by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The thing about history is while it’s happening, there is no narrative. As such, if you were living through, say, World War 2, the whole thing was value free. No one had any idea how, exactly, it was going to end. It was only, in hindsight, that we realized how obvious it was that the Nazis would be defeated.
I keep thinking about this as we careening towards late 2024, early 2025 when something akin to so-called Fourth Turning may occur. It seems to me at the moment that we’re just going to slip peacefully into a MAGA-themed autocracy. Smug, wealthy Blues who would otherwise be the leadership in any effort to do something about America’s transition into autocracy will be too busy leaving the country to do anything about it.
But there is a greater-than-zero chance that the two other scenarios might happen. It could be that either we have a civil war when Trump somehow manages to lose, or w revolution if Blues balk at our transition into an autocracy.
But remember, no one can predict the future. While it’s easy for center-Left people like me to think that we could solve all our problems by defeating MAGA on the battlefield, I hate violence and there’s no assurance that we, the Good Guys, will ultimately win.
So, it’s just as possible that Reds will successfully establish Trumplandia or any attempt at a Blue Revolution will fail and allow the consolidation of MAGA power as it is that we get to have the “cool stuff” associated with a Second Reconstruction.
All I can tell you is I will be astonished if we somehow, some way, manage to punt our structural problems down the road another four years. It definitely seems as though late 2024, early 2025 Will Be It.
