Category: Tsar-A-Largo

An Election Day 2020 Nightmare Scenario


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Right now, it seems as though Trump and Trump alone has not only his own fate, but the fate of the United States, in his hands. Since he’s a deranged moron, obviously he doesn’t give a shit about the United States. As such, here’s a scenario.

At the earliest possible moment, Trump announces he’s won. At the same time, the MAGA-Qanon base begins to firebomb strategic polling locations across the country.

JFK Jr pops out of the top of Trump’s head and we all live in peace and harmony for a 1,000 years under the benevolent rule of Q. I may have made that last part up.

Anyway, the point is — there are ways whereby Trump “doesn’t lose” because there’s not a free and fair election. The question, of course, is, will it just be seen as extreme version of the 2000 situation, or something much, much darker. I honestly don’t know.

I just don’t know what the endgame is.

TrumpBarr’s Three Prong Coup


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

  1. Sue
    This prong involves suing everything that moves the instant they can. The Trump Campaign is already doing this, but they will go into overdrive the moment the polls close on Election Night. They know SCOTUS is their failsafe, no matter what, so there you go — they will win.
  2. Violence
    This prong will be something of a suckerpunch. Between now and Election Night MAGA-Qanon will amp up the violence and disruptions to the point that a lot of people who might otherwise vote, won’t. Trump wins there, too.
  3. Barr
    This would be Barr somehow giving Trump’s sketchy coup activities just enough of a legal justification that conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA will have some sort of talking point to make themselves feel better.

    All of this is going to happen very, very quickly now. If they’re successful, Trump could “win” and it’ll just be an extreme version of 2000. If they aren’t as successful as they think they otherwise could be, then, well, we have a civil war or revolution.

    Good luck.

The Dark Reason Why The Russians May Not Save Trump


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have been so busy thinking about how valuable Trump is to the Russians that I totally missed something — maybe they have come to believe that Trump is such a craven idiot that he will be more destructive if he actually loses. In that case, they don’t have to fuck with votes — even though they might still do it.

They just sit back and watch Trump be, well, Trump.

He stages a coup and either way the Russians get what they want. Either he is successful and America is nothing more than autocratic Trumplandia or he fails and we have to go through The Big Ugly.

The one thing we have to be clear about, though, Barr is likely going to give Trump a thin veneer of legality for any coup he may attempt.

I can’t believe any of this is real. I hope I’m wrong. I really do. I don’t want this. I only keep coming up with worse case scenarios to make myself feel better.

‘Red Alert’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s deep to see very real indications that all your dark scenarios may be coming true. I think the thing that a lot of people missed about the massive clusterfuck we may be about to enter is the role of Trump himself to force the issue. It seems like there’s been a lot of “Oh, that would never happen” going on.

Welp.

So, as I can discern, here’s TrumpBarr’s gameplan. Even if it’s extremely obvious that Biden is going to win outright, the moment Trump has any good news he declares victory.

Then, in one fell swoop, American politics is suspended and we enter Coup Dynamics. We enter The Big Ugly. What I mean by that is, Trump uses a combination of MAGA-Qanon violence and Barr legal skullduggery to “not lose” the election.

So, weirdly enough, we would have a similar situation as to what happened in Belarus where the autocrat “won” by 98% of the vote by everyone knew that was a lie and took to the streets. The unnerving issue is we’re careening towards a massive 9/11 level suckerpunch.

The thinking on the part of TrumpBarr is they use any violence — even if it’s from their own supporters — to use the Insurrection Act to seize “total control.” They shut down voting and use SCOTUS to give themselves a thin veneer of legality so the conservative-but-not-MAGA part of the electorate will simply shrug and go back to enjoying their tax breaks and young, hack MAGA judges.

At this point, their thinking is through sheer force of will they can “not lose” the election just like Bush did in 2000.

For me, the issue is American self-perception. Americans have never in our 240-odd history gone through an actual coup. So it will be interesting to see how such an unprecedented event hits the American psyche.

Americans are so God-awful complacent — and so absolutely polarized — that even if it’s self-evident to 60% of the electorate that coup is taking place, 40% of the electorate will say, “but Trump is legally president.”

So that might be the outcome — nothing more than an extreme version of 2000. Instead of the center-Left thinking in vague terms the election was stolen, they will think THE ELECTION WAS STOLEN VIA COUP. Meanwhile, the center-Right will simply shrug and tell us we have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

In that case, it would be a draw and, by definition, a victory for TrumpBarr. I guess they key takeaway is do not think in terms of traditional politics. TrumpBarr is going to fight dirty. We have to be prepared.

A Big Ugly Scenario


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

  1. Biden wins handily on Election Night, but not all votes are counted.
  2. Trump sues Wednesday morning to throw out all mail-in votes and wins because, lulz, SCOTUS is full of MAGA hack nows.
  3. Within moments of the SCOTUS decision, enraged New Yorkers attack Trump Tower and FOX News’ HQ
  4. This allows Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to take “total control.”
  5. Unprecedented political violence begins to erupt, to the point that Blue people in Red states and Red people in Blue states don’t feel safe anymore — domestic political refugees begin to bounce around the country.
  6. There’s a secession crisis as California openly debates leaving the Union. This is where things grow hard to predict — does the state attempt to leave or does it stay and fight?
  7. The entire country begins to implode as even individuals within the U.S. Military begin to take sides.
  8. Two rival governments are established. One in NYC and one in Montgomery, Alabama. (The DC area has completely imploded into civil war.)
  9. Virginia and Florida completely implode as intra-state regional differences are hardened and exaggerated as both Blue and Red grow ever more radicalized.
  10. I have no idea what the endgame for this would be.

Donald Trump: Flight Risk


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m still not prepared to believe the Russians would allow Trump to lose. It makes no sense. Why allow such a valuable asset to be forced out of power? Why not hack into our election systems then “accidentally on purpose” get found out. A civil war breaks out when Republicans lulz this and win at SCOTUS. The Russians get the destruction of their main geopolitical foe.

But, let’s daydream. Let’s play pretend.

Politico recently did an article on Trump being a possible “flight risk.” I haven’t read the article — just saw the headline — so maybe they covered this already, but let’s mull where Trump might go.

There are two obvious places — Moscow and Pyongyang.

The reason Trump might leave the country is simple: he doesn’t want to go to prison. Now, of course, given how Trump and Senate Republicans have turned 1/3 of the Federal bench into a MAGA cheering squad, it’s easy to imagine a situation where SCOTUS not only validates Trump pardoning himself, but somehow pulls some bullshit explanation for why he can’t be indicted for state crimes, either.

That definitely seems a lot more likely than Trump leaving the country in a rather astonishing — and historic — fashion before January 20th.

But if Trump did do something so bonkers, flying to Moscow on AF1 then quitting right before January 20th definitely seems the most obvious. He would have the biggest country in the world to play with and he could spill all the state secrets he liked directly to the Russians.

I wouldn’t completely dismiss the DPRK, however. I say this because Trump definitely seems to have a personal affinity for “Little Rocket Man” and it would make a lot of sense for him to at least begin his post-presidential career hanging out with Kim Jung Un for a few months before flying to Moscow.

The only reason why I doubt Trump would do such a thing — even if he is a deranged moron — is even he knows because of SCOTUS he could beat any state rap and staying in the country would allow him to fuck with future elections and become the political Singularity of the Republican Party.

And, yet, Trump is a deranged moron.

So, I dunno.

Why 2020 Is Not 2000


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

  1. Polarization
    The events of 2000 could only happen when the country was both not really all that polarized, equally divided and the two parties were almost identical in their visions. In 2020, meanwhile, none of those things are the same. The country is polarized to an obscene level, we at a 60%-40% split of the electorate and one party has no agenda other than what The Dear Leader tweets that morning.
  2. Once Bitten, Twice Shy
    Things like the Brooks Brothers Riot can only work once. That was a suckerpunch. By the the time we understood what was going on, it was too late. Given the shitshow of the last four years, pretty much every non-MAGA person assumes there’s going to be not a Brooks Brother Riot but a Brooks Brothers WAR.

    The question is, given how different things are, what would be the endgame should a 2000-like situation arise? I honestly don’t know. I’m completely clueless. It could be that, as always, the bad guys win. Or, who knows. But the dead hand of history would suggest it’s over. We’re just going to have House Trump in power for between 20 to 40 years.

    It would be at that point that the equally powerful dead hand of demographics kicks in and House Trump’s reign simply becomes untenable. They will have completely run the country into the ground and turned us all in to a reflection of their “deplorables” along the way, but oh well. At least they’ll be out of power.

The Big Ugly: America As Political Powder Keg


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So it’s clear that a Federal judge in Texas is going to throw out 100,000 votes Monday morning, lulz, we can’t have Texas turning Blue, now can we? My fear is that such an event could spark significant political violence on the eve of the election, which, in turn would give Trump the excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and directly fuck with the election on election day.

That, in turn, would escalate things and before you know it, the country implodes and The Big Ugly has begun.

It could all devolve very, very quickly.

So quickly, in fact, that there could be several political 9/11s in quick succession. Before we know it, not even the U.S. Military will be spared.

As such, the Russians will have gotten what they wanted — a second American Civil War, “the worse the better.”

I guess for me, the moral of this would be for center-Left people to at least wait until after Election Day to freak the fuck out. But no one listens to me, so there you go.

I wish I could get so drunk for the next few days that I wake up after a bender on Wednesday morning but that plan never works. I always stay way too sober in such stressful situations. It happen in 2016. It’s going to happen in 2020.

The United States Is Careening Towards ‘The Big Ugly’ of Civil War or Revolution


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though the Republican Party is going to be the dog that finally caught the car. A lot of anti-democratic trends that have been heading towards each other for the last 50 years are finally beginning to pay dividends for the Republican Party.

They’ve corrupted the judiciary. They will stop at nothing to delegitimize any election they don’t win. The list goes on.

As such, it definitely seems as though Trump could very well “win” because of Biden losses from a death of a thousand cuts. A 100,000 already cast votes here. Another 100,000 legitimate votes there. Add to this the Russians never allowing Trump to lose and a Federal judiciary full of young, hack MAGA judges eager to throw the election to Trump, and well, lulz.

The problem for Republicans is while they will “win’ their victory won’t happen in a political vacuum. While there’s a decent chance that any theft of the 2020 election will be just another 2000 — there’s also a good chance we could experience The Big Ugly. There could be significant political violence if Republicans get what they want.

And, yet, that political violence would have to get pretty severe for Republicans not to just lulz the whole thing. They are so completely by their craven desire to have power that Trump probably would see any political violence — even if it was started by his own followers — as an opportunity to invoke the Insurrection Act and take “total control.”

The point is — we’ve officially entered the danger zone. America’s political system is so taunt now because of the pressures of the 2020 Election that virtually anything could set off The Big Ugly.

I still think we need to keep looking at New York City. If Trump obviously steals the election, then before dawn breaks places like Trump Tower and FOX New’s HQ may have been gutted. I’m not advocating that, but just giving you a heads up as to how you might have some sense of how bad things may be about to get.

The True Tragedy of The Trump Era


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Two major historical events come to mind when I mull how the Trump Era — should it come to a close soon — will be viewed. One is Watergate. Not only was it the crucible through which America entered the modern era, it was all around a big old tragedy.

If anything, Trump has taught us a very crucial lesson about Watergate. We thought Watergate established a gameplan for how a president might actually be removed from office if his or her crimes were bad enough. In fact, Watergate was a very specific event with very specific characters that was not really any sort of gameplan at all. It was simply a fluke.

Or, put another way, it was a construct of the era in which it came out of. People in 1972 – 1974 had some sort of shame. Some sort of sense of honor. Two qualities that absolutely no one in the Trump Administration has.

The point is, however, that nothing was the same after Watergate. The Republican Party became the part of the people who were Nixon deadenders. That core group of people — in the guise of Reagan — would come roaring back in 1980 as part of the Reagan Revolution.

The Reagan Revolution is the other big event that the Trump Era gives us some insight into. The reason why Reagan’s election was so important was many of the problems that would lead to Trump first began to form. The Republican’s obsession with SCOTUS. It’s obsession with cutting taxes and social programs. It’s hatred of anyone voting. The list goes on.

The key issue of this moment in time, however, is how it was a psychological break from the past. The entire country began to take for granted a number of what were previously far Right concepts.

So, here we are in the Trump Era.

It will be the biggest shock of my adult life if not only the Russians let Trump lose, but Trump doesn’t somehow start a civil war just out of spite and a fear of going to prison should he leave office.

But should Trump miraculously leave office and a Biden Administration start, I just don’t see how things snap back into place. Trump isn’t going anywhere. He’s still going to be an ex-president. He’s still going to demand a spotlight and he’s still going to have a Twitter account. What’s more, he’s probably going to salt the earth on the way out the door.

One subtle change, however, the thing that we’re all going to have to deal with, is Trump single handedly radicalized much of the center-Left the way the Obama’s second term radicalized the entire fucking Republican Party. We were sucker punched by Trump’s time in office and so a lot of the native goodwill that many center-Left people might give Republicans simply doesn’t exist anymore.

In a way, both sides are now equally radicalized and suspicious of each other. The only real difference between Republicans and Democrats is the latter actually believes in liberal democrats norms. And Democrats have some sense of shame. Republicans, meanwhile, don’t give a shit. They are so fucking craven, so blinded by ideology that they were more than willing to fucking destroy the whole country if they think it might give them just one more young hack MAGA judge.

But I still just don’t believe Trump is going to lose. He’s an autocrat and autocrats never lose. Never. It’s going to be the Russians. Or SCOTUS. Or some combination of both that allow Trump to “not lose.”

And I just don’t see Americans having it in them to do what would be necessary to force the issue and drive Trump out of office — a General Strike. I believe TrumpBarr will simply grow more radical as necessary, invoke the Insurrection Act and that will be that.

As I keep saying, on a strictly political level, Biden is doing quite well. But Trump is an autocrat — if a very incompetent one — and, as such, will never fucking leave office. And if he does leave office, you had better be sure he’s going to demand a pound of political flesh.

So, in the end, even if Trump is out of office, everything will be different. Our expectations have changed. There’s likely to be a Trump Deep State that will aggressively work to bring down the Biden Administration at every turn. The Fox News faux outrage machine will constantly be looking for different ways to recapture the glory of the Trump Era.

Trump will be the Republican Party’s new Reagan. Everything they do, everything they say, everything they believe in will be relative to Trump. They hate democracy and see it only as a means to an end. About half a dozen would-be younger, brighter, more focused autocrats are already chomping at the bit to finish the job Trump has begun.

Remember — even after the disgrace of Watergate, the Republicans just barely lost to Carter in 1976. Barely. It was one of the tightest elections in history. And they came roaring back just six years after Nixon left office in disgrace.

Should Trump physically leave office, we’re probably going to have three to six months to enjoy it before Republicans will shit on it all.

But I still, still will be completely flabbergasted if Trump loses. Too many powerful people — including Trump himself — will fight dirty to ensure Trump stays in power as long as he likes.