are some of the macro trends that are eating away at our political system such that by the time 2024-2025 rolls around we are faced with a stark choice — civil war or autocracy.

Harding of Political Positions
The two sides are beginning to harden their positions in the wake of Trump. Or, put another way, Republicans have become fucking fascists who hate democracy to the point that no amount of political ratfucking is too craven for them. The recent Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 voting restrictions being a prime example of this. The two sides are now just talking passed each other in any political debate and, as such, our politics is beginning to lock up in fits and starts to the point that by the time 2024 rolls around it will collapse and a sizable portion of the population will see violence as their last recourse.

Miscalculations On Both Sides
Both sides are making some major miscalculations about the other. The Right things that if all else fails they can start murdering people to get what they want –without thinking through the practical implications of such a move. Meanwhile, the Left isn’t really taking the Right’s transition into a bloodthirsty mob seriously and think they can somehow magically get what they want via politics.

The Republicans Are Fascists
MAGA is now full-blown fascism and this subgroup of the Republican Party is dragging the rest of the party with it. So in 2024 there will be a number of different junctures where Republicans will test to see if they can simply nullify Biden’s reelection, no matter what the result. Their thinking will be that given we’ve already come to accept someone can win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote by a hefty margin that people will lulz Republicans “legally” nullifying Biden’s re-election by not certifying the vote in Congress. There could be dueling Electors at this point as well to muddy the waters even more.

Income Disparity
A wide gap between rich and more does not a stable nation make. So, it’s easy to imagine that being another systemic breakdown that will make the nation ripe for some sort of violent event in 2024-2025.

A Glorification Of Civil War By The Right
I know from my webstats that there’s a huge amount of interest in a second American civil war out there in the aether. Some of this, I think, comes from good old boys drinking a Miller Light and smoking a doobie on the back porch gaming out what happens when dem dar libtards try to take away their guns. And some of it is simply, on an abstract level, a glorification of violence in the name of political ends that is extremely poorly thought out and completely detached from reality. What I mean by this is — while I know it fits into the FOX News narrative that the center-Left is a bunch of unredeemable soyboy numales who are so limp wristed they could never fire a gun — in reality it’s human nature that when things grow existential humans do tend to adapt in whatever manner necessary to stay alive.

Notes On A Second American Civil War And Realpolitik For Bloodthirsty MAGA Types


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Anyone — especially a MAGA person — who wants a Second American Civil War is very, very dumb and misguided. MAGA is so fucking bloodthirsty because they’re fucking crybabies who think simply not getting want they want is a form of oppression. Add to this their belief that compromise is weakness and you have recipe for disaster in 2024-2025.

The thing that MAGA is completely oblivious about is the different dynamic between politics and war. With politics, you can screw over people by making it so difficult to vote that they don’t. Or you can control the media narrative such that a lying, racist, misogynistic piece of shit you support gets away scot free with any amount of criminal behavior.

But war is, by definition, existential. And you can be MAGA and have all the fucking guns you want to fuck and in the end you will lose because you just don’t have the things in aggregate to win. Blue States have bigger economies with better educated people — and women likely willing to fight! –than Red States. And, remember, that while the country is pretty much split 50/50 Blue States have more people in smaller spaces and a far more united polity than Red States.

What I mean by that is, the place where Red States would likely draw their most strength from — the old Confederacy — simply isn’t as united on an existential level. All the Jim Crow 2.0 that places like Georgia and Texas are up to now are power politics plays. But they won’t mean shit if things grow life or death.

If there’s a hot civil war and everyone has to take a stand and pick a side on a life-or-death basis this one, all the culture war talking points fate into oblivion and two things will grow very radical on both sides very quickly. All the systemic problems that we just don’t have the political will to fix — guns, racism, sexism, taxes, you name it — will be solved one way or another because the dead hand of history will force us to decide.

Or it could be a lot more messy than that with the United States splitting into countries that hate each other. Or the country could balkanize in a half-ass manner where bigger states like California, Texas and Florida are in various states of independence while the rest of the country is barely hanging on.

But I know there’s nothing I can do to stop MAGA from either running around murdering people like me in 2024 or finally getting their wish as the United States turning into a Russian-style “managed democracy.”

All I can do if there is a civil war is sit back and tell MAGA “I told you so” when suddenly all the globalist cuck soyboys they think they can simply murder turn out to have a lot more spunk than they predicted.

All Things Being Equal, It May Be Inevitable That Jon Stewart Becomes A Political Figure


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely appears as though Tucker Carlson is zooming towards being the frontrunner in 2024 for the Republican nomination. He simply has too many viewers who watch him every night not to. Sure, Trump or one of his proxies might block him — or someone like Mike Pompeo might politically kneecap him in some way — but for the moment the nomination is his to lose.

Which brings us to Jon Stewart.

Stewart is unique because, in a sense, he’s the closest approximation to a Trump figure that the center-Left has. I only say that because if he did run for president he would have no political experience and would be coming from the infotainment industrial complex. Other than that, the two men could not be more different.

And, honestly, given that Stewart is actually smart unlike Trump it’s very possible he might run for, say, governor of New Jersey before president. And, given our choice in 2024 of either civil war or autocracy you could think up some pretty wild scenarios as to how, exactly, he might become a political figure.

Some of them are pretty dark, in fact.

Anyway. Keep an eye on Jon Stewart. He may pop up in our politics at some point over the next 10 years in a very unexpected fashion.

A Second American Civil War & The Congressional Certification Crisis Of 2024


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On paper, the United States is doomed in 2024. As of right now, there simply is no way that at that point we don’t either become a MAGA managed-democracy autocracy or descend into civil war.

Among the reasons why this is now-nearly a law of nature is it’s almost a certainty that both houses of Congress will flip in 2022 and remain Republican in 2024. As such, the actual vote outcome in 2024 won’t matter. The MAGA Republicans will refuse to certify Biden’s re-election no matter what. Or they’ll do whatever necessary at the state level so his re-election doesn’t even get that far. But the point is — 2024 will be the crossroads.

Will the average American lulz the idea that literally their vote doesn’t count if it isn’t for a Republican or will they take up arms at the injustice. I guess it’s possible Republicans might be the ones taking up arms if THEY don’t get their way, but given how Republicans are becoming bloodthirsty fascists I don’t see how it would come to that. In other words, they will control the process such in 2024 that if they take up arms it will be in the context to reacting to the center-Left doing so rather than taking up arms themselves. Their political goal is to take power before the center-Left knows what hit them.

We long ago established that no matter how many votes you win by, if you lose by one vote in a strategic state you lose the presidency. As such, the next logical step is for us to lulz Congress using its “legal” right to engage in certification nullification. It simply won’t do what it’s otherwise supposed to do because it doesn’t like the outcome.

But, again, that’s where the fork in the road happens.

A lot would depend on if Republicans lost control of the political narrative in some way and people got woke to what was going on. That inability to strike before the narrative was established was Trump’s biggest screw up. If he had gone full autocrat anytime during the summer of 2020 he would still be president right now.

Or even if he had struck in some major way between election night and when the election was called for Biden, he would still be president. He was simple too lazy, too much of a ding-dong to do the hard work of being an autocrat. He thought he could simply rant about it and get what he wanted. The next autocrat in waiting won’t be so dumb.

Anyway, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where Republicans make a major power grab at both the state level and, if that fails them, Congress. They simply refuse to accept the election of a Democrat. Period. Full stop. They might dress this up in a bunch of legal bullshit but the end result would be the same — we would have Republicans in power in Washington for decades to come.

And that’s where I just don’t know. I don’t know the reaction of average Americans. Maybe as long as the economy was going well and freedom of speech wasn’t really touched that much that there might be something of a stalemate at this point. Republicans have “hard” power of making policy and passing laws, while Democrats would have the “soft” power of the media. The only way anything would ever change is when Republicans did something so totally, absolutely indefensible that they were shamed into doing the right thing. Though, of course, Republicans have no shame so that would only work occasionally.

The other option is a civil war. And here’s the thing — under the conditions of war, Blue States are in a far better position to win than Red States. Red States have massive — and growing — political power for various reasons but the moment you shift your metrics from power politics to geopolitical realpolitik then everything changes.

Blue States have biggest populations and economies. They wouldn’t have to worry about a race war. Not only are their economies bigger, but they’re more smaller and more concentrated. But there are a lot of known unknowns. Would would be the leaders of Red and Blue? Who uses stolen WMD, where and why?

Remember, this clusterfuck would not happen in a vacuum. It’s very likely that WW3 would happen in conjunction. A number of limited nuclear exchanges would happen around the world as the United States fell into chaos. What’s more, it’s even possible that a state like the DPRK might lob a few nukes our way just for shits and giggles.

I have no idea if we will chose civil war or autocracy. That’s just too far out into the future for me to know. But I do know that MAGA is so fucking dumb to want a civil war. Very, very dumb. They can get everything they want by at least pretending to work within the confines of liberal democracy.

MAGA & The Crisis In Ukraine


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s a testament to how fucked up the American political system is right now that a powerful portion of electorate sees Putin’s autocratic managed-democracy as something to look up to.

Let me be clear from the beginning — I’m not expert on what’s going on in Ukraine with the Russians but I know enough to have an educated opinion. It definitely seems as though there’s a greater-than-zero-sum chance that the Russians might make some sort of power grab in the coming days. As such, it makes you wonder what the reaction of MAGA would be to such an event.

A lot depends on if any conflict between Ukraine and Russia is big enough to puncture the America’s inward looking media narrative bubble. If it’s simply a short, swift tactical attack then, lulz, it may be the focus of news junkies but in general Blue and Red will continue to be too busy plotting how we’re going to murder each other in cold blood for political reasons in four years to worry about it.

But, God forbid, it’s not just a tactical land grab but a significant war then there’s a possibility that much like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s the event will come to dominate the American news cycle. And we really haven’t had such a conflict in the era of social media so it’s possible that both sides would flood Americans Facebook and Twitter feeds with gore and violence in an effort to swing public opinion.

That’s where MAGA gets involved.

It’s easy to imagine a scenario where MAGA gives full-throated support to the Russians to the point that, much like the COVID19 pandemic what you think about what should be done will be seen through the prism of your political affiliation.

The traditional Cold War dynamic might be turned upside down with MAGA Republicans siding with the Russians and everyone else siding with Ukraine. Though, to be fair, the dynamic would be a bit more complicated than that — a lot would rest on what Trump’s hot take on the situation was. A lot Establishment Republicans — especially in the Senate — would freak the fuck out if Russia attacked Ukraine in a major way and difference between MAGA Republicans and traditional conservative Republicans might be quite glaring.

And, remember, the last time Ukraine was part of public debate in the United States is was as part of Trump’s first impeachment trial. So there may be some lingering hostility towards Ukraine on the part of some Republicans that might not otherwise be there.

And, yet, I have my doubts that anything will come up Russia’s current shenanigans on the Ukrainian border. They do shit like this all the time and it’s possible after a few days this will recede from our attention like all the other times Putin has done similar things.