Month: June 2022

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s not so much that the United States is a democracy or constitutional republic, it’s that for about 250 years Americans have seen being a democracy as a good thing. It’s our birthright, to believe we live in a free democracy even though if you get all technical about it we live in a (democratic) constitutional republic.

And so, to me, if you are saying “democracy” is “mob rule” and cherry pick the more undemocratic elements of our constitution to make your point, all I can say is — fuck you, you fucking fascist.

I mean, come the fuck on.

If you shit on democracy you’re telling on yourself. It’s just like how it’s a tell if someone shits on Lincoln. If you don’t believe the US is a democracy and if you go out of your way to fucking shit on our greatest president then you’re a fucking fascist racist who wants white minority rule.

Growing numbers of Republicans are becoming more and more willing to admit that they’re white Christian nationalists. But, for political reasons, a lot of Republicans are uneasy coming out and saying that their white nationalists so they couch everything in white noise of how the US isn’t a democracy.

Fuck those people.

Like I said, the issue isn’t so much that the US is or isn’t a democracy, it’s that we’ve WANTED the US to be a democracy. Being a democracy in general terms has been part of how we perceive us, our collective self-perception as a nation. To suddenly shit on democracy means you want white autocratic minority rule.

That’s what you’re really saying — you’re saying that rather than change your policies to conform to what the population wants (which is what the Democrats gradually did from 1981 to 1993) you want to totally detach the government from the governed.

Anyway, as I’ve written before, there is no solution to this difference of opinion. Either we have a very violent and destructive “national divorce” or we don’t and become an autocracy.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the more frustrating things I see these days is people on the center-Left ranting about how the January 6th insurrection was an undemocratic coup. That’s exactly what it was, of course, but it’s frustrating because people on the center-Right no longer believe in democracy in the first place.

Or, more specifically, the MAGA New Right doesn’t believe the United States is a democracy and, as such, events like January 6th aren’t nearly as big a deal to them as it is to people like me. They get upset not about the overthrow of the election part, but the violence part.

So, they were quite happy with the actual plot that dingus Trump came up with but they’re embarrassed and upset that it got violent. To the point that they want to deny that it got violent at all. Hence one of the Big Lies popular among the GQP — that the violence wasn’t there fault, but rather the fault of some combination of the FBI and Antifa that did only the parts of January 6th they don’t like.

The point of all of this is — if we’re going to have a Second American Civil War, it’s going to be because a difference of opinion as to what the United States is. Are we a Western democracy or are we a Constitutional Republic? I have one relative — who I love dearly — who has it all thought out. His reasoning is the US has never been a democracy and suck it, lib. He throws in de Tocqueville rather casually and makes it clear that he wants what I fear — white minority rule.

Now, there are a lot of problems with the center-Right being giddy about the US NOT being a democracy but rather at Constitutional Republic. For them to establish permanent white minority rule, they’re going to have to have to use a three prong approach.

Voter suppression, severe gerrymandering and leaning into the more obscure portions of the Constitution to the point that people get fed up and stop voting, which leads to Republicans being able to seize power and never let it go. And, as such, the weakest moment in this plot will be the 2024 election.

If you have 38% of the electorate that wants autocratic white minority rule then there is at least a chance that as we transition into that that the other 60-odd percent of the electorate will grow enraged that this is happening and decide to leave the Union.

And make no mistake — at this point, if we have a civil war, it’s going to be because Blues leave the Union at the state level. Which is why I seriously doubt we’re going to have a civil war. There is, of course, the possibility that something happens to Biden, Republicans win the mid-terms and Speaker Trump actively begins to lobby for Red states to leave the Union on Truth Social as an effort to put pressure on the Senate to convict President Harris. (This is admittedly rather fantastical, if possible.)

But the chief take away is — all if our fears about how we have to protect our democracy at all costs and if we can only convince Republicans to join us in this goal we’ll be able to sing kumbaya are total bullshit. Republicans hate democracy and don’t believe the USA is one.

How do you fix that potentially epic difference of opinion? The answer is, you don’t. You either slip peacefully into white autocratic minority rule, or you have a civil war. Take your pick.

Choose a side. A side will be chosen for you if you don’t.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

At the core of my hatred of MAGA is how it demands that you deny your lying eyes for pretty much everything. I hate how MAGA fucks with your sense of what is real by constantly simply making shit up.

There are a lot of examples to choose from, but how MAGA has reacted to the events of January 6th are a perfect example of what I’m talking about. MAGA wants us to believe both that it was all a setup by the FBI and Antifa AND a peaceful protest by unarmed patriots AND that it was all Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

I mean, get your fucking story straight, people.

I just am not prepared to believe such bullshit. We al saw what happened and every day we’re getting closer to proving what we already know: Trump was personally behind a conspiracy to stage America’s first coup. (Well, there was the one that happened around the Lincoln assassination, but lulz.)

Anyway, the point is — fuck MAGA and fuck you if you are willing to live in the lala land that MAGA has come up with to explain the world. I mean, JESUS H. CHRIST.

And I know that in the end, once we become an autocracy, that I’m fucked because I refuse to buy into the MAGA bullshit. There is going to come a point when America’s autocrat — be it Ron DeSantis or someone else — is going to say the sky is green and if you don’t obey then you die in a camp or get pushed out a window.

I prepared to go out that way, if it comes to it. I have made my decision. It will be interesting, of course, to see if we have a civil war instead and I endup living as a political refugee in the new United States of Canada.

Do I really think that’s possible? Maybe. We still have a few years of breathing space. But once Roe is overturned in a few days, we’re really going to have a better sense of what to expect. Things could get pretty bumpy a lot sooner than any of us are willing to accept.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ugh. Where to begin with this one. At the core of the hypermodern conservative movement is fear among your average Traditionalist that they, personally, will have their life ruined by the “woke cancel culture mob” simply for the crime of being conservative.

This is something at the forefront of the minds of people in my family. And I totally validate that fear. I suppose if all your content is MAGA and MAGA adjacent bullshit then the fear of being personally canceled because your political views don’t follow the “media narrative” makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, I struggle a lot with the idea of the “Great Awoking” because I know that a lot of my own views don’t fit the much maligned “media narrative.” I’m something of a kook and become even more so when I get drunk. As such, it’s very possible that I could very well be “canceled” at some point in the future simply because, say, I fucking hate the Bechdel Test.

But let’s get back to the point — what the fuck is the “Great Awoking” in the first place?

Well, this is very complex question because it’s all very abstract. At some point in Obama’s second term it became clear that conservatives had lost the culture wars and we had reached the high water mark of social change in the USA. And this is laid the groundwork for the where we are now, where I spend way too much of my time struggling to figure out if we’re going to explode into civil war or implode into autocracy.

Young people — especially those juicy, juicy wealthy teens that advertisers covet — took it for granted that progress was always going to be easy. They began to love it when their favorite celebrity came out as gay. The list goes on. This changed how things were framed in the media because a lot of advertisers began to want to stay “hip” to what the cool kids were thinking.

At the same time, something about Obama winning a second term turned the conservative movement into a rancid, hateful piece of vile hate — and MAGA was born.

And so, here we are.

On one side, you have the center-Left that has a lot of soft power and one the other you have the center-Right that has a huge amount of hard power that continues to grow. They are, in short, ascendant.

And so now we have to sit around and wait to see if we have a civil war or if we turn into an autocracy where the “Great Awoking” is snuffed out once and for all by MAGA’s hate.

I have no idea which one of those two options we’re going to pick. But I will have a far better sense of things once Roe is officially overturned. If there is any political violence because of it, then, guess what!

But back to the Great Awoking. This concept is something I see bandied about by well meaning conservatives who want to understand what fellow young people are thinking. They’re like the earnest assistant youth paster who sits backwards in his chair and says, “Do you know who else was woke?” But for all their well meaning earnestness, things are far more dire than they realize.

MAGA really hates the Great Awoking and they are willing to destroy America to ensure its demise. The only question at this point is if they get what they want peacefully or not.