Category: Cold Civil War

Of NATO, Ukraine & Putin’s Metrics For Invasion


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One theory floating around Twitter is Putin is about to engage in a massive, risky war against Ukraine because he wants to stop the country from joining NATO.

I struggle to imagine this being true, for a lot of reasons.

The biggest is — if all Putin wants to do is ensure that Ukraine doesn’t join NATO, all he has to do is a modest smash-and-grab operation connecting Donbass to Odessa. Have enough of a lingering “frozen conflict” endgame to it that NATO just doesn’t want to risk letting Ukraine join.

And all of the other metrics presented to me can be swatted away. Putin is old, they say. And I say, so what. Putin is an autocrat and all autocrats think they’re going to live forever. The list goes on.

You can’t escape some cold hard facts. It’s sexy to think of a big war between Ukraine and Russia, but you can’t escape how small Russia’s economy is. You can’t escape the stress such a huge, potentially long-term, war against Ukraine that has a fair sized population would have on Russia’s economy and overall stability.

The point is — what metrics is Putin using that would cause him to believe a general war against Ukraine would be a good idea? What the hell is he thinking? Because it would make a lot more sense if this was all just a very expensive bit of saber rattling meant to get a face-to-face sit down IRL with Biden.

And he can do that because he’s an autocrat. So, for the time being, that’s what I think is happening. When something changes, I’ll revise my assessment.

What The Fuck Is Putin’s Russia Up To Around Ukraine?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Putin is up to something curious around Ukraine. The one thing I’ve noticed lately is someone has blocked the troop movement Websites that a lot of armature observers of this developing situation have been using to date. Which definitely seems to suggest that Putin wants as much leeway to strike when and where of his own choosing.

At this point I would like to point out that Stalin was a paranoid motherfucker with a lot of foresight — almost all of the capitals of the Soviet Republics were originally placed in geographic locations that are very close to the border of a sister of republic. I’m assuming his thinking was by doing so, if one of the two was in rebellion, the other one could at least be near the capital of the rebellious Republic.

So, if you look at the map of Belarus, the only thing that separates its border to in the south to Ukraine’s capital of Kiev is a large, long lake. So, if there was some sort of crazy huge war between Russia and Belarus against Ukraine, it’s easy to imagine a one two punch pincer movement by Belarus and Russia to strike Kiev.

If Putin really is preparing a open, general war against Ukraine it’s going to come a huge fucking shock to Americans. And, it has to be noted that in some ways a major regional war in Europe would help Trump a great deal and in another way would hurt him.

It would help Trump for the basic reason that it would crowd out all other news in the domestic news echo chamber to the point that a lot of his defeats about the investigation into January 6th could be pushed off the front page. And, the argument could be made that in the minds of most Republicans the fact that Putin waited until AFTER Trump was president to attack Ukraine would “prove’ that the TrumpRussia imbroglio was a “hoax.”

And, yet, such a war could also fuck Trump over for two reasons. One reason would that for a lot of the smarter center-Left thought leaders like those at Crooked Media and Deep State Radio, the logic of Putin waiting until AFTER Trump was in office to invade would be obvious — why invade Ukraine while your stooge is in office and devastate him politically, when you can just be patient and wait until he’s out of office and do the same thing?

The other reason why a major war between Russia and Ukraine could seriously hurt Trump is if there was a long term regional war between Ukraine and Russia then there would come a point where Trump’s absolute fidelity to Putin would bump up against the Republican’s historical hostility to Russians. And, that, might be the setup for a massive civil war between MAGA and the Republican Establishment to the point that Trump’s Patriot Party eats the Republican Party or the center-Right is simply hobbled for a few presidential cycles until they get their shit together.

In fact, sad to say, that’s one of the ways we could both avoid autocracy and civil war in the United States because if the Republican Party is too busy strangling itself, it can’t very well kill American democracy or start a civil war, now can it?

Could A Second American Civil War Really Happen?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This blog exists in oblivion. Outside of the odd, seemingly random scraping of it by the Internet Archive and some site in Iowa using Microsoft Azure, the only traffic I really get is people who are worried about a Second American Civil War.

I’ve kind of said my peace for the time being on the matter, but given the steady flow of people interested in a 2ACW, I thought I’d pontificate some more.

The key thing to remember when talking about a 2ACW is it’s at one end of a wide spectrum of possible outcomes in the next three to four years. At the moment, all signs point to the United States slipping peacefully into some sort of ever-tightening autocracy. A 2ACW is just potentially too far away in time for me to be able to say for sure one might happen or not.

Or, put another way — all the conditions are there for the United States to transition peacefully into autocracy no later than January 2025. I think MAGA is popular enough that they won’t even have to cheat. They will cheat anyway, but by January 2025, the United States will be on the path to becoming a political clone of Russia.

And that would be that but for one thing — Trump.

Or, to put it another way, the combination of Trump being a chaos agent and the bloodthirsty nature of the MAGA New Right could very well be a set up to the Right self-owning in a pretty astonishing fashion by starting a 2ACW that they could very well lose.

It is telling that so many people are low-grade freaking out about the potential for a 2ACW that they’re goosing my website’s traffic. But, again, at the moment I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Autocracy is just too popular.

One metric that I’m keeping an eye on is how insane Republicans when they regain the House and Senate. If they put bonkers people in their caucus in positions of power, then, well, that’s a pretty good indication that in the 2024 – 2025 time frame Republicans are going to push us to the political limit.

There are plenty of reasons to think that our political system will ultimately bend, not break, but, lulz, we still have time to fuck things up.

So, do I REALLY think we are going to have a 2ACW? Maybe. Ask me again in a few years.

My Theory On Dr. Ronny Jackson & The Sway Trump Has Otherwise Normal Human Beings


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Any discussion of the rise and rise of Trump has to be done in the context of America’s receding empire. Unlike ’30s German, America isn’t aggrieved, we’re just struck with a severe bout of existential malaise. In a sense, 9/11 marked the beginning of the end of America’s empire because we were to find ourselves in Mesopotamia and Afghanistan before it was over with.

By 2016, a huge segment of the American electorate was growing tired with empire — and with the liberal-progressive social changes of Obama’s second term — and the time was ripe for an autocrat.

And everyone assumed it would be ding-dong Trump who would ascend to power, turn the United States into an autocracy and that would be that. But ultimately, Trump was just an empty suit. He did have one specific autocratic ability, despite his laziness: once you got into his personality death cult, there was no going back.

But this leads to the question, why?

The answer on an individual basis for the whole clusterfuck can be found in the personal instance of Dr. Ronny “Feel Good” Jackson. All he had to do is lie and say Trump was not over 300 lbs, and therefore obese, and he would find himself with a nice, cushy — an safe — Republican seat in Texas delegation to Congress.

Just take that amount of power that Jackson got for selling his soul and expanded upon the broader US government, and you have a recipe for a seriously fucked up situation. By the time Trump got impeached the first time, the US government was totally off the rails. It was being run like TrumpOrg, which is, not very well. Everything was ad hoc and a lot of idiots who otherwise would never have any direct link to power were meeting with POTUS on a pretty regular basis.

So, in a sense, there was a direct link between Trump’s management style and him getting impeached the first time. When it began to sink in with people who knew better that Trump was treating the US government like TrumpOrg, he got impeached. He got impeached the second time because he his failings as an autocrat were put on display when he put all his chips on Mike Pence “doing the right thing,” (at least relative to Trump.)

This was all happening in the context of a derogation of democratic norms, institutions and beliefs within the broader society. So, next time, I think Trump is going to win fair and square (-ish) and the autocracy will be established quite peacefully.

But there is always a chance that, lulz, we have a civil war.

A Republican Civil War Over Ukraine As 2022 – 2024’s COVID19


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, let me be clear, I’m only even continuing to talk about this because I’m smarting over being so wrong over 2020. It seemed a political absolute in the fall of 2019 that Trump was going to win re-election through hook or through crook. When he didn’t I was in shock and struggled to figure out how I could have possibly gotten things so wrong.

But I’m being too hard on myself — no one could have predicted that a combination of Trump being a lazy idiot, the COVID19 pandemic and Biden being a lucky, good candidate would happen all in quick succession.

As such, I scramble for what could make me look like a fool again. What could possibly stop Trump and MAGA from wining in 2022 and 2024 outright because autocracy is popular? Well, it seems as though at the moment, Trump’s love of Russia might be it.

It could be that both Putin miscalculates and Trump miscalculates and not only does any war between Russia and Ukraine escalate, but the war lingers and captures the imagination of American public such that two factions would be established.

Trump’s pro-Russia MAGA faction and everyone else.

But a LOT would have to go wrong for both Trump and Putin for things to get that bad. More likely, everything will be very muddled and, lulz, the United States will become an autocracy as predicted on schedule.

Our Second Trump Political Miscalculation


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The big miscalculation everyone made about Trump in 2016 was he was an autocrat. Everyone — on both sides — thought Trump was going to be a real, honest-to-God autocrat. In fact, I came to tell who would listen to me that Trump was going to “not lose” the 2020 election because “autocrats never lose.”

Well, surprise, both sides were wrong.

All Trump turned out to be was an empty suit. And dumb and lazy one at that. So, he was all talk. This led both the people who voted for him and the people who opposed him to make huge misjudgments about what to expect from Trump going forward.

This tendency for Trump to be a lazy idiot that came out in full force around January 6th. He knew what he wanted — to stay in power via a coup — but he was just too lazy and stupid to pull it off. So, virtually anyone else in his position could have stolen the 2020 election in broad day light and gotten away with it.

But he was too much of an addled lazy fool to put even the most barest of work necessary to do it.

Anyway, now I think we’re doing it again with Trump. Now, everyone is freaking out about how Trump is going to steal the 2024 election via Bannon’s “administrative coup.” Meanwhile, everyone on the Right is gearing up to steal the 2022 and 2024 elections in a pretty brazen manner.

Everything I see, however, indicates that this is all going to be a lulz. Autocracy is so popular in the United States at the moment that we’re an autocracy without an autocracy.

For all the hard work on both sides, in the end, Trump is likely to win fair and square. Then, of course, the huge battle will be on who will play Putin to his Yelstin. And about a dozen would be American Putins within the Republican Party know that right now and there’s a huge amount of political bloodlust within the different Republicans who want the chance to grow both amazingly powerful and wealthy like Putin.

And all I’m saying is, in the end, our transition to autocracy will likely to be peaceful and something of a dud. But as I keep writing, it ain’t happened yet. There is, I guess, a greater than zero chance of a civil war

We’re too far out, however, for me to know for sure one way or another. I definitely am leaning in favor of the United States simply slipping peacefully into autocracy.

If we actually did have a civil war, then you have WW3 on your hands and a “Great Reset” not seen since the end of WW2.

Of Putin, Ukraine, Trump & A Potential Republican Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, before I begin, let me be clear that Republicans are on track to win in 2022 and 2024 and accomplish their final consolidation of white minority rule. So, even with the scenario I’m about to lay out, it’s doubtful American democracy survives.

But, if noting else, the context of its death might be different. As such, keep in the back of your mind the cold hard facts that through voter suppression, gerrymandering and Bannon’s administrative coup on the local level we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.

Another thing – Putin has yet to do any sort of invasion of Ukraine. It’s possible this is all a bluff. It’s possible that we’re all overthinking this and the United States will slip peacefully into autocracy, without a hitch.

Having said all that, let’s begin.

It appears as though either Putin is going into any war with Ukraine with modest, limited war aims or he believes that no matter what, any war he starts will be wrapped up early enough that by the time 2024 rolls around the Republican Party will go back to its monolithic personality death cult swirling around Donald Trump.

The Republican Party may face unprecedented division between itself and Donald Trump if there is a war between Russia and Ukraine, because Trump is such a fucking Putin toady that he buck 60 years of Republican political tradition and support the Russians against the Ukrainians.

A lot would depend, of course, on how bad any war between Russia and Ukraine became as well as if the war captured the popular domestic imagination. If the war got really bad and graphic images of the death and destruction of the war between Russia and Ukraine got so bad that Americans picked the Ukrainian side and Trump STILL sided with the Russians…well, Republicans might, finally, have a window opportunity to excise Trump, if not MAGA, from their body politic.

But it’s one of those things that is impossible to predict. There are just too many different variables. And, you know, of course, that Trump is so craven that he specifically for near-term political expediency, he might switch gears, only to go back to slobbing Putin’s knob the moment he was safely in the White House again.

Anyway, the point is — the moment any major war starts in Ukraine, we may all have to take a deep breath and reevaluate what might happen politically in the United States on a domestic basis because of it.

What Is Putin’s Endgame For Trump In The Context Of Ukraine?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Putin’s relationship to Trump is not nearly as easy to figure out as any objective observer might want. We know that Putin wanted Trump to win in 2016. And we know that Putin probably early on made a political calculation that it would be dumb to invade, say, Ukraine in Trump’s first term given what a suck up Trump would be to Russia if it happened.

And, yet, when we turn to the present day, we encounter a conundrum.

It’s very possible that by definition, if Putin invades Ukraine in some sort of “general war” that he would severely damage the Republican Party by splitting it into the Pro-Russia MAGA faction and the more traditional anti-Russian faction. Depending on how bloody the war became, you could even see Trump finally getting a worthy primary opponent, one who would run specifically on being tough on the Russians who were destroying eastern Ukraine.

Which makes one wonder — why?

Why risk destroying the political career of one of the biggest geopolitical patsies in modern history when you could just sit back, wait for Trump to win re-election in 2024, get his Constitutional Convention and THEN strike Ukraine. Putin is a very patient man, he could very well do that and get everything he ever wanted with Ukraine and more.

So, there are a lot of contradictions in Putin and Trump’s relationship that don’t make any sense because we don’t know all that’s going on. But the case could be made, I guess, that something like this is going on — Trump was a combination Manchurian Candidate, Manhattan Project and very, very lucky asymmetrical political attack against the United States.

Even though Trump was a Russian toady and the most powerful man in the world in the palm of Putin’s hand for four years, now that he’s out of office, Putin sees a big chunk of Eastern Ukraine being something he craves so much that he’s willing to destroy the Operation Trump to obtain it.

Putin has made the geopolitical decision to strike now, even though doing so would be a make or break event for the Republican Party for at least one political cycle. And, yet, maybe I’m not giving Putin enough credit.

Maybe Putin is going into his winter war against Ukraine knowing that he intends to wrap it up by spring. If that’s the case, then by fall 2022, everything will be back to where it was. Trump will be the most powerful man in the Republican Party and Putin’s toady.

Meanwhile, Putin will control a huge swath of Ukraine.

But, at the same time, Putin is potentially making a pretty huge miscalculation. If Russia’s involvement in Ukraine lingers long enough to really catch the attention of the domestic American imagination then….things could get interesting for all involved.

Is The Omicron COVID19 Variant My Feared “Omega Variant?’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Some time ago, I worried out loud on this blog about the possibility of a super potent COVID19 variant I called “the Omega Variant.” The announcement today of the existence of the “Omicron” variant has again got me wondering if my dire predictions might come true.

For it to be what I feared, the Omicron variant would have to be so much worse than the original COVID19 everything would be thrown up in the air in an unprecedented fashion, very, very rapidly. In fact, the very existence of our current concept of the modern world would momentarily be put in doubt. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world would have to die in quick succession.

That’s when we know that the Omicron variant was the Omega Variant.

So far, I don’t even know why the WHO is concerned about Omicron in the first place. As such, I think we’re all kind of freaking out and pouring our fears into it in the abstract.

There is a political aspect to all of this. Enough people die quick enough in the United States and the country will buckle in to warring camps a lot — A LOT — sooner than you might think. But, for the moment at least, that’s all very fantastical.

Soon enough, I think we’ll find out what the deal is with Omicron and how concerned we should be. I’m hold up with a broken right ankle, so, hopefully, if the apocalypse does come, it can at least wait until February.

At least give me a running start, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Joe Rogan Is Becoming the Jon Stewart Of The Right — And That’s Bad For Everyone


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There was a point when Jon Stewart was, by proxy, one of the most influential political figures in American politics. But he always seemed very uncomfortable with taken so seriously. It got to the point where whenever he could not help himself and flexed his political clout, he would crack a fart joke to soften the blow.

Joe Rogan / The Internet

And, so, now, we are in a new era, the Joe Rogan Era, where he is in a similar situation to Stewart, only for the Right. The analogy isn’t one to one, but there’s enough similar to take note of it.

Rogan isn’t nearly as smart or engaging as Stewart, but he has garnered a lot of attention in the “alt Right lite” by having clear opinions that he’s will to defend. Up to a point, of course. Wrapping yourself up in an earnest masculinity will only get you so far. Rogan can be a big fucking idiot.

And that tendency to be an idiot has gotten worse as his political influence has increased. In fact, the case could be made that he is yet another cog in the massive, extensive permission structure that allows Traditionalists to make common cause with the MAGA New Right.

He’s part of the amorphous media blob of non-FOX News, non-OANN, non-NewsMax media outlets that water down and make palatable the putrid bullshit of Alex Jones, et. They do this so Traditionalists, who feel pushed up against a political wall because of negative polarization, are looking for any possible excuse not to make common cause with the center-Left in an effort to defeat the rise of fascism in the United States.

Joe Rogan is a pretty big player in all of this. And, you could plot out a counter-factual in which it was Rogan, not Trump, who ran for president in, say, 2020 if Trump had not run in 2016 (or lost.)

Meanwhile, just like Jon Stewart, if Rogan ever does something that causes a lot of pushback, he simply shrugs and says he’s a “comedian not a doctor” and why is everyone getting so upset.

Anyway, Rogan has a lot — a lot — of very passionate defenders who love his gruff, earnest masculine platitudes. No matter what we end up doing — having a civil war or turning into an autocracy, Rogan is likely to only grow in power until things reach some sort of stability again.

What that New Normal will look like is anyone’s guess.