The Republican Party has radicalized so much that there is a pretty good chance that the moment they have the ability to turn us into an autocratic white Christian ethnostate, they will. They want to replace the administrative state with the moralistic state.
The big question is, of course, what happens when they catch the car? What will Blues do? I throw around ideas like a revolution or civil war, but I don’t know. It’s possible we just slide into a white Christian ethnostate and that’s that. There will be a huge brain drain, a Constitutional Convention and, lulz, we ally with Russia, Hungary and Turkey going forward.
That seems like a very real possibility.
Or, put another way — we’re headed into a very unstable and dark future with our eyes wide open. We know where we’re headed, and, yet, we are lulzing it.
While all the conditions are there for Trump to lose, the conditions are ALSO there for Trump to win. The key thing is if Trump does all the crazy tyrannical shit he vows to do in 2025, what will be the reaction? Because that is the thing that not enough people have been willing to address.
If Trump wins, leading up to Trump being sworn in, a lot of smug Twitter liberals will leave the country in a panic. But that will leave us Poors to deal with Tyrant Trump. One issue is what will happen when on “day one” starts to round up undocumented people in hopes up putting them in camps and deporting them.
Now, a lot that may happen depends on who controls the House. If Trump goes full tyrant, then he will probably be promptly impeached if Democrats control the House. Then there is a possibility that maybe, just maybe there might be some sort of Women’s Strike or General Strike on the part of Blues to pressure the Senate to actually do its job and get rid of Trump.
But the thing is, Trump would have to get really, really, really bad — push the entire nation to the breaking point — for something as dramatic as a Blue General Strike to be successful. It would be a dark, chaotic moment in America’s over two centuries of history.
And if we managed to impeach Trump successfully because of the pressure of a General Strike, then there’s a chance that not only could his veep be the person who actually turns us into an autocracy, it could also start a civil war when Red States leave the union.
So, I don’t know what to tell you. The next 18 months could be totally fucked up and historic in some pretty astonishing ways.
I have long believed that Trump is NOT a great man of history like Caesar. But I do think he is a historical and constitutional torpedo headed towards the American ship of state. The key issue is — Trump is, just like Biden, old as hell. And Trump isn’t in the greatest of health because of his weight.
So, there is every reason to believe that Trump could destroy everything…then it will be his MAGA Nazi successor who will do the mop up work. Or, even less conclusively, it could be that the process of turning America into a white Christian ethnostate is half done.
It could be that Trump gets us as far as starting the process of crushing American democracy through a rouge Constitutional Convention…then shuffles off this mortal coil. That would cause even more chaos and uncertainty because…then what?
I think the key thing is that the Republican Party is not fascist and it’s just a question of if we collectively shrug when they attempt to turn us into a fascist state, or if we do something about it. (Not advocating anything.)
The next 18 months will be….interesting, not matter what.
I continue to see a deluge of dude’s dudes being ecstatic about Dune 2. And, I think as Scott Galloway would note, the reason for the success of the movie is it wallows in “dude stuff” that young men feel a connection to.
And I will admit that even as a middle aged man, I was leaning into when some of the “dude stuff” scenes were on the scene. Even though Dune 2 is a “film” and The Empire Strikes Back was a “movie” both movies appeal to young men’s sense of themselves.
A whole 10,000 word New Yorker article could be written contrasting and comparing The Empire Strikes Back with Dune 2. The Star Wars franchise stole from the Dune books a great deal and is far more accessible to the audience, but the Star Wars franchise is a “woke” mess at the moment.
While I think the term “woke” is bullshit, I do think that maybe Disney and LucasFilm could think more about how to tell a good story than how to give a reach around to the advocates of identity politics. And don’t get me started about selling little kids toys.
I do think it’s at least possible that Dune could now become a new major scifi franchise because young men — at least on Tik-Tok — are going crazy for Dune 2. What’s so curious about this is the movie is not a popcorn movie, but a prestige film. It will be interesting to see not only how things progress with the next movie but how the success of Dune 2 will influence Hollywood in general.
Is it at least possible that Hollywood will begin to think more about storytelling and not either churning out either a new MCU movie or another vanity project “woke” movie? Only time will tell.
Reading Ben Smith’s “Traffic” book, I am struck by how social media companies had a sense of the popularity of both Obama and Trump long before anyone else did.
Jon Stewart
As such, if I had a choice of for a “Black Swan” event during the 2024 presidential cycle it would be that Something Happened so there was a brokered Democratic convention and Jon Stewart threw his hat into the ring — and won. I think he would be very, very popular.
Now, obviously, there are some problems with this daydream.
One — I don’t want anything to happen to Biden.
Two, ding-dong Trump was SUCH a fucking HORRIBLE POTUS, that a LOT of people would justifiably be very reluctant to vote for another celebrity to be POTUS. And, yet, as Ukraine’s Zelensky has proven, someone like Stewart can, in fact, be a great leader.
And from all the evidence I’ve seen about Stewart’s leadership abilities, he really would be a great POTUS.
But, alas, for some very corrosive and dumb macro reasons, it definitely seems as though the United States is simply going to slouch its way into autocracy. And, really, at this point, in a cruel twist of historical fate, it could be that Trump thrashing around in 2025 could cause a General Strike that deposes him…which, of course, would only lead to a civil war as Red States left the Union.
As of right now, malignant ding-dong Trump is 60,000 votes in five swing states away from turning the United States into an autocracy. And, barring some sort of Black Swan event, Trump is going to (probably) win and start to round up 20 million people.
The camps will open. People like me be rounded up and probably shot in the back of the head by an ICE agent because I refuse to stop calling Trump a fat fucking cocksucker.
About 1 million smug, wealthy Twitter liberals will flee the country until Trump — or his successor — starts to aggressively make it more difficult to leave the country in an effort to stop the massive American Brain Drain.
The press will be coopted and neutered. And we’ll just take it for granted that we are no longer a democracy and people will stop voting. We will become just another autocracy like Hungary, Russia or Turkey.
There is, of course, a very small chance that Trump, specifically, will be such a tyrant in such a quick amount of time that there is some sort of “Blue Revolution” and Trump is deposed, which will, in turn cause a Second American Civil War.
I find myself thinking about how I will survive this dystopian hellscape. All I know is I would rather die on my feet a free man than live my life on my knees a slave.
Fuck Trump. Fuck MAGA. And fuck you if you support either one.
This is extremely speculative, but I it seems to me that IF — and this is a huge IF — there was some sort of Second American Civil War and Blues won and there was a Second Reconstruction….then I think The Lincoln Project would be see itself at the center of a re-imagined American conservative movement.
But a lot would depend on how bad any such Second American Civil War got. If we bombed ourselves into the Stone Age over “vibes” then it probably won’t make much difference one way or another for a few decades. But if we managed to topple Tyrant Trump in some sort of “Glorious Revolution” then some very interesting things might happen when our politics snapped back into place.
I continue, however, to think that we have two choices at the moment — either Trump wins and we slide peacefully into autocracy or he loses and we punt our political problems down the road another four years.
The other, sexier options, the ones involving civil war and revolution that I’ve written about at great length over the years…I just don’t see them happening at the moment. I don’t want them to happen and I don think they’re going to happen.
On a good day, I’m not “mid.” But I do have value as a human being and two ears, so I still have the right to have an opinion on the besties of the All-In podcast.
Uh oh.
I’m only listening to the All-In podcast because I’m obsessed with AI at the moment and they have some thought provoking ideas. But they can also come across as tone-deaf fascist dicks. They seem to think that some very complex cultural questions that require nuance can simply be “reasoned” into a solution, when sometimes…lulz.
The human experience is subtle and complex and sometimes requires the type of creative thinking that can not be solved by “learning to code.”
Take, for instance, the latest All-In hobby horse — the apparent DEI abuses found with the Gemini image generation. The issue for me is not so much that Gemini is too “woke” to give us accurate depictions of the Founding Fathers — on that, I agree with them on that — it’s that we need SOME guardrails when it comes to general images generation.
In other words — I’m more worried about Gemini churning out millions of Nazi oriented images used for propaganda than I am woke images of Founding Fathers. But here we are, with some people wanting absolutely no guard rails on AI — for any reason.
One thing I’ve gleaned from talking to my far more conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — is their abject fear of some future tyranny coming not from the hard power of the state but the soft power of “woke corporations.”
Of course, they’re complicit in the rise of the American fascist corporate state because not only do they not take the looming fascism of MAGA seriously, but they because they, in general, agree with that fascism it would all be a lulz.
Not until the hard power of the MAGA fascist state is used to not only deport 20 million undocumented people — which they want — but to also murder me in cold blood — which they don’t want — will they take notice of how there is a definite difference between hard and soft power.
So, what happens is, conservatives would far rather conflate issues and get REALLY WORKED UP over the “abuses” of the woke than they would have to give serious answers to questions like, “What happens when the massive infrastructure built out to deport 20 million people is used to murder people you love?”
They usually either don’t answer, make a joked to change the subject or piviot to the latest conservative talking point.
It can be very, very frustrating.
The rise of a MAGA fascist state in the US is not an abstract to me — I’m really beginning to worry that if Trump becomes POTUS again that I’m going to be murdered in cold blood by an ICE agent — or whatever — because I simply will not, can not shut the fuck up about how I think Trump is a fat fuck cocksucker.
But my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — just lulz all this. As long is those brown families are torn asunder at the border they’ll be content. As long as a stray trans person doesn’t get a free can of But Light, they will be content. As long as the social safety net is gutted and only fools and poors pay taxes, they will be content.
The list goes on.
It will be interesting to see what my fate is. If I’m lucky, I will be able to escape the country should Trump win re-election later this year.
As I keep saying — I can’t predict the future. So there’s every reason to believe that Trump will lose later this year and we’ll punt our problems down the road another four years.
And, yet.
I like to make my abstract fears concrete, so, I worry. I worry a lot. Specifically, I worry about what is going to happen if Trump wins and then goes “fully tyrant” in 2025. Will there be any reaction at all if Trump is literally snatching his opponents off the street in broad daylight?
That, specifically, is the thing I just can’t game out. It could be that nothing happens and it could be that Trump will be so ham-handed in his autocracy that he single-handedly causes those rarest of American political creatures, the “Radical Moderate” to pop out.
Radical Moderates only appear in times of great crisis — like the Civil War, The Great Depression or WW2. And usually they don’t last long. The calm down and go back to being just regular old centrists.
I just don’t know. I have no idea what to tell you about events going forward.
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