It seems clear to me that fucking MAGA Nazi Republicans want to replace the “administrative state” with the “moralistic state.” There will be a 30% VAT rather than any form of income tax. Meanwhile, all sorts of white angry Christian morals will be imposed on hapless Americans who just want to be able to edit a tweet.
That, at the moment, seems our fate.
At least on a macro level, that’s what we’re drifting towards. That move towards a moralistic state has a huge amount of historical-political momentum behind it. And, honestly, as much I as I don’t want to even think about it, the only way to avoid such a horrible fate is a massive political clusterfuck in the guise of something like a second American civil war or revolution.
I don’t want that. I hope it doesn’t come to that. But….oh boy…..
For all the ridicule that the center-Left echo chamber is throwing at new House Speaker Mike Johnson, I can tell you that his views are pretty much the sweetspot for many, many hyper conservative people within the American electorate at the moment. To the point that I could see only the growing de facto trend towards always having a female Veep being the only thing preventing Trump from picking him as his veep in 2024.
But for the fact that the United States is either going to stop being a functioning democracy or collapse into civil war / revolution, I would suggest that Speaker Johnson is on the fast track to being a POTUS at some point in the near future. His positions are so fucking absolute and fucking extreme that he’s just what the doctor ordered for the small, but potent portion of the Republican electorate that seems to run the country these days.
So, I don’t know what to tell you.
I will tell you though, that if Speaker Johnson becomes POTUS we will no longer be a democracy — or even a “Constitutional Republic.” We’ll just be a plain old autocracy.
I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. And I hate conflict and violence to the point that I struggle to watch conflict — of any sort — in movies and TV shows. And all my anger towards MAGA, I’ve channeled into a six novel project that uses subtext to rant about how much MAGA Nazis suck.
Having said all that, we really need to accept that there is a good chance that there will come a day in the near future when MAGA and the Nazis are seen as historical equivalents. In fact, I would propose that MAGA Nazis are going to lead to the death of more people than just regular old Nazis. The population of the United States is just so much bigger than Europe in the 1940s and the power of the United States is such that, oh boy.
So, late 2024, early 2025 COULD be it. Either we turn into a MAGA Nazi autocratic state or we have a civil war (Reds) or a revolution (Blues.) Or, since I can’t predict the future, maybe we’ll somehow punt all our problems down the road again. Maybe some outside force really will save us from ourselves, like Mueller, She Wrote seems to believe.
The fact that Saturday Night Live had sketches entirely in Spanish without subtitles has kind of rattled my cage. The reason is, I fucking hate MAGA and yet I found something about it rather grating to the nerves. If it bothered me, then, Lord only knows it probably bothered those 60,000 low information swing voters in five states that will determine the 2024 election.
Add to this how my conservative relative to this day is extremely angry about what happened with COVID and I have a lot of conservative sentiment within my mind to process. If we had a functioning democracy — and no Electoral College — I might switch from a center-Left party to something closer to a center-Right party.
But, lulz, I just don’t have that as an option. So, fuck it, I’m just going to have to double down on my center-Left love of democracy and prepare to potentially risk my life and scared honor for that love. I say that because I believe the best way to fix a lot of these cultural problems is more democracy, not less. So, yes, there are some extremes on the far Left, but the answer is not to turn the United States into a MAGA Nazis white Christian ethnostate.
Anyway. Only time will tell, I guess. I can’t predict the future. Maybe everything really will work out.
So. It definitely seems as though we may have about a year before the United States either slips peacefully into autocracy or we have a civil war (Reds) or revolution (Blues.) Yes, I suppose it’s possible that some sort of third way might happen whereby Biden wins and that breaks the back of MAGA, but….oh boy. Not putting a lot of hope in that one.
All the macro signs at the moment point to Trump winning in 2024 and, soon, enough, the entire post-WW2 global world order is thrown up in the air. And that’s just internationally. Domestically, the United States will become a white theocratic ethnostate, probably as the result of a Constitutional Convention that puts MAGA enabling acts into the Constitution.
Or, put another way, the issue is how bad are things going to get? I mean, my fears of catastrophe are growing so serious that I’m thinking about the need to buy a Ham radio. Because if things really go tits up, communication will be something that we will be sorely lacking.
But, to date, I’m more interested in working on my novel to worry about something so dark. If that changes, then, well, there you go.
Because of how, collectively, Americans are a pretty laid back bunch, I struggle to imagine a situation where there might be any sort of mass revolt against Tyrant Trump should he win a second term. Because of his age, Trump will be seen as a transitional figure, with the result being whomever his successor is being the person who finally throttles our dying democracy.
And, really, much like how Augustus was able to transition the Roman Republic into an Empire, as long as Trump and his immediate successor don’t touch the First Amendment, they should be fine. Even if elections are meaningless, as along as Americans feel as though they can bitch and moan about what’s going on around them, there won’t be any problems in the streets.
But this is Trump we’re talking about.
Trump loves, loves, loves, to besmirch anything and everything that is considered sacred, so it may be almost inevitable that soon enough, Trump will start to attack some pretty basic Constitutional rights. Ironically enough, as long as he doesn’t touch the Second Amendment, his supporters will lulz our descent into a Russian-style autocracy.
But we have to accept that Trump’s second term will not only be one based on revenge, but also will take all the parts we hated about the first term to the next level. So much so, that the entire post-WW2 global liberal order will be thrown up in the air to the point that a full blown WW3 might break out because America pulls out of NATO and South Korea. What’s more, as all of this is happening, a good 1 million smug wealthy liberals will flee the country — at a minimum.
I still, however, struggle to imagine a scenario whereby there might some sort of Glorious Revolution on the part of Blues that might involve a General Strike and that kind of thing. Americans are just too complacent to do such a thing.
The only reason why I even keep writing about this issue is there are some macro trends at work that are extremely alarming. One of America’s two major political parties is now fascist and only see elections as valid if they win them. But I can’t predict the future. Maybe “Mueller, She Wrote” is right and somehow MAGA will evaporate into the mists of political history and everything will work out because some court ruling saves us from ourselves.
One of my personality quirks is I like to make my many abstract fears concrete. As such, here are various absolute-worst-case-scenarios when it comes to Biden shuffling off this mortal coil.
It happens after January 20th, 2025 I don’t want it to happen at all, but if it DID happen, the best time for it happen for the country would be at some point during Biden’s second term. There is a specific set of events that would happen and after a proper amount of grief, the country could go back to tearing itself apart.
It happens sooner rather than later If Biden shuffles off this mortal coil this late in the 2024 POTUS election cycle, then everything gets thrown up in the air. Chaos would descend upon the land. And, what’s worse, we STILL wouldn’t know if acting Speaker McHenry could become POTUS. And given how tense the country is, if there is some question as to if a Red Speaker of the House or a Blue Senate President Pro Temp was going to be POTUS, well, that’s a recipe for disaster. For that to happen, something really bad would have to happen, but the stakes would be so high that you know MAGA would figure out a way to force the issue one way or another.
It happens later rather than sooner If such a horrible thing happens a lot later, but before, say, ballets are printed, then chaos would erupt. The key thing would be, such a horrible thing happening would make the 2024 Democratic Convention a sight to see because there would be a massive struggle over who the nominee would be.
He lingers Another really bad scenario would be something happens such that the 25 Amendment has to be invoked. This horrible situation would also cause mass chaos because of how the country is tearing itself apart.
It happens between Election Day and Certification Day The absolute worst situation would be Biden shuffles off this mortal coil between Election Day and Certification Day. It’s happened once — as part of the election of 1872 — and the solution they used, with the dearly departed’s Electoral votes being dispersed to the living candidates doesn’t seem like a viable option in the modern era. I just don’t know what to tell you in that situation. I don’t think it would cause a civil war, but it would definitely be a “Not great, Bob,” situation.
When the history of this era of American history is written, the fate of one Mike Pence will be worth a few books. Given how “the Resistance” has accepted Liz Chaney with open arms, if Pence had a Road-to-Damascus moment and actually stood for some of the values he professes to believe and started hating on Trump, his life would be A LOT better.
I can’t promise you he’d ever be POTUS, but Pence’s political influence would increase dramatically if he became a Liz Chaney-like figure. If became something akin to a modern-day War Democrat, Pence would be on CNN and MSNBC a great deal. Hell, he might even get a show on one of those channels.
But, no. Pence is such a weak-willed weasel that he can not, will not do something so dramatic. It’s all sort of sad. The next speed bump that Pence is going to have to go over is what he’s going to do in late 2024, early 2025 should the country completely collapse.
Even if the country doesn’t collapse, given how Pence refused to do the one thing that might have kept Trump in office, you have to wonder if Trump goes full-tyrant on the American people that Pence might, at last, have his nuts descend and find his manhood.
I have my doubts, however. It definitively seems as though Pence has decided to simply fade away into political oblivion.
It seems as though within 18 months, we may very well literally live in the world of the movie “Her,” with the world of “Ex Machina” not being far behind. The issue, of course, is are we ready for both a political crisis and a technological “Petite Singularity” happening at about the same time.
It also makes me wonder if it’s inevitable for MAGA to transition into a neo-Luddite movement. It would make a lot of sense for this to happen because a lot of the people who would be the most disrupted by a sudden lurch into the future would be, well, MAGA people.
I also think that 2024 will be the first presidential cycle whereby a Universal Basic Income becomes a serious policy issue. Of course, to get it, we’re probably going to have to have a 30% VAT and tax the economic activity of non-human actors.
I can’t predict the future. I don’t know what is going to happen. But I am both concerned and intrigued. A part of me believes that much like a WW3 paused a lot of consumer technological development, so, too, will the Fourth Turning / WW3. We may be so busy bombing ourselves into oblivion that we just don’t have the mental energy to do anything with AI.
But once we sort out what post WW3 world order will be, the, yeah, I could see us zooming towards some pretty cool, pretty exotic technological developments.
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