Category: The Resistance

What Caused The Second American Civil War?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If there is new, second civil war, the question of what caused it will be just as potentially controversial and complex as that of the first. But to me, I think just as slavery is the simple answer for what caused the First Civil War, the Second Civil War was caused by one word: abortion.

I say this because, in a sense, abortion is an economic system as much as it is a form of birth control. Where the population of a state lands on the legality of abortion pretty much aligns with if they’re a Blue or Red state. This is a very simplistic point of view — there are some obvious exceptions — but I guess what I’m trying to point out is that if the dominate political party of your state does everything in its power to make abortion absolutely illegal then you’re probably living in a Red state.

Of course, the REAL answer for what caused the 2ACW is, well vibes.

Pretty much the United States is being torn apart by how the two sides perceive each other. Or, to put an even more fine point on it, the issue of how MAGA perceives itself in relation to Blues is what will be the cause of the 2ACW. MAGA is a classic late-stage-empire movement.

It’s about retrenchment combined with the once majority ethnic group — white people — feeling resentment about the growing encroachment of brown and black people. So, in a sense, while slavery was the clear cut macro issue that led to the 1ACW, the 2ACW is about not one clear-cut macro issue, but a number of such issues that all could be referred to under the rubric of “abortion.”

Just from the conversations I’ve had with my far more conservative relatives, it definitely seems as though Trump will have a huge amount of slack should he get re-elected and go full tyrant. It won’t be until it starts to get personal that my Traditioinalist relatives — whom I love dearly — might begin to have second thoughts.

That will be the moment of truth, not just for them, but for the nation in general on a macro level.

Of course, it could be too late by that point.

Can The American Union Be Saved?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The Right in the United States is making it very clear what its agenda going into the 2024 Election cycle is, as can be seen from this tweet.

When the American Right is openly talking about such anti-woman policies, it really begins to test my faith in the continued unity of the United States. I say this because the American Right through a combination of having a decades of momentum and its manipulation of our rotting political system, is probably going to make all of its dystopian hellscape dreams come true.

Which, in turn, makes one wonder — what will be the political consequences of them, yet again, catching the car? There are a few possible endgames. One is, they catch the car and rather than doing anything about it, about a million wealthy, well educated Americans on the center-Left just leave the country. Meanwhile, another option is Trump wins in 2024, he pushes the agenda above in such a ham-handed way that he is impeached and convicted or even deposed by the U.S. Military, which will, in turn cause Red States will leave the Union.

Those are just two possibilities. It could be that we just punt our problems down the road another four years by going some “third way” that I just can’t predict at the moment. But all the momentum is with the American Right’s anti-woman agenda at the moment and, as such, it definitely seems as though one way or another we’re all going to be pushed to the breaking point in late 2024, early 2025.

Either because Trump loses and he screams bloody murder about the need for a National Divorce to keep him, specifically, out of jail, or he wins, get deposed and Red States leave the Union as a sort of counter-revolution. But the key thing we have to consider is what the “Red Line” is for Traditionalists — especially Traditionalists women.

Remember, the US is a huge, diverse and decentralized country. Many non-MAGA conservatives just want kids back in cages. But when Traditionalists women get charged for having a miscarriage after the above agenda is introduced nationwide….it’s possible some unexpected political events might happen.

At the moment, at lot of Traditionalists live in a La La Land where they think, “Oh, no one would ever come after birth control.” And when the Right does, in fact, go after birth control….then what? Are they just going to shrug, or might they become Radical Moderates?

Only time will tell.

Someone Needs To Tell Tim Pool That A Second American Civil War Would Fucking Suck


By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Apparently, I’m not the only one with a second American civil war on the brain. I still am curious what green haired woman at Vice broke that poor man’s heart to the point that he turned to a raving MAGA lunatic. But, anyway, while I write a lot about a civil war, it’s not like I *want* one.

I just feel compelled to game different scenarios out because I don’t want to have some sort of abstract fear hanging over my head.

Anyway, it’s par for the course for people like Pool to scream at the top of their lungs that we *should* have a civil war. Ugh. A civil war would be a massive tragedy not just for how much it would fucking suck in the US, but how WW3 would break out if it actually happened.

We Might All Suffer From Groupthink When It Comes To Trump’s Popularity

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We still haven’t actually had anyone vote one way or another when it comes to Trump in either Iowa or New Hampshire, so it’s at least *possible* we all have some sort of lingering group PTSD over what happened in 2016 and we’re wildly overestimating Trump’s actual popularity.

The scenario I have in my mind at the moment is Trump gets trounced in both the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary and we all spend about a month mentally masturbating about the possibility that “Trump is done” or that he might run third party.

Then, of course we reach South Carolina and lulz, Trump comes roaring back and eventually everyone else drops out. But I don’t know. I really got burned in 2020 by overestimating Trump. He is so dumb and lazy and such an avatar for deep problems in our political system that maybe his win in 2016 was just a quirk of history and, as such, it’s over for him.

I just don’t know. That seems a little too good to be true, and, yet, as 2020 proved, stranger things have happened.

We Have Got To Recalibrate Our Perception of MAGA

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is very easy for us all to fall into the trite trap that, by definition, MAGA is made up of “ignorant” people sucked into a cult. At this late date, that assessment just makes no fucking sense.

The vast majority of the crazier things that MAGA does is a combination of political performance art done in order to “own the libs” and fascist virtue signaling. The key issue is that MAGA is symptom of a number of structural problems in the American political system.

What’s so interesting is MAGA is a movement of imperial retrenchment, not expansion. As such, I would compare Trump not to Hitler, but to Pol Pot. That’s the real nightmare scenario — that as the two sides grow radicalized, that Trump will decide to empty the Blue cities and we’ll endup with something akin to American Killing Fields.

MAGA is mostly made up of angry white (male) Christians who are so alarmed by the browning of America and the rise of women having political and economy agency that they going into the idea of autocracy with their eyes wide open.

In fact, that’s what they want — their dream is my nightmare. And some of them don’t even realize the implications of catching the car. They’re so busy hating on brown people and some ideal of how “every life is precious” while at the same time hating on COVID protocols done in a good faith effort to save lives in a crisis that you can grow rather frustrated with them.

Most of the people who make up MAGA aren’t ignorant at all. They are just really resentful of the modernization of America and they see Trump as their avatar. As such, Trump is NOT a Great Man of history. He’s just too lazy and dumb for that to be the case.

If he was a Great Man, he would never have lost the 2020 election and he would now be well on his way to becoming something akin to a Red King (at least over the Blue portions of the country.) But, here we are, with Trump fighting his way back to see if he can actually live up to all the autocratic rhetoric he spouted the first go round.

Which brings up an interesting point — if Trump really does try to deport 20,000 (or more) undocumented people in the United States, many with American children — is there any point when the Traditionalist who aren’t MAGA will throw up their hands and say, “I’ve had enough?”

That, dear reader, will determine the fate of the United States for generations to come because if Tyrant Trump loses the Traditionalists and they, for a brief movement, become Radical Moderates…we’re going to the show. We’re going to have a battle royale between Blue and Reds with no endgame and no narrative. It really could go either way.

And as all of that is going on, the globe will collapse into WW3 with a number of regional conflicts going nuclear. So one could propose that at least 1 billion people may die directly because of the actions of malignant ding-dong Trump. If my worst fears about the future come true, then Trump will replace Hitler as everyone’s go-to Worst Person in History.

But I can’t predict the future. And there is still plenty of time for us to punt all these structural problems down the road.

Wargaming The Unthinkable On A Personal Basis

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My tendency to be really paranoid served me quite well as an expat in South Korea. In the ROK as an expat, you’re pretty much one sentence away from scrambling to stay in the country. Living in America, though, this can make me come across as kind of bonkers.

But, having said all that, let’s think the issue what the fuck I’m going to do if the absolute worst happens and I am forced out of my Deep Red part of my state when the country implodes because of “vibes.”

At lot depends on how bad things get and how quickly. If things get really bad in the sense that I don’t feel safe being a Blue in a Red part of a Purple State, then, I suppose I’ll flee to the home of family in a Blue part of the state. But if things got REALLY BAD, REALLY QUICK, things are more complicated.

If there was some sort of infrastructure for Blue domestic political refugees to use, then I probably would grab my passport and stuff some essentials in a backpack and head North. With a general destination of NYC, if I could somehow finagle it.

But that’s very speculative and maybe a bit — or a lot — delusional. The key thing for me is I have to be prepared to bounce the moment it’s obvious that my political orientation is suddenly An Issue to the people around me. They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once, and that’s my fear — that I’ll wake up one day at some point after the 2024 Election and a bunch of good olde boys with guns will make it clear that I need to leave town — or else.

And, yet, I’m probably being hysterical. I am prone to think up the absolute worst case scenario. I won’t have to worry about any of this. Right? Right?

If You’re A Free Speech Absolutist Because Online Filtering Software Thinks You’re A Nazi, You Got A Problem

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a few relatives — who I love dearly — who honestly believe that evil liberals are trying to turn everyone gay, ban The Bible and are on the cusp of destroying the lives of conservatives at any moment because they don’t follow the “media narrative.”

This, of course, contributes to the whole “let’s destroy the greatest country in the world because of vibes” problem that we all currently face. What’s interesting is my far more conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — are now free speech absolutists because they think if Nazis can burn everything to the ground, then they will have a better chance of being able to, I dunno, say the N word because black people can?

I don’t have a problem with conservatives. Any strong, healthy democracy has a solid conservative movement. What I *DO* have a problem with is fucking MAGA and fucking Nazis. It is telling that even my Traditionalist relatives, whom I love dearly, have bought into to current Gay Scare.

All I can say is, if your political speech gets in trouble because it’s a little too close to Nazi propaganda…oh boy. You got a problem. Maybe tone it down a little bit. And whatever happened to the market place of ideas?

I find it amusing that conservatives think the “free market” can solve everything until that very same free market decides that saving the planet is a good idea. Then it’s “whoa, not THAT free.”

I fucking hate MAGA Nazis.

Facts Don’t Care About Your Vibes

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have some very conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — who continue to be enraged by the policies associated with COVID. They tell me they looked at the data and they will *NEVER* trust the CDC again.

Ok, I get it.

And, yet, these very same people lulz the very real economic data that suggests the American economy is humming along quite well. As such, if “doing their own research” and “looking at the data” helps their overall hatred of evil libs who want to turn everyone gay, then they embrace it. But if it DOESN’T help feed into the conservative media agenda being fed them by all the conservative podcasts they listen to…it is to be waved away and or ignored altogether.

They just *FEEL* that the economy is horrible and that the U.S. Military is now so woke that it’s weak compared to China and or Russia. This really aggravates me because the fact are this: the economy is doing well and the U.S. Military continues to be the most powerful fighting force in the world.

But for my Traditionalist relatives, whom I love dearly, they are very open to America turning into a white Christian ethnostate because of…vibes. They have an extremely simplistic take on politics to the point that what they believe is little more than a grunt. They just know: “Liberal bad.”

The only reason why I even bring this up is it’s so annoying that they make SUCH A BIG DEAL about how the “data” proves that the CDC should be arrested en mass and taken to Gitmo…but they simply don’t care that America’s economy is doing quite well at the moment and we can kick anyone’s ass in the world.

And it gets worse.

At the forefront of the minds of my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — is the “crisis at the border.” Again, I get it. There is a crisis at the border and more should be done to fix that problem. I will even acknowledge that someone should get impeached to at least focus their minds on the subject.

What alarms me about my conservative relatives anger about the “border crisis” is how blasé they are the implications of deporting over 20 million people — many of them have American children. You press them on the issue and they just do a lot of shuck and jive combined with hand waving. They don’t know the specifics of how things would work out, but they know something needs to be done.

And they are absolutely against the cornerstone of how to fix the problem — amnesty. Which, I think, tells you what’s really going on — they’re upset about the browning of America more than anything else. But they just can’t bring themselves to admit it, so they get all upset about the “border crisis” then refuse to even address what a fucked up situation we would find ourselves in if we actually tried to deport 20 million people.

But it definitely seems as though if Trump is re-elected in 2024 that the issue of “show your papers” will be the central issue of the day. Birthright Citizenship will be eliminated or ignored and millions of families will be torn apart and a lot of American citizens will be put in camps. AND, the ICE infrastructure that will have to be built out to deport all those people will be ripe for abuse.

And that’s freaky weirdoes like me might find myself in a Trump branded ICE camp at some point after 2025. Good times! But my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — think I’m a crank for even suggesting such a possibility. They’re too busy getting upset by any perceived slight against Christianity to realize that they have people in their immediate family who will cross Tyrant Trump because they refuse to shut the fuck up.

But I understand why this just sounds like my usual hysterical doom shit. I get it. I understand. All my fears are very speculative at the moment. But the fact remains — the economy is strong, America is strong and the idea of Trump having 500,000 armed ICE agents at his tyrannical deposal is a horrible idea.

A Moment Of Truth

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something I find myself thinking about a lot these days is what will happen on a personal basis to different people if any of my political dystopian hellscape nightmares come true.

I would suggest you keep an eye on some of the more bonkers MAGA people in Congress if it seems as though we’re going to have some sort of Secession Crisis. If Ted Cruz leaves the Senate to help organize a Trumplandia government then, welp, we’re going to the show. But if he doesn’t leave….then maybe things will kind of fizzle out.

Meanwhile, there are a number of notable Blues that I think could see their lives turned upside down if we have something akin to a civil war. Jon Stewart, in particular, seems like just the sort of guy who would stand and fight, rather than flee the country to have a circle jerk podcast that he did in the South of France. In fact, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and even Jimmy Fallen might shock us all with how they might be forced into some sort of political leadership position.

They may become political prisoners under the watchful eye of MAGA goons, if things get bad enough.

If things get as bad as I fear, everything and I mean EVERYTHING is going to be scrambled in a rather shocking, startling manner. The Woke Era will end because we’ll all be so busy trying to avoid artillery shells that we don’t have time to think about what pronouns we want people to use in reference to us.

And, I can’t predict the future and I hope — HOPE — I’m wrong. I just can’t help myself when it comes to trying to make my abstract fears concrete.

The Siege of Austin & Other Second American Civil War Nightmares

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me again say, I can’t predict the future. There is every reason to believe that in the end, the US will simply shrug and we either have four more years of Biden or we turn into a MAGA America First nightmare and it’s all a lulz.

But because I like to make my abstract fears concrete, let’s really think about the nuts and bolts of a possible Second American Civil War starting in late 2024, early 2025.

The state we should keep an eye on in this situation is Texas. The state is already an autocratic MAGA bastion, and so it makes a lot of sense that if Red States feel they need to bounce that Texas would be the first state to do it. Tradition would suggest that South Carolina might be the first out the door, but there are so many African Americans in the state….whoa buddy…that, in practical terms might not be as sure a thing.

But Texas has just the right demographic composition that if Trump lost in 2024, or if he won then went full tyrant in 2025 and was deposed, they seem to be the state that would call up a snap secessionist convention on the fly. Now, there are some obvious complications to this idea. On the ground, Texas — as I understand — is s l o w l y — shifting to Purple.

As such, even if Texas MAGA Nazis were able to sucker punch the populace by calling up a Secessionist Convention overnight, there would be some pretty dire consequences going forward. You could easily imagine a scenario where the state capital of Austin went full Paris Commune on the rest of the state and there was some sort of Siege of Austin.

Ok, let’s also think about how things might play out with other Red States. I think pretty much all the low population Red States of the Mountain area would flee the Union the moment Texas made it clear they were serious. Utah is one of those states that could go either way because it’s a hotbed of NeverTrump support…but one of its Senators is Mike Lee, so lulz?

Now we get to even MORE complication. States like Oregon and Virginia would likely implode because of how diverse they are. If we started to have a serious secessionist crisis, there would be A LOT of self-selection across the country as people bounced to states that better fit their own personal political views. And then, of course, there is the issue of places like Austin and other Blue dots in Red States that would either be razed by Red forces or see a huge amount of depopulation as their political difference became untenable.

And don’t even get me started about my fears of Trump going Pol Pot on us an emptying the “Godless cities” so American Killing Fields can be filled with the bodies of Blues.

And, remember, none of this will happen in a geopolitical vacuum. World War 3 would start the moment it became clear that the US was too pre-occupied blowing itself up to do anything about various regional conflicts around the globe. What’s more, if any sort of Second American Civil War dragged out long enough, then the outside world would begin to get involved, too.

I could totally see the DPRK dropping a few H-bombs on the US to kick us while we’re down.

Anyway, if things get so bad that we have states leaving the Union….yikes. May God have mercy on our souls.