It seems to be we are in something of a lull before the the mass chaos of the second Trump Administration. There are a lot of elements to the prospective Trump Administration are only vaguely comprehended.
What happens when Trump actually does begin to arrest prominent “Resistance” politicians. Then what? What is going to happen? Will there be a huge reaction in the streets, or will people just shrug as we slide directly into hard autocracy?
I guess the point is — maybe we need to buckle down the hatches for what might be about to happen.
One of the last remaining elements of our barely functioning democracy is there is an ebb and flow to presidential elections. It just so happens that the center-Right in the US is a fetid miasma of shit.
So, it was inevitable that Republicans would win one way or another. Or, put another way, the average person simply could not take the cognitive leap to think, “I have to vote Democratic to save democracy.”
I used to listen to the Morning Joe podcast (the first hour of the show) pretty religiously. But since the election, I don’t think I’ve listened to it once. And now that’s learned that Joe and Mika went down to ding-bat Trump’s Mar-a-Largo to kiss the ring and bend the knee….ugh.
Just fucking ugh.
This reminds me of how the Biden Administration is thinking of giving preemptive pardons to a number of people that the MAGA fascists have said they want to imprison.
But I think such thinking misses the point — MAGA doesn’t care if the people Biden might pardon are innocent or not. They just want to hound them — into prison or out of the country.
So, I don’t know what to tell you. We just have to accept that the USA is probably going drift gradually into a legalistic autocratic state like Russia. And if Trump does the obvious for him — do it all in a kneejerk way — then, oh boy. Maybe things won’t happen as calmly as we might otherwise want or believe.
With all the talk of the coup attempt in South Korea, I find myself thinking about how something similar could happen here. The most obvious way is at some point after the Congressional mid-terms (should the Democrats win) they decide to impeach Trump for something and he decides to arrest them all en masse.
I think *that* would be the last shiver of American democracy, more than anything else because I think he would get away with it. SCOTUS has already said he’s above the law, so, lulz, seems like he could pull off such a coup scenario pretty easily.
All the lawmakers would be in jail by the time enough people realized what was going on, given how big and distracted the country is, in general. I have a very low, dark view of how things are going to play out over the course of the next four years.
I think 2024 will be the last free-and-fair election in America history for the rest of my life — at least. We’re going to become a legalistic autocratic state like in Russia and that will be that. And because I will never bend a knee, Trump — or one of his successors — will order my death.
This is just me thinking off the top of my head, so if you want some sort of researched depiction of what has happened to Crooked Media look elsewhere. But, in general, I’ve listened to Crooked Media back before it was still Keepin’ It 1600.
I’ve really enjoyed Crooked Media over the years, but at some point around the time there was a push to remove Biden from the running to be the 2024 nominee the media group kind of jumped the shark.
There was a moment when it just seemed as though the media group had lost its way. It was saying things that seemed way more elitist than what I remember. Do I think it can recover?
I honestly don’t know.
A lot depends on how bad things get with the potentially tyrannical second Trump administration. I suppose it’s possible that the Kash Patel run FBI will make the whole thing moot by shooting Crooked Media down.
But, who knows?
I think the key element is Crooked needs to stop smelling its own farts. It’s just way too smug at this point.
The great joke that has been played on everyone is, of course, that American Liberalism has been crucified for the sins of the American Left that hates liberals with a passion. So pretty much, all the “woke” stuff that has hurt liberalism in the US isn’t even liberalism.
But, despite this, I suspect what is going to happen is, baring, I don’t know a DPRK nuke blowing up NYC specifically because of a Trump screw up, a reign of “just good enough” MAGA tyrants for the rest of my life.
Either Trump pushes through a Constitutional Convention so he has a lot more power for the rest of his life or we enter a semi-imperial era in our nation’s history where it’s just Trump after Trump after Trump from here on out being president.
And because Americans are generally complacent, lulz, it won’t matter. I’ve come to believe that its the “just good enough” part of the equation that is going to save Trumplandia — because of income inequality, America otherwise would be ripe for revolution. (Not that I’m advocating any such thing.)
Anyway — I still want to leave the country. As soon as possible. But for various reasons that just isn’t possible at the moment and so I will have to suffer the slings and arrows of being a minority of one in Trumplandia.
But for the fact that I just don’t see the US ever having another free and fair election again anytime soon, I would say given what a catastrophe Trump’s second term will be that Blues will make a big comeback as soon as possible.
So, what I expect will happen is the US is going to slowly circle the drain and in 20 years we’ll be a total MAGA autocracy and I’ll be long gone (or dead) because I wouldn’t shut my mouth about how much I fucking hate MAGA.
I suppose there are any number of black swan events that might happen that could upend this particular dystopian hellscape, but I wouldn’t get too excited. We’re stuck with MAGA for the rest of my life, I fear, no matter how fucking bad things get.
I suppose if, like we lost a few major cities to specifically Trump bungling a crisis with the nuclear-armed DPRK then, yeah, maybe that end MAGA. But racism is a hell of a drug.
I will note in passing that Blues need to reflect deeply on how they come across as white cancel culture snobs to “real America.” (Whatever that means.) The average American thinks Blues want everyone to be gay or trans and that they care more about pronouns than helping people with everyday problems.
This is the result of a massive, viscous propaganda machine that pumps out a lot of MAGA garbage against Blues as a whole. I just don’t have any ready answer to that particular problem.
It’s an example of how, in the macro the US is just historically fucked.
The issue is that apparently America is now a white Christian ethnostate and we’re just going to have to get used to it. It’s going to be interesting to see, however, what happens when a lot of these abstract issues become very concrete.
What happens when all these dystopian things that Trump has promised to do actually happen? What are people — even some people who voted for him — going to do then?
I honestly don’t know.
It could be that we’re just going continue to lurch into fascism without even a hickup. People just won’t care. And that will be that. People will be pushed out of windows like they are in Russia and it will be just a bit old lulz.
I continue to want to leave the country as soon as possible. But for various reasons, that’s just not going to happen anytime soon — if ever. So, I’m kind of stuck. I guess we’ll just see what happens, huh?
Now that we know the United States isn’t going to keep punting its fascist inclinations down the road anymore, we face the next issue — what are we going to do politically when people start to fall in love with AI androids? It seems to me that this inevitability will have a dynamic similar to that of the trans movement, but with a twist — a lot of very MAGA Incels are going to be the ones demanding the right to marry androids.
As such, all kind of strange and surreal political alliances may pop up. Because it is clear to me that once we have AGI that can be put into android bodies that the Left is probably going to embrace the idea of giving those androids as many rights as possible.
I say this thinking of how the Crooked Media people called people who were romantically interested in chatbots “freaks.” Now, obviously, it’s difficult to legitimately fall in love with a narrow intelligence chatbot without a body. But that’s just what’s going on now.
Soon enough, technology will reach the point where there will be Ava from Ex Machina androids running around. And it goes without saying that for a variety of reasons these androids will be really, really hot and very human looking and acting.
And all of this could happen a lot sooner than you might think, like by the end of the decade. So, the election of 2032 — if we even have one — may be determined in some way by the Left’s determination to extend its “love is love” mantra to people who want to merry AI androids.
It seems as though Trump and MAGA are consolidating power rather quickly without much resistance. I supposed it was inevitable that this would happen eventually in our nation’s history.
This leaves me wondering what my fate is. I’ve decided that no matter what I’m not going to shut up about Trump. I’ve been a loudmouth crank my entire life, what’s the point of stopping now — I can’t change who I am.
It’s pretty wild how this go round everyone is just shrugging and not even thinking of giving fascist MAGA even the most perfunctory of resistance. The powers are just going to bend a knee to fucking Trump and that will be that.
I really need to get back to working on something creative while we slip into autocracy. I guess I’ll just fucking be a man in a high castle or something and watch as the United States turns into a dystopian hellscape.
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