Category: Trumplandia

Twitter Chatter: Something ‘Big’ Is About To Happen (Lulz?)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here and there these days, you see cryptic Tweets from major “resistance” people on Twitter saying something about how something “big” is about to happen. I’ve grown extremely jaded about such things — Trump is politically above the law — so I pretty much think any such talk is either bullshit, delusional or something that should evoke a lulz.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend something “big” is about to happen. What could it be?

First, I don’t know. Second, there’s only one thing that I would consider “big” at this point — concrete evidence that some big names in MAGA, including Trump, actively worked with the January 6th insurrectionists with the specific goal of a successful violent coup.

But even absolute, rock hard evidence of this would only last one Twitter news cycle at this point. Historical determinism — the dead hand of history — has kicked in. There simply is now no escaping the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. Something’s gotta give.

I say this because even if you knock out Mad King Trump as a viable political force, a dozen other would-be autocrats are lurking in the shadows to finish the job he started. And all it takes in one of them winning one presidential election and that’s it, that’s all she wrote — we become a white Christian ethno state. The center-Left has been proven to be completely ineffectual in protecting liberal democratic norms and a President Pompeo or President Cotton (etc, etc, etc) will flip a switch and turn us into an autocracy.

The media will be purged, one way or another, the ICE infrastructure will then be weaponized and people like me will mysteriously begin to fall out of windows. At this point, it’s just an issue of how long things stay “normal” before we wake up in a dystopian autocracy hellscape. Though, given how MAGA dark money craves a Constitutional Convention, it may that which is our absolute last gasp of freedom.

Having said all that, the other option is MAGA will bungle our inevitable transition into an autocracy and we have a civil war. A very nasty, very bloody mess of a civil war that will involve WMD domestically and WW3 abroad. It will be so horrific that everyone — even, hopefully the “good guys” who win — will regret it happen and in desperation will give it some sort of narrative and value after the fact. (Like what happened after the end of the First American Civil War.)

The key takeaway from all of this is nothing is going to save us. Even if we knock Trump out politically, the same rot that caused him in the first place is still there and someone else will use what they learned from Trump and finish the job. Or we have a civil war.

Tucker Carlson: The Most Dangerous Man In America


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t think we appricate how easy it would be for Tucker Carlson to become president. A huge swath of the Right’s media echo chamber listens to his personal form of White Nationalism Lite with rapt attention.

Because make no mistake, that’s what Tucker Carlson is: a White Nationalist.

In fact, it’s because of him, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram that the United States is careening towards a near future where we are no longer a nation-state based on the idea of the Constitution, but rather one based on the “blood and soil” of a white Christian ethno state. There are a dozen would-be autocratic successors to Trump who will flip the switch — with Carlson being at the head of the pack.

And, yet, from what I’ve heard, Carlson isn’t interested in the gig. Which, in itself, is interesting.

Carlson is similar to Trump in a lot of ways as a would-be candidate — he has no government experience, for one. But would have at least a few strengths that Trump doesn’t have — he’s young, bright, articulate and focused. All of those things that Trump obviously doesn’t possess. But there’s another thing that Carlson has that Trump doesn’t: an ideology.

Trump is so deranged and idiotic that he just goes from the gut about what he believes and why. There’s no over arching ideology other than, “own the libs,” even to the point where that’s more important than making any sense whatsoever. Carlson, meanwhile, knows exactly what he believes and is able to articulate it in a way that the average (white) person can get into.

But there are a number of obstacles to Carlson, besides his own self-avowed uninterest in the job. He has to figure out a way to eliminate Trump as a political force. Then he would have to get past the maw of the dozen other would-be autocrats who want the gig far more than he apparently does.

Anyway, don’t sleep on Tucker Carlson.

Revisiting Ezra Klein’s ‘Why We’re Polerized’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States definitely has a late-stage Republic vibe to it these days. Something is warping our politics in surreal ways to the point that on an individual basis one can find oneself having some pretty bonkers conversations. At the core of this, of course, is America’s third historical rail: race.

I read Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized and it was very illumining, but for one thing — he went into all this detail as to why we’re polarized, but could not figure out what to do about it. He offered no solutions, probably because there are none at the moment.

It would be like someone writing a similar book in the late 1850s — there just was no solution to the division America faced within the construct of traditional American democracy. Something was going to give.

Just within my own family, I’m the political red headed step child. Everyone in my immediate family is bed rock, old school conservative. If the issues behind the rise of MAGA were not fucking with our politics, they would be pretty much just your regular very conservative people — they only flirt with MAGA because of negative polarization. They simply feel they have no other choice but to go wherever MAGA takes the Republican Party.

The macro bending of our political system warps individual political conversations in some pretty bonkers ways. I have a very conservative relative who is upset about the Virginia police official who lost his job after an online leak showed he gave about $20 to the Kyle Rittenhouse defense fund. This relative was upset that the officer got in trouble both because of a leak and because of the small size of the donation. To my relative, this is just another example of “cancel culture run amuck.”

Meanwhile, to me, I’m flabbergasted that my relative wouldn’t see what I see — you deserve to lose your job (especially if your in law enforcement) if you support a political murderer. It doesn’t matter how much you donated or how we found out. No one with such fascist political views should be in law enforcement, period.

It’s small things like that that trouble me a great deal. Fascism is ascendant in the United States in a rather conspicuous manner and one day we’re either going to slip into an autocratic managed democracy or we’re going to have a civil war.

At the moment, I think there is a historical determinism to the United States becoming a white Christian ethno state of “blood and soil.” The Establishment Powers That Be have a vested interest in keeping everyone calm and so when we’re absolutely forced to make a decision, they’re going to tell everyone that living in a fascist state is just The New Normal.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that on a macro historical level, America’s fate rests more on how likely it is that Trump or any number of his potential successors is deft at shepherding us into autocracy or if they bungle it. Only if things get out of their control will we go the other high risk, high reward route: civil war.

I don’t want a civil war, but I also don’t really want to live in a MAGA-themed autocratic state where I have to worry about ICE pushing me out a window. In a strictly rhetorical manner, I would rather risk dying on my feet a free man than living a slave in an autocratic state.

But that’s just me doing my usual “doom shit.” It’s possible that things will endup being far more subtle than I keep sketching out. We’ll drift into autocracy, but it will be a “light touch” autocracy for a long time until someone realizes that they can get away with anything they want on a political level and they overreach. Americans get woke to living in an autocracy…..and I don’t know.

Anyway, I would advise you to get a passport or make sure you live in a part of the country that aligns with your political views. Good luck.

Deep State Radio & My ‘Doom Shit’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I listened to the most recent Deep State Radio and, while I was pleased, I noticed something. While they kept talking the “doom shit” that some people on Twitter get mad at me about when it comes to MAGA, Trump and our coming decent into autocracy, there was an element of ignoring the pink MAGA elephant in the room.

That elephant is they are so concerned about the political problems we face when it comes to MAGA that they said not a word about the other option before us: civil war.

Now, I know why this is — they’re working with metrics that are real, not speculative and they don’t want to sound hysterical or like their doing “doom shit.” But I compare it to a fictional, anachronistic podcast in, say, 1859. They would be talking about the rise of Slave Power and how “these United States” risked being all slave under autocratic Slave Power rule. The idea that Lincoln would win and slave states would leave the Union in protest is probably something they would dare broach.

But not one listens to me, so I talk about it all the time.

As I keep saying, we have something of a spectrum ahead of us with a MAGA autocracy on one end and a civil war at the other. I vacillate wildly between these two possibilities in my mind. At the moment, I think we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy because The Powers That Be have every reason to tell an enraged populace that Everything Is Fine.

It will only be if MAGA bungles the historical inevitable of America transitioning into an autocracy that there is any risk of the “doom shit” that I keep writing about here and on Twitter becoming a reality.

Before I go, let me explain my gratuitous use of “doom shit.” See, one of those well respect Resistance Twitter accounts who do a lot of yeoman work covering the Trump Era got mad a me for pretty much saying, “I simply don’t believe Trump is every going to be legally held account for anything he’s ever done.”

They yelled at me and said, “You have to stop it with the doom shit.”

At the moment, at least, it’s not “doom shit” — it’s what really going on. Mad Kind Trump is politically above the law. And, even worse, even if we magically fell him on a political level, he’s always just been an avatar — there are a dozen would-be autocrats lurking in the shadows, waiting to finish the job he completed.

As such, we still face the choice of autocracy or civil war between now and January 2025.

Why Does MAGA Want A Second American Civil War So Bad?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Much like the lead up to WW1, MAGA has glorified political violence to the point where they think all their fucking problems will be solved if we just have a civil war and settle the “liberal problem” once and for all.

Besides the obvious — war is hell, is never pretty and never goes the way you plan it — there’s the issue of MAGA not being nearly in the pole position to win any civil war once they finally get what they’re lusting after so badly right now. They would be much better off just being patient and letting the existing drift of macro political history forces give them the autocracy they want peacefully.

But they’re idiots who can’t understand that — so they want a civil war.

And, yet, why?

I struggle with this a lot these days. One idea is MAGA sees “civil war” as a kind of short hand, much like the “Insurrection Act” was around January 6th. They’re sitting on the back porch of the cabin with their buddies smoking pot and drinking Miller Lite and they start talking about how dem dar lib’rals “won’t leave them alone.” Then get all riled up and start taking their anger to its logical extreme — a civil war.

But the vast majority of these fucking cocksuckers haven’t gamed this idea out in any practical fashion. All they know is the hate liberals and in some sort of vague manner think if only the United States was more like modern Russia that they wouldn’t have to worry about “cancel culture” or their children being forced to learn Critical Race Theory. There’s no logic to any of what they believe. They just have a general sense that “things ain’t right” and, as such, Something Bad should happen to liberals. But I doubt they really have any concrete ideas about a civil war other than that’s the worst thing they can think of.

So, in a sense, MAGA’s political stance is completely recursive — they believe what they believe because they believe it, and fuck you lib. But this is a very dangerous dynamic because it gives a general historical determinism to a general drift towards SOMETHING bad, be it a civil war, or something else.

I have no idea what is going to happen, but I am growing aggravated with how wrapped up in the idea of a civil war MAGA has become. If nothing else, it means the United States is growing far more politically unstable than one might otherwise think.

But as I keep saying, it wouldn’t just magically happen. Just as MAGA thought Trump invoking the Insurrection Act was magic pixie dust that would solve all their liberal problems, so, too, has “civil war” become some sort of abstract cure-all.

What any of this means in practical terms, I still don’t know. Only time will tell, I guess.

Second American Civil War Flashpoints


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let’s get some things out of the way. One is, while the MAGA far Right has crossed the abstract Rubicon when it comes to a Second American Civil War, it wouldn’t just magically happen.

You would have to have some sort of secession crisis caused by something like Cyber Ninjas “proving” Trump “won” Arizona or a some sort of nullification crisis in the 2024-2025 time frame. Even then, there is plenty of reason to believe that instead of a civil war, America will chose the other option: autocracy.

Someone like Ron DeSantis will become president — potentially fair and square — then purge the media and weaponize the ICE infrastructure so loudmouths like me either get pushed out a window or end up in a camp somewhere.

But let’s say, just like in 1861, we aren’t able to take any of the peaceful off ramps and we actually have a Second American Civil War, where can we expect the most bloodshed?

The first area that comes to mind is somewhere like Ohio and Indiana. These are smaller states with high population concentrations that would likely be the center of significant fighting between Red and Blue. Red, on a political level, controls both of the states, but they have big Blue neighbors and there are enough Blue people in the states that there could be some very heavy fighting. It would be a lot like the type of fighting we saw in Europe during WW2.

Another place I would imagine there would be a lot of fighting would be Texas. This state has a huge, diverse population and once we no longer see things in terms of politics but rather the dynamic of war, then the state is likely to implode and have an intra-state civil war. So much so, that its ability to help Trumplandia in any broader war would be significantly hampered.

The rest of the South west of the Texas would also pretty much just go tits up the moment Americans took up arms against each other. The old CSA South would be were the most atrocities would likely take place because of race, race, race. It’s easy to imagine historic race-war-like crimes against humanity taking place there — the type of stuff people would eventually get hung for if the “Good Guys” (at least in my view) won.

It just seems like the rest of the country would stabilize a lot quicker for various reasons. If California could get its act together, it would control a huge swath of the country east and north of it, while the Northeast would be firmly in the Blue camp. But it’s places where Blue and Red states neighbor each other — or there are sizable minority populations — where the highest number of deaths would occur.

Hopefully, I’m wrong one way or another. I hate violence. Though, as I have mentioned before, in an abstract way, the idea of civil war at least would give us the possibility that we could end the MAGA threat once and for all. But, lulz, who knows what is going to happen. I hope we just keep punting this problem down the road for the foreseeable future.

What’s With All The (MAGA?) Burner Accounts Following Me On Twitter?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

When you live a life that is anonymous as mine is at the moment, it doesn’t take much for you to get all tingly when something even remotely interesting happens.

In just the last few months, a number of obvious burner accounts have followed me on Twitter. You can tell they’re burner accounts because they’re very small accounts that obviously aren’t just Russian bots or trolls. And they follow a very narrow group of people.

Now, this would be, I guess?, flattering but for one thing — recently these burner accounts have been MAGA. I know I can sometimes kind of flip out on Twitter in my pointed anti-MAGA hatred, so it makes me wonder if these burner accounts are name brand MAGA “thought leaders” who want to hate-follow me so they can use my hysterical anti-MAGA tweets to be fascists. Or something like that.

Or maybe all of this is just another instance of me pulling something out of my butt out of whole cloth. That has been known to happen.

DeSantis: The Autocratic Next Time


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All macro political trends indicate that the United States is drifting — maybe careening — towards a transition into an autocratic managed democracy like is found in Russia. The man who could very well be the once to tip the balance is current Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.

He’s the political creature that we’ve long feared: Trumpism without Trump.

So, it’s easy to imagine he becomes POTUS and makes autocratic rule palatable enough that it won’t be until Tom Cotton, or Josh Hawley or Mike Pompeo inevitable become POTUS that the ICE infrastructure is weaponized and loudmouths like me start to get pushed out of windows. But for the duration of the DeSantis Administration we’ll see a dynamic whereby hard power is weld by MAGA and cultural soft power continues to exerted by liberals in the media.

We’ll just drift into a Russian-style government so by the time the media is purged and ICE pushed me out of a window we won’t even think about it. About 50% of the population won’t even notice or care that the United States is no longer a liberal democracy because they will, at last, “just be left alone.”

That, at least, is one option.

But there are two other scenarios to think about when feeling bad about how dark America’s future is right now.

One is, Trump is so stupid and craven that he completely fucks up what is otherwise a done deal. He either kneecaps DeSantis out of envy or he somehow bungles our transition into autocratic managed democracy by embracing the “24 or before” slogan and everything goes wrong. In a sense, this would simply delay the rise of fascism in the United States, not stop it.

Meanwhile, the other option is, well, a fucking civil war.

I hate violence and I don’t want a civil war. But if you look at the United States on a macro historical level, we’re very similar to the America of the late 1850s — there may come a point where we have to chose between continued domination by Slave Power (MAGA) or we are forced to slice this particular boil once and for all.

But there are no assurances that the “good guys” would win in such a situation. So, I don’t know what to tell you. We’re fucked.

The Duality Of Maggie Haberman — And Speculation On Why She’s Enraging Trumplandia Right Now


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about “Trump Whisperer” Maggie Haberman is she is, at the same time, both way too close to Trumplandia AND a great journalist. So the Twitter liberals who defend her no matter what and the populist pitchfork crowd on Twittter who hate her both have vaild arguments.

Recently, however, Trumplandia “thought leaders” like Sean Hannity are freaking out about her, apparently out of the blue. It makes you think maybe she’s up to something that she’s asking questions about and they’re doing a pre-emptive freak out to prepare to base for whatever bombshell she’s about to drop.

What I HOPE she’s going to tell us is exactly why Trump was so absolutely desperate to remove 1/3 of America’s troops from Germany right before the 2020 election. I have yet to get any explanation for this directive on Trump’s part and, as best I can tell, the whole thing was off the books to begin with.

Trump just started demanding it happen, without going through any proper channels at all.

This was and is very suspicious.

At the time, I kept ranting about how I thought it was YET ANOTHER quid pro quo between Trumplandia and Russia — Trump removes a big chunk of our troops from Germany, the Russians hack into our election systems.

But…the Russians this go round strangely sat on their hands, even though Trump did everything in his power to give them a major geopolitical windfall in Europe.

But, I’m just a hayseed rube in the rural part of a flyover state. Though, if I guess that this is what Maggie Haberman is about to drop, well, I take back all my snarky comments about her being an “access journalist” and will want to buy her a beer.

Ms. Haberman, however, has to produce the goods. It could be whatever she’s looking into isn’t nearly as momentous as the scenario I’ve proposed. But I will note that my 2020 ranting about this topic is beginning to get just a tick of traffic out of the blue, as if other people, out there in the aether are thinking about what I was thinking.

Trump Is Powerful But Not Popular


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Right now, Trump has completely dropped off the public stage relative to my center-Left echo chamber. It’s like he never existed, or, at least, doesn’t exist now. And, yet, within the MAGA echo chamber, they love him so much they’re struggling to think up ways to get him back into office as soon as possible — even if it requires fantastical — and extra-legal — means.

So, it’s going to be very jarring to a lot of people when Trump magically pops out again in a rather abrupt and unexpected way. It seems to me now possible that Cyber Ninjas will “prove” that Trump “won” in Arizona and this will be at best used as a talking point to win the 2022 mid-terms and at worst used as the catalyst for some sort of weird nullification crisis.

Another possible dystopian hellscape scenario is that even though Trump — who looks like shit right now — has seen his support outside of the MAGA base evaporate will demand he become Speaker of the House should MAGA win the House. Then he impeaches both Biden and Harris and gets a conviction in the Senate by inciting political violence. Democrats in the Senate will be cowed into voting for conviction because the nation appears on the cusp of a civil war if they don’t.

Or something. Something like that.

The point is — we are in a very surreal post-Trump era. While Biden does everything in his power to bring back “normal,” Trump is lurking in the shadows like some sort of movie monster waiting to come back for the sequel. It’s very strange and is not exactly the sign of a stable liberal democracy.