Because everything is fucked, we find ourselves in a situation where Joe Rogan is the voice for millions of mostly white mostly men who feel disenfranchise. What’s interesting is Rogan is a gateway drug to the fascist MAGA New Right. One of his quirk is he’s not exactly a fan of Saturday Night Live.
So, he brings on all these washed up, has been comics who also hate SNL. Rogan often asks leading questions about SNL in hopes that people will agree with him and shit on SNL.
It seems like this probably comes from Rogan’s secret longing to have been on SNL at some point in the past. SNL is a sink-or-swim workplace and this is something that is latched on by Rogan whenever he criticizes the show.
But the key thing is, Rogan’s hatred of SNL is a prism for us his overall worldview. Rogan is a standup comic who was a minor player on Newsradio decades ago. It’s just he’s lucky that he’s able to hide who he is by wrapping everything in an earnest masculinity that really appeals to bros who think they’re at risk of being canceled by “the woke cancel culture mob.”
Yet, I think we need to step back and appricate who Rogan really is. I would suggest that the best equivalent would be Jon Stewart at his height. Both men love the power they have, but whenever there’s any blowback on stray comment he makes, he falls back to “but I’m a comic!” as a defense.
As I’ve written before, the American electoral system hides a pretty shocking fact about what’s going on right now. If we had, say, a parliamentary system like the Weimar Republic, it would be very clear that we are in the twilight of our barely functioning democracy.
Instead of two parties, we have the fascist Republican Party and the center-Left alliance of minor parties that fall under the rubric of the Democratic Party. The fascist Republican Party is seething with rage and once they inevitable get power again, they’re unlikely to ever peacefully relinquish it.
There won’t be any sort of a civil war, but rather the fascists will quickly consolidate power. I estimate at least a million center-Left people will flee the the United States starting in late 2024 when it becomes clear that the fascists are going to seize power once an for all. There will be a real counter-revolution in the United States that will see a wide range of very unpopular fascist policies become law. NATO will be destroyed. The United States will form some sort of alliance with the autocrats of Russia, Hungary and Turkey.
Our coming Autocrat?
And that will be that.
That will be the “new normal” for the rest of my life. In fact, I’m probably spend the rest of my life trying to avid being round up by America’s Putin (which ever Republican ends up winning that prize) and maybe I’ll just end up with an ICE bullet in the back of my head when they finally catch up with me.
From everything I see in the United States, such a dystopian hellscape is a pretty safe bet.
What’s interesting is, I talk to my far more conservative relatives and all they talk about is how they thing the “woke cancel culture mob” is going to figure out essentially same thing to THEM. For my Traditionalist relatives, the idea of having their lives ruined “just for being conservative” is something that continues to be at the forefront of their minds. That’s all they talk about.
And that brings up another interesting issue — relative to their echo chamber, they’ve been scared into thinking it’s the center-Left, not the center-Right that will turn the United States into an autocracy. No amount of me talking about the difference between soft power and hard power will change their minds. They no longer believe in democracy and they crave a situation where Democrats can never hold power in any meaningful way.
They believe that only then will they no longer have to go to the sensitive training forced upon them by their “woke” corporate overlords. What’s worse, everything is very muddled in the United States at the moment. The center-Left does it self no favors by fixating on some really, really unpopular ideas ranging from “Defund The Police ” to, yes, extreme trans right. I like to think I’m pretty empathic to trans rights, but I also know that there’s a reason why the Republican Party won’t shut the fuck up about the dangers of that very same thing — it plays really well with Traditionalist conservatives who otherwise are queasy about elements of MAGA.
The United States is a lot like the Titanic just after the iceburg hit. We all know something has gone wrong, but not everyone realizes the ship is going to sink. So, you have a lot very, very clueless Blue Check liberals who think the system still works or that somehow Trump will magically be held accountable for all his many, many crimes.
And, like I said, we all know Blue Check liberals are cowards who will bounce from the United States once it’s clear that all their earnest, angry Twitter threads failed to stop the rise of autocratic America.
Things are very dark in the United States, and we’re going to lurch even closer to a true Russian-style autocracy in January 2023 when the fascist Republican Party takes control again. Republicans will then brazenly steal the 2024 election, even though they probably don’t even have to and that’s it — American autocracy.
We’re fucked. Totally and completely. There’s no going back. When ever election a democracy has is existential, then you’re not even a democracy anymore, you’re an anocracy.
I will be flabbergasted if we have a civil war. The center-Left just doesn’t have it in it to risk their lives and careers to challenge the fascist Republican Party anywhere by Twitter.
I’m old enough to remember when a book came out called “The Birth Dearth.” I was too young to read it all — I did try — but in general the book was about how America faced a “birth dearth” in the coming decades.
I’ve heard a little bit more about this book as an adult and apparently it was racist as hell. But anyway, I thought of this book when I caught a moment of the tech bro podcast “All In.”
One of their Smartest Guys In The Room participants said offhandedly that America was — you guessed it — facing a birth dearth (among white people) because of gender equality. They were quick to say, “Well, we all know gender equality is good thing…”
Then it hit me — do we? Does everyone agree with that? The answer is, no. In fact, a huge swath of the MAGA New Right agenda is based specifically on the idea of ending gender equality once and for all. It all goes back to the demographic panic among white conservative men about their place in American society.
Hence, abortion — even contraception in general — will probably be outlawed. The whole point is — white conservative men believe they are in an existential struggle to keep their status by forcing more white babies to be born. They will do everything in their power to achieve this goal, to the point of making women second class citizens if need be.
And the quest to do that goes hand-in-hand with the overall MAGA New Right desire to turn the United States into an autocratic white Christian ethno state of blood and soil.
The real question, of course, is as we are in the final transition into autocracy, do we have a civil war and bomb ourselves into oblivion? I still think we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy.
The Republican Party loves, loves, loves autocracy. If it’s not blowing Putin’s Russia, it’s giving a reach around to Orban’s Hungary. In fact, the fucking cocksucker racists of CPAC are having their next shindig in Hungary as to prove this point.
Some people seem to think that autocratic America will be some sort of right wing ideal where all that happens is Republicans are always — forever — in office and no one will ever again have to worry about “woke” corporations ever forcing them to have regular sensitivity training.
But, alas, I seriously doubt this.
The reason is, Republicans are out for blood. Every day, it seems the talking points of the Far Right drift down to your Traditionalist relative who just wants the right to say the “N-word” if the mood so hits them, since they’re outraged that African American rappers get to say it and they don’t.
Add to this some basic differences between modern day America and Orban’s Hungary. One is, race. Hungary is pretty homogenous in its demographics and so the issue of race isn’t really relevant. Yes, Orban seems like something of an anti-Semite, but otherwise he doesn’t govern a nation as diverse as the United States.
So, it makes a lot of sense that once we do finally slip peacefully into autocracy, we’re headed for something a lot darker, something a lot closer to an American First version of Nazi Germany. I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know how exactly it will happen, but the entire infrastructure of the Republican Party is now comping at the bit to turn the United States into a dystopian hellscape.
Once we’re an autocracy and there is no longer any political connection between the governed and the government, Republicans will enact sweeping, long-sought after policies that will raise taxes on the poor while at the same time gutting the nation’s social safety net. I mean, who is going to stop them? And how? By voting? Ha!
And that will be just the beginning.
There will be a Constitutional Convention called to “pass a balanced budget amendment” but will soon enough go rouge and pass something probably marketed as a “Second Bill of Rights” that will enshrine the concept that the United States is an autocratic white Christian ethno state based on the concept of “blood and soil.”
Because of how Qanon is now popular within mainstream Republican ranks, the existing ICE camp system will be weaponized and liberals — or just loudmouth cranks like me who refuse to fucking shut up — will be rounded up and have God only knows what happen to them. And form follows function, so POC will probably eventually be killed en masse in some sort of MAGA “Final Solution” of the “minority problem.”
Women’s rights will be eroded to the point that the autocrat will definitely make it clear that they’re aren’t enough white babies being conceived.
Again, I can’t predict the future. I could be wrong. I often — almost always — am. But all the macro signs point to some very, very dark days ahead for the United States. Autocracy is very popular with most of the Republican base, even if a lot of them can’t really articulate that that is what they want.
In short, we’re doomed. Those with the means to leave the United States, will do so. Hundreds of thousands of wealthy center-Left Americans in tech and entertainment will simply leave the country for less autocratic nations. America will leave NATO, ally with Russia, Hungary and Turkey and that will be that. America will grow inward and fascist to the point that all of our arguing over pronouns and fears of being “canceled” will see very, very quaint.
Or we have a civil war starting somewhere between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025.
At the moment, I think we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy, but it hasn’t happened yet. Good luck.
Jesus Christ, where to start with this one. This only continues to aggravate me because my dark “doom shit” predictions about the fate of the United States continue to be proven correct. Mueller, She Wrote is one of the more respected Blue Check liberal accounts on Twitter and they blocked me some time ago for my “doom shit.”
My response is — have you guys looked around lately? Mueller, She Wrote is apparently still stuck in those halcyon days 2017 when we all thought Mueller was going to save us. Well, jokes on you Mueller, She Wrote. You guys are fucking fools. You are so wrapped up your earnest Twitter threads that you are completely oblivious to what’s really going on.
No only is the system not working — Trump and his ilk are demonstrably above the law — but the Republicans Party seems to systemically grow more radical on a nearly daily basis. And I get blocked for simply pointing this out. Jesus Christ are they fools.
Mueller, She Wrote still having faith in the system is a part of a broader problem among Twitter liberals. They seem to think that something or someone is going to “save” us, when there is absolutely no sign of this being the case.
Even if Trump got indicted, he would still run for POTUS. Even if he got knocked out of running for POTUS for some reason, there are a dozen younger, more focused fascists within the Republican Party who will do the same Goddamn thing that Trump wants to do.
It’s not like I’m making any of this up. This is what anyone can see for themselves on a daily basis by just looking at Twitter.
I want to be wrong. I really do. I wish Mueller, She Wrote was right. I could sleep a lot easier at night if I knew Mueller, She Wrote was right. But, alas, they’re delusional.
Voting isn’t going to save us. The system isn’t going to save us. We have to save ourselves. And the only way I know to do that is for everyone to figure out what they believe in and what they’re willing to suffer for. Maybe store a bugout bag somewhere.
But one thing is clear — between now and 2025, the United States either slips peacefully into autocracy or a civil war begins. And I’ll still be blocked by Mueller, She Wrote.
We are witnessing the radicalization of the Republican Party into nothing short of an American Nazi Party. Just in the last few months, the party has grown more and more hysterical in its misogyny, race baiting, and now, homophobia. It’s like something about their impending return to control of Congress has boiled their minds or something.
But this is part of a broader problem — Republicans have now decided that any fact that doesn’t help their preconceived narrative is “bogus.” They have their orthodoxy and that is their reality. Any cold hard fact that doesn’t fit that orthodoxy is to be ignored, or played down or disparaged. There is now such momentum to this adherence to the MAGA New Right orthodoxy that a lot of “Good Germans” are shifting their stance accordingly.
That’s why 2023 – 2025 will be a very, very turbulent era in not just American history, but, potentially human history. The conditions are there for Republicans to commit genocide no matter which direction we go. If we become an autocracy, then ICE will be weaponized as will the entire ICE camp infrastructure. Soon enough, because of how how Qanon has consumed the Republican Party, liberals will be rounded up and murdered in cold blood. Meanwhile, if we have a civil war, the same thing will happen, only in the Red States to those Blues unfortunate enough not to escape to a Blue State.
I’m well aware of how hysterical all of this sounds. It just doesn’t seem possible that the most powerful democracy in the world would turn on itself like this. But, lulz, here we are. In fact, if humanity survives the impending clusterfuck we’re about to go through, many, many, books will be written that struggle to figure out how things got so bad so quickly.
All the conditions are their for something horrific to happen in the United States between now and around Certification Day 2025. Or, put another way, the process that will end with a historic genocide happening in the United States will begin between now and 2025.
The reason why this keeps being at the forefront of my mind is I’m never going to shut up about how much I fucking hate the MAGA New Right and given I’m a loudmouth crank with no friends it’s inevitable that it’s going to be people like me who run afoul of our new MAGA autocrat — or have to struggle to leave my Red State to get out of the clutches of the radicalize state MAGA government.
All of this sounds totally bonkers at the moment, but things are growing darker by the moment in the United States. Even my “Good German” relatives talk about how “woke corporations” “groom” children for a homosexual lifestyle — or worse. If that’s not a ping from a very, very dark future, I don’t know what is.
This only sounds bonkers because people simply can’t comprehend that the United States could implode into true tyranny. In fact, it’s surreal how my Good German relatives think it will be “woke corporations” who do the very things that I’m afraid a MAGA autocrat will do. So, we’ve reached the point where both sides accuse the other of the same things.
But one thing is clear — we can’t keep punting the crisis we’re in down the road forever. There will come a point sooner rather than later when America is going to go through some historic changes. Either we turn into a Nazi-style autocracy, or we have a civil war.
Why is everything so dumb. Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is such a fucking trap. What’s more, Twitter liberals keep walking straight into this trap in a totally oblivious manner.
Don’t Say Gay is part of a growing trend on the part of the MAGA New Right where they obsess over something that doesn’t exist in an effort to juice the base while muddling and conflating things to such an extent that the two sides can’t even talk about the matter at hand.
As I understand it, the Don’t Say Gay bill bans something that doesn’t exist — the discussion of sex and gender with K-3 children. So, what happens is, Twitter liberals do this performative dance where they “say gay” in some sort of defiance, while all supporters of the bill want to talk about is “grooming” of children for a homosexual lifestyle.
Because how of fucked up everything is and how America is an anocracy, not a democracy, both sides get what they want while continuing our march towards the existential choice of autocracy or civil war in the general 2024 – 2025 timeframe.
Republicans get yet another hot button wedge issue to juice the base. They can continue to rant about how the “woke mob” wants to turn all our children transgender (or whatever) while clueless Twitter liberals somehow think the bill prohibits the general use of the term “gay” with adults (or whatever.)
We have to accept that Republicans have figured out how to game the system. Barring something I can’t predict (First Contact, WW3, another pandemic) Republicans are going to turn the United States into an autocracy and that will be that. America will gradually — or not so gradually — lurch towards being a clone of Russia.
Of course, as I keep saying, there is also a risk that, well, we’re going to have a civil war and bomb ourselves into the Stone Age using WMD.
The point is — we’re doomed. We’re fucking doomed and either you acknowledge this reality or you live in a political dreamworld along Mueller, She Wrote.
The system is broken. No one is going to save us. Trump and his ilk are above the law. Good luck.
The idea of being “woke” has become a catch-all for the MAGA New Right. Anything they don’t like, or whenever they don’t get what they want, they ascribe it to the “woke mob.” All of this, of course, is part of the broader idea of being “Red Pilled.” When you’re Red Pilled, you believe that white Christians — especially men — are under attack by, you guessed it, the angry woke mob.
The is constantly at the forefront of my mind because I have far more conservative relatives who talk about their personal fear of being canceled simply for being conservative. Because of a combination of negative polarization and an extensive permission structure, they’re MAGA in all but name. They simply can not, will not, do the one thing necessary to save American democracy — make common cause with people like me to defeat the rise of fascism.
So, we’re fucked.
They don’t have any red line other than eventually, inevitably, when I get drunk sometime in the 2030s and rant at the top of my lungs about what a fat fuck President Mike Pompeo is, regardless of how many gastric bypass surgeries he has and I get detained by ICE. Of course, my conservative relatives think I’m nuts for even suggesting such a thing — they’re the good guys, after all, and nothing like that would ever happen.
Once we’re an MAGA New Right autocracy, the poors will stop being lazy and no one will ever again have to fear being “canceled” simply for a stray conservative comment in public.
This, of course, totally ignores the realities of living under an autocratic regime. Form follows function and the moment it’s simply accepted that it’s almost impossible for Democrats to have any real power, Republicans will begin to abuse this new power to the hilt. They will push through a fascist, Objectivist agenda that will gut the social safety net and turn back the clock to the 1950s.
The thing is, it’s not like Republicans are hiding any of this. In fact, that’s all they do, is scream at the top of their lungs about all the fascist things they want to once they have the power to do so.
And, at the moment, it definitely seems as though Republicans are going to transition the United States into an autocratic state. At some point after 2025, many, many center-Left people will flee the United States. There will be a lot of talk of an “American diaspora” and an “American brain drain” but by then it will be too late.
Trump then his hand picked successor (DeSantis? Pompeo? Flynn?) will strangle American democracy once and for all and the seething rage of white Christians in the United States will serve as the bedrock of our new autocratic state. We will be politically identical to Russia. There will be huge protests every once in a while, but in general, nothing will change.
America will grow poorer, more inward looking and probably leave NATO to form an alliance with Russia. I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know specifically when and how this nightmare scenario will happen, but all the macro trends I see are definitely heading in that direction.
At least, I suppose, Republicans will no longer have the abstract fear that a stray conservative comment at work or in public will ruin their lives. They will have burned everything to the ground to get it, but they will no longer have to worry about being “canceled.”
The other options is, of course, we have a civil war, bomb ourselves into the Stone Age and it takes 20 to 40 years for us to recover one way or another. At the moment, I honestly don’t know which option we will pick as a nation.
As is so often the case, all these nightmare scenarios I come up with about the rise of fascism in the United States get people from Red States all excited. A post I wrote some time ago about why the United States is probably going to slip peacefully into autocracy is suddenly getting a trickle of traffic and I assume it’s from people looking forward to that happening.
Anyway, I generally believe all far Right people are huge fucking hypocrites. As such, if you’re a member of the MAGA New Right and you are eager for the United States to become a Russian-style autocratic white Christian ethno state, you might want to pause for some reflection.
The reason is simple — while you won’t have to worry about “the woke cancel culture mob” canceling you for a tone deaf comment that is recorded and goes viral, a lot of other things you take for granted won’t be there anymore. Or, if you want to get more technical about it — even if you are a Good German and get to smugly enjoy the destruction of the center-Left in the United States, someone in your life you care about is probably not going to be so fortunate.
So, while maybe you can cheer at the end of the social safety net, I bet you someone you care about relies upon it being there for them. Or if you don’t have to worry about how suddenly it’s impossible to get an abortion, someone you care about will.
But since you’re a huge fucking hypocrite, you’ll break the law to get that abortion or whatever. Or you’ll sulk in private about how things have changed, but you’ll have no recourse. Voting won’t matter. And after the Constitutional Convention, ICE will be able to knock heads of anyone who has the temerity to speak out against the autocrat.
And, yet, that’s what members of the MAGA New Right want. They haven’t really thought things through, but they are so worked up about the “woke mob” that when they get what they want, they’ll get what they want.
What’s more, if you’re MAGA, you’ll also get to enjoy all the liberal elites fleeing the country to escape the autocrat’s grasp. Of course, taxes for the rich will become non existent and poor people will have to pay for everything. Social Security might get phased out, too.
But at least you won’t have to worry about being canceled.
To anyone paying attention to American politics, it’s difficult not to be overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom, of dread — The Undertoad. The Republican Party no longer believes in democracy — in fact, won’t shut up about this fact — and because of macro trends they are ascendant.
So, all things being equal, Republicans will, starting January 2023 begin the process of extinguishing American what’s left of American democracy once and for all. The Republican Party has radicalized to the point that even though they probably would win the 2024 without cheating, they will do so anyway.
Once Trump (or whomever) becomes president in 2025, the final transformation of the United States into a Russian-style white Christian ethno state will begin. And I personally know a number of people who will be quite happy that this is happening — until, of course, someone they’re related to — namely ME — crosses our new autocratic regime and they have to figure out how to get me out of a Trump branded re-education camp.
It will all happen gradually, too. And that, in a sense, is why autocracy is so insidious. Most of the people who are screaming at the top of their lungs for an autocracy don’t even realize what they’re doing — all they know is they’re personally afraid of being canceled by the “woke mob” and if that means the end of American democracy, so be it. “The United States isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic. Are you going to question the wisdom of the Founding Fathers?” they say.
And when we’re finally an autocracy, they will sit back smugly that the evil woke mob is finally vanquished and they never have to worry about Democrats ever holding important offices again. They will think this until, as I mentioned, someone they love runs afoul of the autocrat. Then they will sit up and take notice because they’re fucking hypocrites.
But as I keep saying, there are macro political trends coming to a head between now and Certification Day 2025 that we just can’t stop. It would have to take something truly astonishing for us not to face the existential choice of civil war or autocracy. It’s happened once already — the pandemic — so, I suppose it’s possible it could happen again.
This brings up the idea of a potential civil war. At the moment, I think we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy and that will be that. Nothing will change at first, but mysteriously we’ll all wake up 20 years from now and somehow Ron DeSantis is still POTUS. A mass migration of center-Left people will have occured. The United States will be out of NATO and aligned with Russia and the Constitution will have been changed in accordance with an “American First” world view.
Back to civil war. While I struggle with the idea of a civil war, I also know it’s at least possible. The key metric we have to keep any eye on is how bad things get when Republicans take control of Congress. If they are as bad as I fear — repeated impeachments of both Biden and Harris, for instance, then the prospect of a civil war increases significantly.
But any Second American Civil War would be one of those things that happen for immediate tactical reasons that I can’t game out. A lot depends on the specific circumstances, the specific sequence of events between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025.
If Republicans steal the 2024 election in such a brazen manner because they just don’t fucking care anymore, there is a real chance that a number of major Blue State governors will hold some sort of emergency summit to decide how they’re going to react. If California decides to join forces with New York, Illinois and Massachusetts to leave the Union — or to simply deny that Trump (or whomever) won the election, then we’ll have a civil war.
But I have to stress again that a civil war would happen for reasons that I can’t predict. A lot of personalities and touch choices would be involved in ways that I can’t predict years in advance. Yet, of course, there is a real risk that things will break in such a way that a civil war — based on the state level — will break out and the United States bombs itself into the Stone Age using WMD.
Yet, as I keep saying, all signs point to us slipping peacefully into autocracy. But only time will tell.
You must be logged in to post a comment.