Month: March 2023

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve begun to see some signs that the #NeverTrump movement may be beginning to buckle at little bit now that they don’t have malignant ding-dong Trump to rally against. I saw a headline from The Bulwark, a major #NeverTrump online publication, suggesting that DeSantis is “not worse than Trump.”

This is totally wrong.

First, some context. American democracy is so fragile at the moment — in large part to Republicans not even believing that we ARE a democracy — that, by definition, I believe our next Republican president will be America’s first autocrat.

One way or another, the moment we have another Republican president, that’s it for American democracy. We’re going to slide into a Hungary-like situation where we’re no longer a functioning democracy. There are two ways this might come about.

There’s the brazen — when President DeSantis demands a Constitutional Convention for what sounds like harmless reasons that goes rouge and ultimately codifies MAGA into the Constitution. and there is far more subtle, insidious version.

So, I could see either that the years 2025 – 2033 are a huge struggle over what a Constitutional Convention is going to cram into the Constitution or it could be that we wake up to Speaker (Veep?) DeSantis in 2033 while he figures out how to get the Constitutional Convention.

This is what Putin did, ultimately, and given how popular authoritarianism is within Republican ranks, I don’t see why this won’t happen to America, too. It could be that someone like DeSantis could decide that the fucking so-called “Resistance” is simply too weak to worry about and he will consolidate power in such a way that he gets everything he wants while Morning Joe commentators whine and complain — but ultimately aren’t able to do anything.

DeSantis is worse than Trump because he’s young and focused and knows how to use the levers of power to get what he wants in ways that Trump is too lazy and stupid to do. Though, I will note that if Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee, the chance of some sort of Second American Civil War increases dramatically.

So, DeSantis is far, far worse than Trump and if he’s elected the great fleeing of Twitter liberals will begin and they’ll all sit around drinking white Russians in the south of France, telling me how great MeUndies are on the podcasts.