I’ve all but given up talking to my Traditionalist relatives about politics. They are really, really upset about the evils of the “media narrative” and anything that doesn’t fit THEIR media narrative is dismissed as “bogus.” One thing that they often raise is what they feel is the lack of objectivity on the part of the mainstream media.
This really upsets them a whole lot.
And I honestly don’t understand why they’re so upset or what, specifically, they want to change. If you give a lie (MAGA) equal value to reality (everything else) then you’re pretty much lying to the audience. Of course, they like the lie and they get really angry when anyone calls a spade a spade and a lie a lie.
Which brings us to The New York Times. I love The New York Times and all my occasional interactions with them have been pretty cool — other than Maggie Haberman who was really mean to me on Twitter. Anyway, the Times on an institutional level, despite being liberal leaning, always tries to square the circle by going out of its way to give some validity to the MAGA lie.
Given that our democracy is in something of a long term, structural crisis, such behavior does not help anyone — especially not the Old Gray Lady. Conservatives already want to burn the paper to the ground and they totally ignore the fact the paper struggles with being objective, to the point of doing a disservice to its readers.
This is yet another example of how totally fucked the United States is on a macro basis. We’re careening towards a very, very dark future of either autocracy or civil war.
I rarely watch or listen to The Joe Rogan Experience despite being pressured into doing so by the YouTube algorithms. But I did once see a clip of this big, beefy dude complaining about the evil liberal “media narrative.” Ok, let’s unpack this.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) gestures toward a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory Jan. 6, 2021 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Some demonstrators later breached security and stormed the Capitol. (Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico via AP Images)
As I’ve written before, something is warping American politics. A group that was once the bedrock of our democracy, conservative straight white men, now feel under attack to the point that they would rather give up their American birthright of democracy than risk the abstract danger of “being canceled.”
Now, the reason why this makes me so aggravated is all of this is “soft power,” while Republicans are accruing hard power…by scaring straight conservative white men with the boogey man of fear of being canceled. I really struggle with the origin of the attack on “CIS straight white men.”
The obvious answer is “wokeism,” yet I believe that some of that is constructed by fucking MAGA New Right cocksuckers who get their fee-fees hurt when they don’t get everything they want. And, as I’ve said, the issue is maybe a combination of technology and a generational vibe shift have combined to make the baseline of the “media narrative” “woke” to the point that your average Joe Rogan guest freaks the fuck out about it.
But the issue is we’re careening towards a very, very dark future. Either we have a “national divorce” with Blues serving the papers, or we slip into autocracy and that will be that. The two sides are just too absolute in their views and the Reds are actively agitating for autocracy. They make it quite clear that they want a white Christian ethno state.
Anyway, we’re fucked. Get ready for the next few years to be very, very bumpy.
Ok, this is something I think about way, way too much. And I think I might have come up with an explanation for what troubled me about both “being woke” and the conservatives who want to burn our Western democracy to the ground because of it.
It seems to me that “being woke” is actually a catch all for a hodge-podge of different things that represent different ideas to different people. Rather than being some sort of set orthodoxy, “being woke” is an amorphous blob of ideas that are used, abused and twisted as needed by both sides to prove their points. (This is coming from someone who absolutely HATES using “both sides” for any reason.)
Or maybe we might look at “being woke” as a spectrum.
On one end of the spectrum is “classical college sophomore wokeism” that hates all “straight CIS white men” because they’re a member of the patriarchy that needs to be “slayed.” This is the wokeism that your typical rabid conservative podcaster rants about in ever growing heated monologues.
I’ve only rarely encounter this Hyper Wokeism outside of my time in college and I have to admit it is pretty fucking annoying. It’s annoying because its corrosive and causes the bedrock of any stable Western democracy — conservative men — to start babbling about how the US isn’t REALLY a democracy, but rather a constitutional republic and fuck you, lib. I suppose the case could be made that this form of Hyper Wokeism leapt out of its natural college campus environment because of social media.
On the OTHER end of the spectrum, there are things that conservatives CALL “being woke” that aren’t all being woke, but rather just normal life in a modern Western democracy — or a constitutional republic that aspires to be a democracy. Things like not being overtly racist or misogynistic are now used by Conservatives as examples of people being “woke.” Throw in the #MeToo movement’s abrupt and long-overdue change in expectations for men in power and the word “woke” is thrown around a whole lot in ways that are meaningless other than to jerk off angry white men who can’t find a job because they don’t have a college degree.
The issue is, even though “being woke” is a blob, conservatives mix and match different types of “being woke.” They actively conflate the different concepts associated with being woke for their own purposes, making everyone angry which is what they want — they want to destroy everything and the best way to do that is make everyone so mad that we don’t have any functioning politics. Conservatives hate government unless it’s doing things they like.
So, taxes for the wealthy can never be too low and taxes for the poor can never be too high. They have no shame and so they want to expand or contract government control depending upon which part of their fascist governing alliance we’re talking about.
Anyway, we’re fucked. Get out the country if you can.
Nothing is going to change. There will be no reforms. Trump isn’t going to be indicted and if he is, he will simply use it as a foil in his 2024 presidential campaign. Or if Trump doesn’t run, the Ron DeSantis will run and we’ll just skip the middle step of him being Trump’s veep. And if DeSantis isn’t Trump’s veep, he could very well pick someone completely bonkers like Gen. Mike Flynn and HE will be America’s Putin starting at some point after 2025.
The point is — get out.
Leave America as soon as you can. Or, if nothing else, figure out some practical contingencies. What do you believe in? What are you willing to suffer for in the real world? There will be no narrative. If you pick wrong, you may die or get tortured at some point down the road.
Or there’s going to be a civil war and if you’re a poor Blue in a Red State, you’re going to become a domestic political refugee with no understanding of what your ultimate endgame will be.
Now, it’s talk like this that got me blocked by Twitter liberal darling “Mueller, She Wrote” for being “terribly negative.” But all those dystopian scenarios are things I really believe may happen, with civil war on one end of the spectrum and autocracy on the other.
The thing that we’re used to, a peaceful transition from one democratically elected Western-style administration to the next, just isn’t going to happen. The worse thing about it all is the MAGA New Right is telling us point blank what their plans are and we’re lulzing it.
But you know that the moment the shit hits the fan that wealthy liberals are going to vote with their feet. They’re going to flee the United States en mass at unpreceded numbers. Even though I’m beginning to think leaving the country is probably my only option, I still think if Twitter liberals weren’t cowards and made it a taboo to leave the country so people would stand and fight then maybe I wouldn’t be so interested in leave the country myself.
Yet, here we are.
The very people who might help us at least slow our slide into autocracy — Twitter liberals — will be the first to bounce. And it will be even worse if we have a civil war instead. But, as I keep saying, if there’s a civil war, it will be Blues NOT Reds who start it and it will happen because of tectonic political and historical forces that will force individuals to bubble up to the surface to be heroes whether they like it or not.
So, get out. If you’re not MAGA and you have the means to get out of the country at some point between now and late 2024, do it.
So, I was on the Wrong Side of Tik-Tok and saw some angry white dude make it clear that he thought that it HAD to be one of those evil, squirrely liberals who leaked the Dobbs decision because otherwise we would know who did it. His thinking was that because of the globalist cucks and the Deep State all the liberals are in it together and want to protect the liberal leaker.
Meanwhile, in the real world, this hot take makes no sense whatsoever. Why would a court controlled by conservatives protect a liberal leaker when they would have a vested interest to do the exact opposite.
So, no. It was a conservative. And the person with the means, motive and opportunity to leak Dobbs is Ginni Thomas.
But the fact that both sides feel they have iron clad logic for why they believe the other side is responsible for the leak is not great for the future of the the United States. It’s an example of how the two sides have their own echo chambers to the point that there is absolutely no room for compromise or understanding.
Anyway, so this is yet another sign that we’re fucked. Totally and completely fucked. We continue to careen towards a very dark future. Get ready.
At it’s heart, I think it’s possible that what we call “wokeism” is part of a soft Singularity that causes culture to move at such a fast pace that Olds can’t figure out how to adjust to a strange new world. Add to this that something about the second Obama Administration broke the brain of the Right and we’re really careening towards a dark and uncertain future.
Now, before I continue, I’ve made my choice. I’ve picked my side. For all the bullshit that the “woke cancel culture mob” generates, I’d rather side with them than the fucking tyrannical, fascist MAGA New Right. I know this is negative polarization — something I often bemoan with others — but everyone seems to be dipping into the poison well of negative polarization so I can feel only so bad.
But, in my experience as middle aged “CIS white male,” there are, in fact, people who are too “woke” for their own good and that wokeism is extremely corrosive to our democracy. Things have obviously gone too far at this point for us to fix anything, but it’s a shame that that is now the case. If only we had collectively decided that we shouldn’t make conservative men feel bad for being conservative….then we wouldn’t have fucking MAGA to worry about.
Because, from my discussions with my Traditionalists relatives — who I love dearly — they believe that they risk being “canceled” by the “woke cancel culture mob” simply because they don’t follow the “woke media narrative.” Now, obviously, things are far more complicated than this statement might suggest.
There is a whole cottage industry of Far Right podcasts devoted specifically to banging MAGA talking points into the minds of very receptive conservative white men. In fact, I would even go so far as to suggest that conservative podcasts, more so than talk radio or FOX News (or OANN or NewsMax) is where the real damage is being done.
Even though my Traditionalist relatives would not admit to being Good Germans in waiting, that’s what they are — they are willful in their desire to live in a white Christian autocratic fascist state with white minority rule. That’s what they want, damn the consequences.
And it definitely seems that we’re going to turn into an autocratic state starting the moment a Republican is POTUS again. It’s an asymmetrical attack on our democracy — they only have to win once.
I don’t know what to tell you. We’re fucked. And I know that there’s a good chance I’m going to run afoul of ICE once President DeSantis is president and forces through some sort of dystpian “Second Bill of Rights” that will be, in fact, enabling acts that will assure Republican minority rule for at least the rest of my life, if not far beyond.
There continues to be lingering griping in my center-Left Twitter echo chamber about how Liz Cheney sucks and why are we praising her so much for her work with the January 6th Committee.
I think such chatter is misguided and a bit extreme, if well intentioned. I don’t agree with Cheney on virtually anything other than that the United States is a Western democracy and Trump and MAGA are an existential threat to that democracy.
U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) delivers an opening statement during the opening hearing of the U.S. House (Select) Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, on July 27, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. During its first hearing the committee, currently made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, will hear testimony from law enforcement officers about their experiences while defending the Capitol from the pro-Trump mob on January 6. (Photo by Jim Bourg-Pool/Getty Images)
But we’re in a crisis. And, as such, I’m desperate enough that I would be willing to support Cheney for POTUS (especially if she was leading a Unity Ticket) if that was what it took to punt the existential problems the United States faces down the road at least one more presidential cycle.
Because the United States is careening towards a very dark future. One where, in some ways, a civil war is the best of two options. The other option being an autocracy somewhere between Hungary – Turkey – Russia. I tend to think for a number of reasons — race chief among them — that should we cross into autocracy that we’re not going to stop at the Hungary model. No, I believe, probably after a Constitutional Convention, the United States is going to become politically identical to Russia.
It may take a few decades for us to get there, but we’re going to get there. Then President DeSantis will invade Canada for some dumb reason and I’ll get drunk at a bar and rant about how President DeSantis can suck my dick and I’ll endup in prison for the rest of my life.
My Traditionalist relatives –whom I love dearly — poo-poo such talk, saying it’s “bogus.” They REALLY WANT DeSantis to be president, so much so that they “want to vote for him three times.”
Anyway. Back to Liz Cheney.
If we go the other route, which is civil war, I could see her being a major leader of the Blue States in any such conflict. History tends to go the most ironic route and her being the leader of a center-Left nation trying to get out of a marriage that no longer suits them would be the most ironic possibly outcome.
But I think in the end what will really happen is Cheney and a few million other Americans will flee the country as the DeSantis Administration slowly strangles American liberty and democracy.
If I had the means, I will already be making practical plans for how I was going to get out of the United States and never come back. I honestly believe that the America I have known my entire life is in its twilight. Either we’re going to have a civil war or we’re going to slide into autocracy without firing a shot.
Given how relatively chill everyone was — in a practical sense — to the Dobbs decision, it definitely seems we’re going to become A Very American Autocracy. Initially, nothing is going to change other than it becoming very clear that “vote harder” simply is not an option. Voting will be seen as meaningless and people will gradually just stop voting because they will now that, in the end, Republicans will always maintain power.
And that will be that.
There will be a lot gritting of teeth and yelling about this or that thing that should happen, but, in the end, it will all be meaningless. Millions of well educated, wealthy liberals will flee the country. They will do the same meaningless things they did before the Very American Autocracy was established, only in a different country.
In fact, I suggest that the massive outflux of wealthy American liberals will likely be THE news story of 2025 -2030. It’s going to change global history as American ideals and tastes begin to be pumped throughout the world in force. This will all be happening, potentially, in the context of the US leaving NATO and generally “bringing the boys home.”
Fortress America will be established and, as such, the world will grow so unstable that WW3 might break out as several regional conflicts become hot at the same time and WMD are used.
The liberal “brain drain” out of America will grow so bad that President DeSantis will make a big deal about passing legislation that will make it harder for it continue. Form follows function, after all. And, while we’re mentioning form follows function, President DeSantis at some point in his decades-long reign is probably going go full Putin and invade Canada for this or that reason. Autocrats do shit like that.
Now, of course, there is a very small chance of a civil war. But I just don’t see it happening. The only way there might possibly be a civil war in the United States is if Trump, not DeSantis, is the Republican nominee in 2024 and he personally, single-handedly is such a deranged asshole that Blue States feel that they have no choice but to secede.
I know I’m a nobody in the middle of nowhere, but all this talk about “civil war being on the table” for MAGA is totally oblivious. MAGA has no reason to start a civil war! MAGA is getting everything it wants without firing a shot. Why would they possibly start a civil war?
I’m well aware that a lot of fucking cocksucker MAGA types stumble across this obscure Website because they have a boner for civil war so they can finally murder people like me in cold political blood. But that’s just mental masturbation. They’re all excited about the idea of civil war because it’s the worst thing they can think of happen — that and a “MAGA revolution” — but, in the end, it’s just bunch of bluster. They just have no reason to start organized political violence and if they did, it would be a blunder of epic proportions.
I suppose, if you really wanted to have a fever dream, that if Trump became Speaker of the House and then went transactional by saying Red States would leave the Union unless both Biden and Harris were convicted in the Senate as part of impeachment trials…THEN, MAYBE, there MIGHT be a civil war.
Otherwise, lulz. And you’re an idiot to think MAGA is going to start a civil war. It’s just wouldn’t make any sense.
But the crux of the issue is — no one is going to save us. There will be no reform. Nothing is going to change. This is it. We’re beyond the event horizon when it comes to autocracy or civil war. We’re in the twilight of America’s democracy and, as I mentioned, if I could leave the country forever, I would.
I can’t thought. So, I suppose I’m going to either have to take my chances when it comes to crossing our new autocrat (which is inevitable because of my loud mouth) or figuring out a way to leave my deep Red portion of a purple state for some Blue state in the North should there be a civil war.
Yet, to be clear — enjoy these last few months of traditional free America while you can. Good luck.
Talk about dumb and clueless. Everyone is so fixated on how fascist MAGA is, they keep making some basic assumptions about our future which simply are not true. The MAGA New Right is politically ascendant and are gradually getting everything they want through the courts, if not politics. They have absolutely no reason to start a civil war.
You start a civil war when you feel disenfranchised and turn to violence because you don’t feel you have any other way to effect change. While Republicans feel disenfranchised, that has more to do with bent up rage over the browning of America than what’s happening practically on the ground.
MAGA is doing the hard work of corrupting the administration of elections to the point that telling people within the center-Left to “vote harder” is even more meaningless than it would be otherwise. The time is well on its way when Republicans lock in national power for generations to come and Blue States either bend a knee, or they secede from the Union and start a civil war.
So, it won’t be Reds who start a civil war — they have no reason to. It will be Blues who finally grow so exasperated that they see no other option than to leave the Union en mass. Now, everything to date leads me to believe this isn’t going to happen.
What’s probably going to happen is there will be a final spasm in late 2024 – early 2025 and then we’re going to be an autocracy. Millions of wealthy, well educated and well trained liberals will flee the country for the four corners of the globe and Fox News will start to complain about a liberal brain drain instead of scary immigrant carvans.
That, for the moment, definitely seems to be our fate. In fact, the only way I could possibly see MAGA starting a civil war is if history intervened (probably because of a 9/11 sized tragedy) and they felt their gradual ascendancy was being stymied for some reason.
Or, of course, Trump could go transactional at some point after Republicans gain control of Congress again and he could demand that Red states threaten to leave the Union if the Senate doesn’t successfully convict both Biden and Harris during their inevitable impeachment trials.
We are in for a very bumpy ride between now and Certification Day 2025, but nothing the center-Left has done of late would indicate to me they have the gumption to leave the Union. So, we’re doomed. We’re totally fucking doomed. I suppose your best bet is to leave the country sooner rather than later with all the Twitter liberals.
Politico has run a piece suggesting Jon Stewart run for POTUS in 2024. I have long thought he would be a great president. But there is a problem — and that’s Jon Stewart.
He likes to have power but he doesn’t like the responsibility that comes with power. Time and again while he was hosting The Daily Show, the moment people pointed out how politically powerful he was, he would fall back to “but I’m just a comic” and tell a fart joke.
For him to run for office — especially high office like POTUS — he would have to grow a lot more comfortable with being taken seriously and with people being aware of his power. As it stands, he seems a lot more interested in having a middling podcast and playing with rescue goats in a glorified petting zoo.
But if you could get him out of that mindset, he definitely would be a great presidential candidate and a great president. Maybe Stewart / AOC 2024? But there is, of course the problem that the country is falling apart and Republicans are going to pretty much do everything in their power to steal the 2024 election. As such, we may have a civil war if we don’t turn into an autocracy.
One interesting thing about Stewart is he is far more a traditional liberal than one might think. He is tight with Dave Chappelle and for some of the people on the Far Left that, unto itself, would be a deal breaker. But it would also make Stewart more appealing to those 100,000 swing voters strone across five swing states that decide every presidential election.
I would prefer he run for governor or senator from New Jersey before running for POTUS, but, lulz, nothing matters. I really want Stewart to run — and win — but at the moment that seems very doubtful.
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