Given that Warner Bros. Discovery has some $50 billion in debt, the company is going to face a lot of pressure to not just cut costs but to merge again. And to me at least, the ideal company for WBD to merge with is NBCUniversal.
But by definition, doing this throws the fate of CNN up in the air because of the obvious existence of MSNBC. The only way the two companies could pass anti-trust concerns would be CNN being sold off.
There are a number of different scenarios one could think of as to the fate CNN. One possibility is some MAGA plutocrat buys it and turns it into a Fox News clone. Another is someone like Jeff Bezos buys it and makes it his play thing along with the Washington Post.
Then, there is the possibility that Elon Musk could swoop in and buy CNN. Remember, CNN was built upon the ego of Ted Turner. So, it would be a return to its origins for it to be the plaything of something like Musk.
But the key thing you have to remember is, given how important CNN remains to be, there’s a good chance that it’s current drift towards MAGA is going to accelerate.
In general, I doubt Trump is interested in being Speaker of the House. He’s just too dumb to have the abstract cognitive abilities to do something so norm breaking and diabolical. All of his political instincts are little more than a grunt. And, remember, Trump is not a Great Man of History. He’s just a very lucky idiot who serves as an avatar, a vessel for white Christian rage.
As such, if anyone is going to be Speaker who isn’t a member of the House, it’s probably going to be Newt Gingrich. He would be an ideal Trump proxy for bonkers MAGA House Republicans and he already has experience impeaching a Democratic president.
I don’t think we really appreciate what at fucking clusterfuck 2023 is shaping up to be on the political and impeachment front — despite the thin majority Republicans have in the House, Republicans there have one thing they all agree on: spite.
I could very well see Republicans impeach both Biden and Harris multiple times specifically to be extremely petty — they would want to take away the Democratic talking point of Trump being the only president impeached twice. At the same time, impeaching Biden (and Harris) a few times would retroactively make Trump’s impeachments no big deal.
“Everyone gets impeached,” MAGA House Republicans would say.
The only way I see there being a Speaker Trump is if the battle over the Spearship lingers long enough for it to catch Trump’s attention. I could see, maybe, Trump seeing an opportunity and swooping in to be Speaker because he’s the one person that the entire Republican caucus — or at least 218 of them — can agree on.
And don’t let yourself be fooled by the myth of the “moderate Republican” who would object to Speaker Trump. Ha! Just like there were probably moderate Nazis, there are “moderate” MAGA Republicans who will inevitable tow the line should they be forced to vote for a Speaker Trump.
I want to be wrong. But, then, I would prefer Biden and Harris not be impeached a few times between January 2023 and November 2024.
If Republicans take the House, which historically, they are favored to do, MAGA will have the power to impeach members of the Biden Administration. Given how fucking spiteful a Republican controlled House will be, it’s not a question of if more than one member of the Biden Administration will be impeached, it’s if there’s anyone who WON’T be impeached.
Here’s a back-of-the-envelope prediction about all the potential impeachments we should expect in 2023 if Republicans do, in fact, take the House.
President Biden It’s pretty clear to me that a Republican House will be so full of spite and rage and bloodlust for revenge that it’s very possible they may accidently on purpose impeach Biden for no apparent reason in the early days of 2023. It will be so transparent as to what is going on that House Republicans are going to do severe political damage to themselves. But it won’t matter — that political damage would only matter if we were a functioning democracy. But we’re no longer a functioning democracy, we’re in between autocracy and democracy — in other words, an “anocracy.”
There are at least two reasons why Biden will be impeached. One is, of course, his wastrel son Hunter Biden. The other is the “border crisis.” The big issue is will these be two seperate impeachments so Democrats will not longer have Trump being impeached twice as a talking point, or if these two issues will be fused together into one event.
At the moment, I honestly don’t know. There’s always a chance that MAGA Republicans will impeach Biden THREE times, for two reasons. They both scream at the top of their lungs that Biden is the only president to be impeached three times and at the same time they can, expo facto say it’s no big deal that Trump was impeached twice.
Veep Harris I have no idea why House Republicans will impeach Harris, but they’ll think of something. Just the idea that they could somehow impeach and convict Biden and Harris in quick succession is enough to give them all a boner and they have no self control so they’re going to do it at some point between 2023 and 2025.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas As I understand it, there’s already a move afoot by House Republicans to hit the ground running impeaching Mayorkas for his handling of the “border crisis.” So, there’s every reason to believe that he’s going to be impeached at some point between 2023 and 2025.
HHS Secretary Becerra This is a bit more speculative, but I could see that once the impeachment counter-revolution gets going that House Republicans will set their sights on Becerra for something connected to “gender affirming” care of minors. That seems like just the type of culture war edge issue that MAGA House Republicans would want to wallow in for a few months to prove a point. I could also see a potential impeachment article surrounding the Biden Administration’s handling of COVID — even though it was Trump who fucked that particular situation up. Who cares about facts when you have lies?
Education Secretary Cardona This is also rather speculative, but once the monster of impeachment is unleashed, House Republicans may go after Cordona on the nebulous charge of encouraging “critical race theory” in schools — even if this is total bullshit. They just want to be able to hold hearings where they rant about CRT for hours on end. It will juice the base while “owning” the libs.
FBI Director Wray If this happens, it will be a prime example of how wrapped up in their own bullshit MAGA House Republicans will be once they have power. Wray is ON THEIR SIDE and they will still come after him because something something Deep State.
Attorney General Garland This is obvious — MAGA Republicans are so blinded by their anger over the Mar-a-Lago raid that they want to impeach Garland for approving it, despite it being totally justified given what Trump did.
There could be a few Federal judges that spark MAGA ire that will be impeached as well.
I can’t predict the future. But there are some alarming trends in American politics at the moment that make me sit up and take notice. Take the rise of mainstream antisemitism within MAGA ranks. There is a very dark scenario that writes itself involving a Republican House refusing to raise the debt celling in 2023 and, as such, crashing the global economy.
That, in turn, puts America in 2023 in a very similar situation to Germany in 1933. Let the United States marinate in an extended deep recession for a few years and by 2024 it’s possible that if not Trump, then someone nastier — and younger — than he is could pop up and away we go.
We end up in something literally akin to an American Fourth Reich.
The issue for me is, there seems to be a lot of slack in the system for an increase in support for antisemitism. Now that people like Ye and Nick Fuentes are being given oxygen for their hate and not a lot is being done about it for the very reason nothing is ever really done about Trump, well, oh boy. Are we fucked. There could very well come a tipping point where things we never imagined possible in the United States — especially when it comes to the state of Jews here — could become a very cold, hard reality.
That sounds very hysterical, I know, but still. The conditions are definitely developing for something very, very dark to happen in the United States between now and spring 2025.
And, remember, I still believe that if there is a National Divorce, it won’t be Red States who do it, but rather Blue States who serve the papers. And it won’t be rolling political violence as predicted by Barbara F. Walter — it would be full blown secession at the state level.
But nothing suggests we’re going to have a civil war at the moment — I just don’t think Blues have it in the to do such a thing. Blues will bend a knee to autocratic Nazis MAGA fascism and that will be that. A shit ton of wealthy American liberals will flee the country and before you know it the existing ICE infrastructure will be weaponized and, lulz, there you go. That will be my fate at some point after 2025.
I guess I need to write a breakout first novel so I can flee the country, huh.
The alarming mainstreaming of antisemitism within MAGA ranks is something that if it continues is going to force a moment of truth for anti-anti-MAGA Jewish conservatives. At the moment, this particular vocal subset of MAGA complicit people are living in complete denial.
They generally support the fascist agenda of MAGA, but they can’t bring themselves to admit it. So they get really work up about the tactics of the anti-MAGA (Blue) political movement and qubble about the specifics of the dynamic between Blue and Red.
And, really, from what I can tell from what I read on Twitter, these anti-anti-MAGA Jewish conservative intellectuals would be more than happy to go full throated MAGA if things came to that. But, ironically, just as they are moving towards that decision, we have Ye and Nick Fuentes having dinner with ding-dong Trump.
Speaking of Trump, the issue of what will happen to Javanka should antisemitism consumes MAGA in the whole is going to be very, very interesting. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the status of Javanka is something of the canary in the coalmine. If they get pushed out of the movement then that could be it — that could be the moment when anti-anti-MAGA Jewish people have to fish or cut bait when it comes to MAGA.
Fucking MAGA autocratic fascist.
That is going to be surreal to watch, should it happen.
I think what I’m most concerned about is not so much Trump but his successor. It’s also easy to imagine that if MAGA really does transform into American Nazism that some American Hitler might bubble up to the surface who will do some of nastier things to Jews — and people like me! — that Trump just doesn’t have to mental ability or discipline to pull off.
What makes all of this even more curious is we’ve been told for about 80 years now “Never Again.” And, yet, here we are — the same Goddamn thing that happened with Germany in the 1930s is happening in the United States. Or, at least, we seem to be drifting towards a similar dire situation. Of course, the key difference between MAGA and the Nazis is MAGA is movement of retraction of power while the Nazis were expansionistic.
The point is — I’m very alarmed. And it sure would make me feel a lot better if anti-anti-MAGA conservative Jewish intellectuals would actively join the anti-MAGA movement. It definitely will be interesting to see if that ever happens and how, exactly, it will go down if it does.
For way too long, there have been people who have refused to pick a side in the United States. They’ve just thrown up their hands and said “both sides” whenever people like me bring up the latest racist, misogynistic, bigoted thing that MAGA has done. They do this usually because they very sympathetic to MAGA, but aren’t prepared to fully align themselves with the fascist movement.
With the rise of antisemitic MAGA, however, MAGA is lurching closer and closer to being just another strain of Nazism, updated for modern sensibilities. As such, the Traditionalist and self-avowed “independants” who simply refuse to pick a side simply are fooling themselves.
Either you’re MAGA or you’re not. Either your an American Nazi or you’re not. There is no middle ground. Pick a side or a side will be chosen for you. The process of ending the perceived wiggle room between MAGA and anti-MAGA hasn’t finished just yet, but it’s getting there.
When it happens, I think a lot of Jewish anti-anti-MAGA conservatives are going to be in for a rude awakening because they’re pretty much going to be purged from MAGA. It seems pretty obvious to me that anti-anti-MAGA Jewish conservatives are living in a state of denial. They just can’t process that the very thing everyone keeps ranting about never letting happen again…is happening again. And it broad fucking daylight.
I can’t predict the future, but it’s not too difficult to sketch out a scenario between now and, say, spring 2025 when essentially the choice that everyone faces won’t be MAGA or anti-MAGA….but whether or not we want to live in an American Fourth Reich.
I am well aware of how hysterical that sounds, but sometimes the truth sounds hysterical until your mind is able to process what is going on. And, of course, there are plenty — plenty — of ways that we might, at last, find some sort of off ramp. But my bet is any off ramp will be a false victory — we’ll just punt our macro problems down the road an election cycle or two.
The issue is — America is pretty much fucked. Either we turn into the Fourth Reich or we have a civil war. That’s it. Those are our choices between now and spring 2025, barring something I can’t predict. There is, of course, the possibility of some sort of military junta, but that is only an abstract possibility in my mind.
It will be interesting to see how things work out. Macro trends are not on America’s side.
I believe 2023 is going to suck politically. It’s going to suck so bad that we’re going to look back upon 2022 like we now do the year 2017. In 2017, we were all so wrapped up in the legacy of post-Watergate Washington scandals that we assumed Mueller would fix all our Trumplandia problems and we could have some sort of magical Obama third term.
In other words — I believe Biden will probably be impeached a few times. I believe that any accountability that Trump is held to will only make him stronger. I believe that, in the end, Trump is either going to turn us into a Russian-style autocracy (at least) or we’re going to have a civil war that starts between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025.
I believe all this because the macro trends are just not in our favor. We’re an empire in decline and the tectonic forces at work are probably going to force Blues to make an existential choice of bending a knee to autocracy or leaving the Union.
I don’t really want a National Divorce, but on an abstract basis, it definitely does make a lot of sense. I say this as someone who loves America and am quite content to keep the country together like it is, thank you very much. But if the choice is between the Fourth Reich and Blue States attempting to leave the Union, well, then, things start to get a bit more complicated, now don’t they.
It just seems to me that we’re headed towards a very, very, very dark future, it’s just the specifics haven’t been worked out yet. I’m of the opinion that at the moment we’re probably going to turn into the Fourth Reich, America will leave NATO and WW3 will happen as a result. In the end, MAGA will be directly responsible for just as many people as those that died in WW2.
I’m of an age where I’m generally indifferent about a lot of things that used to bother me — I just don’t have time for that shit, as they say. So, when I got invite to the new Twitter clone “Post” I was mildly interested to see what it was like.
And, after having used it a few days, I can honestly say I really like it. It’s spare, but has a lot of potential and is small enough that it still has that new social media platform smell to it. There are some quirks, but nothing so difficult as to make it unusable.
Once it gets some of the basic features that Twitter has, I could definitely see myself using it so much that I don’t really use Twitter that much.
But.
The problem with Post is not the service, but the sense one gets using it that a lot of its initial users see it as a liberal-progressive “safe space.” That is not bad unto itself, but when the service is just a bunch of people agreeing with each other it can become boring.
But there are two reasons to think I’m jumping the gun a little bit and things aren’t going to be as bad as you might think.
One is, Twitter is already so siloed when it comes to political discourse, it’s not like there’s all that much real debate going on. In fact, in my experience, in recent days, the only actual debate between people who disagree comes from when one side or the other notices something from the other side and retweets it into their echo chamber.
Otherwise, the two sides don’t talk to each other about politics on Twitter.
Meanwhile, another thing that Post has in its favor when it comes to not being boring is the anti-MAGA liberal-progressive alliance is so diverse and fractious that people who agree in general about the dangers of MAGA that there is still a lot of room for debate.
I suppose what really bothers me is not so much that Post is going to be boring as it is the possibility that it’s going to be populated with a bunch of smug people who think they have it all figured out and, as such, don’t build up the intellectual antibodies associated with robust debate.
Such smugness is really fucking annoying, regardless of your political leanings. But I fear what’s really going on is if Post becomes popular then it’s yet another common element of society that has been destroyed and segmented into Red and Blue.
If that’s not a “Not great, Bob,” trend, I don’t know what is.
The fact that antisemitism is going mainstream within MAGA ranks in broad daylight is alarming to say the least. The same dynamic that allowed Trump to come perilously close to destroying American democracy is now at play with the rise of antisemitic MAGA.
Everyone with the actual power to end it is too big a coward to do anything about it. Or they’re silent and hope it all just goes away. But barring something I can’t predict, it’s not going away. I’m not Jewish, but just like how Roe v. Wade was a firebreak for reproductive rights, the taboo against accepting antisemitism into the mainstream without consequences is firebreak against kooks like me getting caught up in the same dragnet that would get Jewish people if things really got that bad.
As such, I have an existential self-interest in making sure antisemitism stays in the shadows where it belongs.
But it definitely seems like we may have crossed the Rubicon. Things have suddenly begun to get dark and growing darker. All of this is happening in the very curious context of Trump having a Jewish daughter and children. How ding-dong squares that particular circle is something I struggle with a lot.
And I would go so far as to say keep an eye on the status of Javanka. If MAGA turns on them in any big way, oh boy. Things really are dark. What is happening in American politics at the moment is very, very surreal.
But I suppose the case could be made that form follows function. If you country has a fascism problem, it’s inevitable that you’re going to have a antisemitism problem, too.
And, like I said, this is all happening in the context of no one being willing to do anything about it because of one person — Donald Trump.
This is a very delicate thing to broach, but as antisemitism goes mainstream within MAGA ranks, we need to start to talk about the political fate of Jewish conservatives. I’m not Jewish — even though growing up I always wanted to be Jewish or black — but I am reading up on the rise of Nazism in Germany and the continued reluctance of a lot of American Jewish conservatives to join the broad anti-MAGA democratic coalition is alarming.
It would greatly help the cause of American democracy if conservative American Jewish people who aren’t currently #NeverTrumpers would stop supporting Trump and MAGA because, well, the movement is growing more and more hostile to Jewish people.
Why this “come to Jesus” (wink) moment hasn’t happened yet is very curious. But I think it’s definitely something to look out for. Whenever it happens, it’s probably going to happen a lot later than it should and could be very nasty and jarring.
The way it might ultimately happen will be not that Jewish conservatives leave MAGA, but, rather, they will be purged from even being anti-anti-MAGA. There may come a tipping point when MAGA is actively going out of its way to be hostile to even otherwise extremely sympathetic Jewish conservatives.
But, let me be clear — I can’t predict the future. Maybe the alarming rise of antisemitism in MAGA will abait and we will drift towards an autocracy more like Turkey or Hungary than Nazi Germany.
I’m still very alarmed, though. No good will come of this.
I don’t know what to make of this. In dribs and drabs, I’m beginning to get more and more MAGA “hate followers” who obviously only follow me because they want to keep tabs on people like me.
I don’t know what to make of this development. In a way, I guess, it’s flattering? Maybe? If they hate more or not, at least they’re giving me their time and attention, which is something.
My only fear, of course, is there might be some sort of sinister second phase to this particular development that I don’t know about or can’t expect. But I think, for the time, that would be overthinking things.
The whole thing is humorous and innocuous as far as I can tell. It’s a lulz. So what, they hate my politics and I hate theirs. As long as they don’t trolls me, then I don’t see any problem.
Now, obviously, some of these MAGA people following me do so because of confirmation basis — they think people like me hate them and so they want to see people like me…hate them. I don’t really hate THEM, I hate their POLITICS. But people who follow me for such a reason are extremely clueless and unself-aware. They think they can be a part of American MAGA Nazism without, well, having to deal with the consequences of being the member of a Nazi variant.
I say this as someone who if I would just become MAGA would, on a personal basis, find a lot of benefit. I would have an extensive support group of MAGA people and my relationship with my direct family members would be A LOT better.
You must be logged in to post a comment.