by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
You’re a fool if you think Ron DeSantis isn’t probably going to be the next president of the United States. As of right now, he’s got a straight shot at becoming America’s Putin. He will gradually at first, then more and more quickly, strangle American democracy and we’ll wake up in 20 years with him still being president.
But there are still some obstacles to him becoming America’s Putin. First of all, there’s Trump. Either Trump destroys DeSantis politically, or the two come to some agreement whereby DeSantis is Trump’s veep and ultimate successor. The latter is a win-win for both Trump and DeSantis, but Trump is so stupid and lazy that I could easily see Trump naming someone really crazy like Mike Flynn to be his veep.
Then we really would have something to cry about.
Another wildcard is the Russo-Ukrainian War. If it escalates into something closer to WW3, then there is a small chance that everything will be so changed that Biden or Harris (or name a Democrat) might be in a position to leverage that particular clusterfuck to at least punt the existential choice of autocracy or civil war down the road one more presidential election cycle.
But the point is — we’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked. No one is going to save us and at this point, the only question is who is going to be America’s Putin. We can only punt the fall of our democracy down the road for so long.
It’s growing more and more obvious that, tragically, the only hope of saving our democracy may be the high risk, high reward option of civil war. But there are no assurances that there would be a pat endgame. Things could be very muddled and the world will fly past a broken America.
