by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One way to face your fears is to think about them so thoroughly that you turn an abstract fear in to a more understandable concrete one. So, let’s think through what like in “Trumplandia” will be like once the Russians steal the 2020 Election for Trump because we pulled out 1/3 of our troops from Germany at their behest.
Well, some of this is easy and some of it is hard.
It’s easy to see that once Trump is AGAIN politically pardoned for everything he’s done while in office that he’ll take his consolidation of power to the next level — he’s going to purge the press.
This could happen any number of different ways. But I’m going to assume it happens two different ways — “German Industrialists” do House Trump’s bidden by, say, buying up companies like Twitter while House Trump itself will lean on media companies to change their tune about House Trump….or else.
The broadcast companies — because of their government licences — are easy. The New York Times might be a bit more difficult to bring to heel, but when you have the entire power and weight of the US Government at your disposal it’s easy to imagine Rupert Murdoch finally owning the paper at last.
So, on a practical level, the first thing the average person will notice is a lot of fresh faces on TV and some pretty strange changes in tone at The New York Times and The Washington Post. I don’t think a lot of people appreciate how central the NYT is to the media ecosystem, so once it’s neutered, that will change a lot.
All the major late night talk show hosts will vanish off TV and a wave of new people will pop up who strangely avoid talking about politics altogether. In a sop to liberals, they may be women and minorities, but they will completely stop talking about politics because “it’s not popular.” It’s even possible that something weird will happen with SNL as well.
But all of this will happen in one fell swoop, so fast that there won’t be anyone to, well, report about it.
Once House Trump gets the free press out of the way, then Trump starts to rant about the need for a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment.” This is where some sort of doublespeak “Second Bill of Rights” will be pushed through the MAGA dominated convention and, lulz, the United States will be officially transformed into Trumplandia.
The question, of course, is how will this affect the average person?
This is a very interesting question because on one hand, given how fragile and rotting out liberal democracy obviously is, it’s easy to imagine that this transformation will happen quite smoothly. And, yet, Trump himself is such a massive moron self-own artist, that things may get all fucked up. Instead of pulling a fast one on everyone, Trump could be so ham-handed in his smash-and-grab on the United States that people get really mad.
If that’s the case, then we’ll just continue to drift into an autocratic managed democracy in fits and starts. It will be Trump’s successor — Cotton? Pompeo? Don Jr.? — who will be able to do all the ratfucking that Trump obviously is desperate to do.
But one thing I think we really need to keep an eye on in Trump’s stolen second term is how much money Trump Org is able to suck out of our economy. Our economy is significantly bigger than Russia’s so it make sense that the House Trump could become the wealthiest “royal” family in the world pretty quick. All that ill-gotten cash can be turned around to bribe anyone who might get in their way going forward.
In the long run, it’s probably First Amendment rights that Americans will notice the erosion of the most. But by the time the “final pivot” happens with MAGA-Qanon it’s going to be way, way, way too late to worry about shit like that.
People like me are going to be told to “shut up if you know what’s good for you.” That will be the final answer from any MAGA-Qanon who happen to get into a debate with people like me.
The sad thing is, they’ll finally be right.
