I’ve grown fascinated with the dynamic at work now between Putin, Ukraine and Trump. The reason is — ostensibly, it would make no sense for Putin to wait until AFTER Trump was out of office to invade Ukraine in a big way. In fact, one might say that leans into the Republican narrative Trump’s love of Russia is just a big “hoax” given this fact.
Then Trump opened his big mouth about where he stands on Ukraine and it all made a lot more sense to me.
Trump being in office in the United States — unless it was after a Constitutional Convention that made him a true autocrat — babbling about how great Putin was in the middle of a war between Ukraine and Russia would prove that the TrumpRussia scandal was real. That it wasn’t a hoax.
What’s more, Putin also has to deal with the possibility that there would be a Republican Civil War between a pro-Trump, pro-Russia faction and a anti-Russia faction. This, in turn, would potentially be a political bodyblow to the Russia-loving MAGA movement for at least an election cycle.
As such, it would make a lot of sense for Putin — if he’s going to do it — to make his move on Ukraine sooner rather than later. The reason — if Putin is going to attack Ukraine, it may be doing so under the assumption that he’s going to do something of a smash and grab operation.
The whole war would be so brief that by the time the 2022 and 2024 American elections rolled around, it would be like the Russo-Ukrainian Winter War was a long, long time ago.
But, as of the moment, it appears as though Putin may not even attack Ukraine in the first place. We’ll see.
Now, before I begin, let me be clear that Republicans are on track to win in 2022 and 2024 and accomplish their final consolidation of white minority rule. So, even with the scenario I’m about to lay out, it’s doubtful American democracy survives.
But, if noting else, the context of its death might be different. As such, keep in the back of your mind the cold hard facts that through voter suppression, gerrymandering and Bannon’s administrative coup on the local level we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.
Another thing – Putin has yet to do any sort of invasion of Ukraine. It’s possible this is all a bluff. It’s possible that we’re all overthinking this and the United States will slip peacefully into autocracy, without a hitch.
Having said all that, let’s begin.
It appears as though either Putin is going into any war with Ukraine with modest, limited war aims or he believes that no matter what, any war he starts will be wrapped up early enough that by the time 2024 rolls around the Republican Party will go back to its monolithic personality death cult swirling around Donald Trump.
The Republican Party may face unprecedented division between itself and Donald Trump if there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, because Trump is such a fucking Putin toady that he buck 60 years of Republican political tradition and support the Russians against the Ukrainians.
A lot would depend, of course, on how bad any war between Russia and Ukraine became as well as if the war captured the popular domestic imagination. If the war got really bad and graphic images of the death and destruction of the war between Russia and Ukraine got so bad that Americans picked the Ukrainian side and Trump STILL sided with the Russians…well, Republicans might, finally, have a window opportunity to excise Trump, if not MAGA, from their body politic.
But it’s one of those things that is impossible to predict. There are just too many different variables. And, you know, of course, that Trump is so craven that he specifically for near-term political expediency, he might switch gears, only to go back to slobbing Putin’s knob the moment he was safely in the White House again.
Anyway, the point is — the moment any major war starts in Ukraine, we may all have to take a deep breath and reevaluate what might happen politically in the United States on a domestic basis because of it.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that Putin’s relationship to Trump is not nearly as easy to figure out as any objective observer might want. We know that Putin wanted Trump to win in 2016. And we know that Putin probably early on made a political calculation that it would be dumb to invade, say, Ukraine in Trump’s first term given what a suck up Trump would be to Russia if it happened.
And, yet, when we turn to the present day, we encounter a conundrum.
It’s very possible that by definition, if Putin invades Ukraine in some sort of “general war” that he would severely damage the Republican Party by splitting it into the Pro-Russia MAGA faction and the more traditional anti-Russian faction. Depending on how bloody the war became, you could even see Trump finally getting a worthy primary opponent, one who would run specifically on being tough on the Russians who were destroying eastern Ukraine.
Which makes one wonder — why?
Why risk destroying the political career of one of the biggest geopolitical patsies in modern history when you could just sit back, wait for Trump to win re-election in 2024, get his Constitutional Convention and THEN strike Ukraine. Putin is a very patient man, he could very well do that and get everything he ever wanted with Ukraine and more.
So, there are a lot of contradictions in Putin and Trump’s relationship that don’t make any sense because we don’t know all that’s going on. But the case could be made, I guess, that something like this is going on — Trump was a combination Manchurian Candidate, Manhattan Project and very, very lucky asymmetrical political attack against the United States.
Even though Trump was a Russian toady and the most powerful man in the world in the palm of Putin’s hand for four years, now that he’s out of office, Putin sees a big chunk of Eastern Ukraine being something he craves so much that he’s willing to destroy the Operation Trump to obtain it.
Putin has made the geopolitical decision to strike now, even though doing so would be a make or break event for the Republican Party for at least one political cycle. And, yet, maybe I’m not giving Putin enough credit.
Maybe Putin is going into his winter war against Ukraine knowing that he intends to wrap it up by spring. If that’s the case, then by fall 2022, everything will be back to where it was. Trump will be the most powerful man in the Republican Party and Putin’s toady.
Meanwhile, Putin will control a huge swath of Ukraine.
But, at the same time, Putin is potentially making a pretty huge miscalculation. If Russia’s involvement in Ukraine lingers long enough to really catch the attention of the domestic American imagination then….things could get interesting for all involved.
Some time ago, I worried out loud on this blog about the possibility of a super potent COVID19 variant I called “the Omega Variant.” The announcement today of the existence of the “Omicron” variant has again got me wondering if my dire predictions might come true.
For it to be what I feared, the Omicron variant would have to be so much worse than the original COVID19 everything would be thrown up in the air in an unprecedented fashion, very, very rapidly. In fact, the very existence of our current concept of the modern world would momentarily be put in doubt. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world would have to die in quick succession.
That’s when we know that the Omicron variant was the Omega Variant.
So far, I don’t even know why the WHO is concerned about Omicron in the first place. As such, I think we’re all kind of freaking out and pouring our fears into it in the abstract.
There is a political aspect to all of this. Enough people die quick enough in the United States and the country will buckle in to warring camps a lot — A LOT — sooner than you might think. But, for the moment at least, that’s all very fantastical.
Soon enough, I think we’ll find out what the deal is with Omicron and how concerned we should be. I’m hold up with a broken right ankle, so, hopefully, if the apocalypse does come, it can at least wait until February.
At least give me a running start, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
There was a point when Jon Stewart was, by proxy, one of the most influential political figures in American politics. But he always seemed very uncomfortable with taken so seriously. It got to the point where whenever he could not help himself and flexed his political clout, he would crack a fart joke to soften the blow.
Joe Rogan / The Internet
And, so, now, we are in a new era, the Joe Rogan Era, where he is in a similar situation to Stewart, only for the Right. The analogy isn’t one to one, but there’s enough similar to take note of it.
Rogan isn’t nearly as smart or engaging as Stewart, but he has garnered a lot of attention in the “alt Right lite” by having clear opinions that he’s will to defend. Up to a point, of course. Wrapping yourself up in an earnest masculinity will only get you so far. Rogan can be a big fucking idiot.
And that tendency to be an idiot has gotten worse as his political influence has increased. In fact, the case could be made that he is yet another cog in the massive, extensive permission structure that allows Traditionalists to make common cause with the MAGA New Right.
He’s part of the amorphous media blob of non-FOX News, non-OANN, non-NewsMax media outlets that water down and make palatable the putrid bullshit of Alex Jones, et. They do this so Traditionalists, who feel pushed up against a political wall because of negative polarization, are looking for any possible excuse not to make common cause with the center-Left in an effort to defeat the rise of fascism in the United States.
Joe Rogan is a pretty big player in all of this. And, you could plot out a counter-factual in which it was Rogan, not Trump, who ran for president in, say, 2020 if Trump had not run in 2016 (or lost.)
Meanwhile, just like Jon Stewart, if Rogan ever does something that causes a lot of pushback, he simply shrugs and says he’s a “comedian not a doctor” and why is everyone getting so upset.
Anyway, Rogan has a lot — a lot — of very passionate defenders who love his gruff, earnest masculine platitudes. No matter what we end up doing — having a civil war or turning into an autocracy, Rogan is likely to only grow in power until things reach some sort of stability again.
What that New Normal will look like is anyone’s guess.
On paper, it seems as though Putin missed a golden opportunity to achieve his geopolitical goals by not attacking Ukraine while Donald “golden showers” Trump was still in office.
And, yet, if you look at Trump’s recent statements about Ukraine, one gets the sense that Putin had a very specific reason for not attacking Ukraine (or anywhere else) while Trump was in office. If he had, the jig would have been up as to how absolutely weak Trump was with Putin.
Trump was so beholden to Putin — for whatever fucking reason — that had Putin taken advantage of it while Trump was still in power then it would have been difficult for Trump to successfully stay popular enough to become the autocrat that Putin wants him to become.
Or, put another way, one could make the argument that Trump is too weak domestically for Putin to have walked all over the United States while Trump was president the first go round. If Trump had won a second term, then, probably at some point after he got his Constitutional Convention and secured his place as American’s first autocrat, THEN Putin might have attacked Ukraine knowing it would all be a domestic political lulz.
But now that Trump is out of power, Putin can attack Ukraine and pretty much it will be Biden’s problem and there’s nothing he can do in real terms without risking WW3.
At least, that’s all I got. It just makes a lot more sense to me for Putin to be thinking this than anything else.
The conservatives in my family love, love, love WGN’s “NewsNation” because they are ecstatic that it is “objective” unlike the “fake news” of MSNBC and CNN. They see the idea of it as a quick and easy way to square the circle of how divided the United States is right now.
(This is where I point out that NewsNation correspondent Kellie Meyer follows me on Twitter and I think she’s cute. So, there’s nothing personal in this post that she should be offended by — I hope.)
Anyway, this is how I address the issue whenever my conservative relatives get all excited about the existence of NewsNation — when one side of the political debate (MAGA) tells us the sky is green and the other side (everyone else) tells us it’s blue it’s not “objective” to hold the opinions of both political sides up as being “equal.”
NewsNation appears to tell us “objective” news.
They’re not.
MAGA is a fascist movement based on violence, racism and misogyny based on the lie of the “Great Replacement.” The other side isn’t perfect, but at least it tries to stay within the bounds of the truth.
But I understand why NewsNation is growing in popularity. It gives a lot of traditional conservatives who are fed up with the perceived biases of CNN and MSNBC an option for their news that isn’t as loaded in conversation as FOX News, NewsMax or OANN.
They can say they got their right wing talking points not from FOX News, NewsMax or OANN, but from the seemingly “objective” news source of NewsNation.
So, in the long run, this is just another sign that the thing we need to have happen to save our democratic republic — for traditionalists to momentarily make common cause with anti-MAGA forces — isn’t ever going to happen and we’re totally, completely fucked.
Get a passport. Figure out what you’re willing to risk your life and scared honor for in the real world.
It’s growing quite comical how much we know about Trump’s involvement in the lead up to the “Stop The Steal” rally on January 6th and how little we, as a nation, care.
In fact, I don’t really even understand why we have put so much import on the January 6th Committee’s investigation. We know, in general terms, what Trump’s plot was on January 6th. What we don’t know is the detail that might convince people on the edges who grade Trump on such an absolute curve that it’s debatable that absolute proof would even be enough for them.
At the moment, the MAGA orthodoxy is that January 6th was a false flag operation perpetrated by a Deep State combination of the FBI and Antifa. Meanwhile, the other half of MAGA also absolutely believes that January 6th was organized by a fearless group of patriots who wanted to “stop the steal.”
If you call MAGA on this contradiction, they get very very VERY angry.
Which, of course, makes any discussion of politics with someone you disagree impossible. That’s exactly what the fucking fascists of MAGA want. The more divided we are, the more power they know they can accrue.
No one is going to save us. Get a passport. Know what you believe and what you’re willing risk your life for in the real world.
I find myself using way too much brain power these days when it comes to the issue of the day, “Are we living in a modern antebellum era?” It is self evident to me that Something Bad is going to happen between now and January 2025. The reason I think this is, on a political basis, the United States is running on fumes.
We’re just too divided and what it means to be an American is too different in the minds of Blue and Red. Having said that, there is still a very, very good chance that whatever Bad Thing happens to the United States will be peaceful in nature.
In fact, at the moment, I’m on the opinion that the United States is going to slip peacefully into autocracy because, lulz, autocracy is popular with a huge swath of the electorate. The argument has been successfully made to White Traditionalists that because of The Great Replacement, that democracy is no longer a viable form of government and we need an autocrat to make sure scary POC and economically liberated women don’t threaten the traditional power structure that has white men on top.
Here are some reasons why we won’t have a civil war:
It’s not in our nature to have a civil war. For all the hateful rhetoric on the part of the MAGA New Right, it’s possible that in the end, they manage to pull off a peaceful transition to autocracy. In fact, at first, at least, the chance from democracy to autocracy could be so subtle that only a few hysterical people like me even notice. For the average person, it will just be a replay of 2000, only worse: it will simply be accepted that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if that party also control Congress. People will say “the system worked” and move on.
Republicans have gamed the system. It could be that by 2024 – 2025 the actual administration of elections will be so corrupt that it will be a fact of life that people shrug and take for granted. It will be the first step towards Americans becoming Russians in that they will no longer feel as though the government expresses the will of the people. And that will be that.
Not Trump 2024 Another reason why we could slip peacefully into autocracy is it’s not Trump who is the Republican nominee, but someone other than Trump. If this is the case, when I honestly don’t see why we would have a civil war. Autocracy is so popular within the United States –and the opposition to it is so weak — that our transition to an actual autocracy will in the end be so easy to pull off that there will be no need to resort to violence. Blue States will get angry, but, lulz, they always get angry, right Mr. Eastman?
Autocracy is very popular in the United States A sizable portion of the United States’ electorate wants an autocracy. They want one so bad that they seem like a cult to people who aren’t all that thrilled at the prospect of one. So, it’s possible that they will wrap up the transition into autocracy without any violence at all. By the time people realize what they’ve lost, it will be way, way too late. The United States will be nothing more than a Russia clone with an identical political dynamic. There will be a MAGA-themed Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment” and we’ll still have President DeSantis (or whomever) 30 years from now.
Anti-MAGA forces are just too weak willed. Again, it could be that when push comes to shove, the whole thing will be over before it even starts. There will be a lot of angry tweets on Twitter, but in the end, because Twitter liberals aren’t willing to risk anything in the real world, we slip peacefully into autocracy and that, as they say, will be that.
There really is no reason to think we’ll have a civil war. We’ll just wake up one day and realize the United States and Russia are, on a political basis, identical. Thousands (millions?) of center-Left people will have voted with their feet until the autocrat gets wise to this and makes it impossible for anyone to leave the country.
For the moment, I really think that’s what’s going to happen. There may be the occasional hick-up on the journey to autocracy, but that’s definitely where long-term American political trends are headed.
And, yet, it’s also possible that the combination of Trump being extremely stupid and lazy as well as the innate bloodthirstiness of the MAGA New Right might cause us to have a tragic, needless civil war where a hyperpower bombs itself into the Stone Age with its eyes wide open.
Here are some reasons why we will have a civil war.
Republicans have come to glorify political violence Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
Republicans no longer believe in democracy It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely destabilizing things that help push the country to the brink.
Trump 2024 Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
Steve K Bannon. Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that weuse to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
Extreme negative polarization We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
A lack of shared values As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.
Given how popular autocracy is the United States at the moment and how radicalized the Republican Party has become, it’s very possible that Trump can be as stupid and lazy as he likes and we’ll STILL slip peacefully into autocracy.
But I continue to struggle with which existential choice we’re going to pick in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe. Civil war or autocracy?
I just don’t know. But SOMETHING is going to happen a “Fourth Turning” if you will, that is going to dramatically change everyday life in the Untied States. I just can’t figure out which of the two most obvious options is going to be.
Macro trends are not on America’s side. As I keep saying, 2024 is going to be it. It’s the year when either the United States turns into a Russian-style “managed democracy” or there’s a civil war. Now, this isn’t going to be a complete list of the 50 states, but I am going to highlight some of the states that may be more problematic should a Second American Civil War erupt.
Oregon The state is really two states and, as such, is probably going to be a major flashpoint in any Second Civil War. What’s likely to happen is Portland will buck any attempt at a putsch on the part of bonkers Right wing nutjobs in the rest of the state and, as such, either there’s a really blood struggle in the state or there are a massive amount of political refugees from the Portland area as the rest of the state sides with MAGA.
Virginia Again, this is really two states. There’s the NOVA-Richmond-Hampton Roads urban corridor and everything else. It’s very easy to imagine a situation — especially with Virginia’s historic ties to the first Civil War — where the state implodes as we grow closer and closer to a Second Civil War. Too many good old boys in the rural areas of Virginia might get wrapped up in the “Lost Cause” mythos and decide to seize places like Danville (the last capitol of the Confederacy) or Richmond (another Confederate capitol.) If nothing else, simply because of the larger population of the “Blue” parts of the state, there will be significant violence and political refugees as the Blues consolidate power.
Michigan I don’t know as much about this state, but it definitely seems as though once the pre-war process of coups and political consolation begins that there will be at least a coup attempt on the part of the Far Right. Again, don’t underestimate how once you actually start murdering people that the dynamics of things change significantly. It’s very possible that there would be a coup in the state, it would fail, and there would be significant political violence as the state’s Blue population fought back and put the state firmly on the Blue side.
New York Yet again, we have a situation where once politics fails us that the otherwise banal regional differences in a state tears it apart. New York City is far more progressive than the rest of New York State and, depending on how things work out, it’s possible that New York City could become a revolutionary hotbed to the point that is tears itself away from the rest of the state and proclaims itself a Free City. This almost happen during the first Civil War. If nothing else, there will be a serious jiggling of the relationship between NYC and the rest of the state to the point where it aligns itself in any Second Civil War with New Jersey and Connecticut in a way that update New York does not. Or, again, there could be significant political consolidation as Blues from all over the northeast flee to New York and the MAGA-friendly natives of the state flee elsewhere.
Maine I really don’t know that much about this state other than a vague belief that the northern part of the state is far different than the southern part. It’s very easy to imagine significant consolation in the state one way or another as people flee to it as the rest of the country buckles. The state is big — if sparsely populated — and it’s strategic location near the Canadian border might be enough for it to be the home to large refugee camps.
Texas Texas would be in an odd situation as the country fell into civil war because its long-term political trend is shifting Blue, but it’s part of the South and a lot of people consider themselves Southern and MAGA. So either it simply buckles into its own intra-civil war or the MAGA cocksucker fucktards push out all the Blues who flee to Blue States nearby. The end result would be a lot of pissed off former Texans who would be of great benefit to the Blue cause.
California In a sense, the whole fate of the United States rests on what California does. If it simply bolts from the Union, then that significantly hobbles the Blue cause on the ground. California sitting on its hands and become its own nation in the event of a Second Civil War makes it far more likely that either Red states win or there is some sort of half-ass balkanization of the United States. But if California stays and fights, then they could provide not only the necessary economy and population for a Blue state victory — after many, many dead — but also something of a vision for what America would look like after we’re finished bombing ourselves into oblivion.
The Deep South It’s very easy to imagine at the onset of a Second American Civil War most of the old Confederacy on a political level getting extremely excited and having a massive amount of momentum to either leave the Union outright or support the Republican controlled Congress’ attempt to brazenly steal the election. Then reality would sink in — all of the Southern states have significant African American populations and once politics is no longer a viable method of solving problems then the far more brutal dynamics of realpolitik would kick in. I just can’t imagine millions of African Americans lulzing a return to the Confederacy, no matter how badly the white political establishment of those states may want it. So, even though the South has a lot of people and a big economy, it would be, on a regional basis, too busy fighting a race war to really help the Red cause all that much. If things really grew as radical as I fear they will — probably because WMD are stolen and cities start to get vaporized — it’s the Deep South where you’re most likely to see some WW2 level atrocities as radicalized whites begin to murder blacks en mass.
As for the rest of the states, their ability to pick one side or the other is probably far easier and their biggest problem would be dealing with political refugees.
Say what you will about Trump, he definitely can come up with song titles. Broken Old Crow lyrics by Shelt Garner @sheltgarner please give credit if you produce or perform
can’t fly anymore my heart is almost still I’m nothing more than a broken old crow
I once could touch the sun but that’s long gone now I’m nothing more than a broken old crow
wish I could return to what once was to a time and place of my making when the sky was blue and there I roamed before the darkness fell and I was left broken and old
can’t fly anymore my heart is almost still I’m nothing more than a broken old crow
I once could touch the sun but that’s long gone now I’m nothing more than a broken old crow broken old crow borken old crow
(bridge) in my heart I’m whole young and free don’t you fret that’s who I am when all is said and done no one can catch me now
but then I awake and realize I’m nothing more than a broken old crow broken old crow broken old crow
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