by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The fascists have won. I say that because Trump is assembling about a dozen different ways he’s going to steal the 2020 Election. If it’s not the Durham Investigation indicting Joe Biden the weekend before the election, it’ll be the post office essentially becoming an arm of the Trump Campaign. And those are just the most obvious ones. There will not be a free and fair election.
And, even if somehow Trump manages to self-own to such an extent that Biden actually does manage to be win the electoral vote, Trump is going to challenge the certification of the popular vote at ever stage. In the end, his criminality and his insanity will fuse and, well, lulz, he’s not going anywhere.
So, with that in mind, if you’re not MAGA, you need to do a gut check as to what you believe. It is very, very easy to write a witty tweet that goes viral. But it’s going to be a lot different when ICE starts snatching people off the street or pushing people out windows in the real world.
What do you believe on an existential level? Are you really willing to face indefinite incarceration in an ICE camp or the risk of simply being pushed out a window for your opposition to Trump’s fascist tyranny? Nearly everyone can talk a good talk on social media, but when you’re shoved into an unmarked van by a member of PACT or ICE, you might simply turn into a quivering mess.
There’s going to come a moment very, very soon — probably in 2021 — when we’re going to find out who is willing to pledge their “lives and scared honor” for the America that existed for about 240 years before Trump. While a few bonkers people like me, with nothing to lose, will take a stand and tell Trump’s goons to fuck off — and be murdered accordingly — most people are going to take the advice of MAGA people who will tell them, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut up.”
I don’t have any easy answers for you. I can’t tell you in practical terms what to do or how to prevent the inevitable from happening. I hate violence and I hate guns. Usually, it takes a war of some sort to end a fascist regime. There’s no one to invade us. I mean, who’s going to do it? The EU?
All I can tell you is the final official transformation of the United States into a fascist state is going to happen in fits and starts and then EXTREMELY RAPIDLY. Get out of the country if you can. Start thinking about where you might hide.
But the issue is — ranting on social media about Trump simply isn’t going to cut it anymore. You’re going to have to think about your career, your life and your family in the real world. Fascism is the ultimate “cancel culture,” if you will.
Darkness has fallen. There’s no going back. If it’s not Trump who does it, it’ll be Mike Pomepo or Tom Cotton. The macro trends simply aren’t on our side. And while there may be rolling political violence this fall and winter, I just don’t see there being any type of organized civil war. Though, I would note the only way we’re ever, EVER getting rid of Trump is the country will have to be on the verge of a revolution. That’s the only way I can think of that the political fault lines might shift just long enough to physically frog walk Trump out of the Oval Office.
Even then, this would be only a brief reprieve. Trump would immediately become a political martyr in the eyes of MAGA and he’ll find some fascist ghost writer to write his own “Mien Kampf.”
We’ve reached the end of the United States as we’ve known it.
