Say what you will about the #NeverTrump movement, they definitely have principles. And, I think, that’s what makes #NeverTrump groups like The Lincoln Project so appealing to liberals. NeverTrumpers are so principled, articulate and passionate about how much they fucking hate Trump that they sometimes outshine liberal leadership on the subject. (I find the vast majority of liberal leadership rather timid and tepid, at best.)
Now, I have to note — the existence of the #NeverTrump movement has a spooky similarity to the War Democrats of the Civil War. So, in a sense, history is repeating itself, which does not bode well for the long-term political stability of the United States.
In fact, it’s not too difficult to imagine a situation during a Second American Civil War where President AOC picks a NeverTrumper as her veep in an effort to unite the country, or something.
That sounds rather fantastical — it is — but it is at least within the realm of possibility, the way things are going.
I guess what I’m saying is, NeverTrumpers could balloon in political significance should Blue States find themselves actively trying to destroy the Republican Party. I mean, a liberal democracy needs some sort of conservative party if it’s going to be a…functioning liberal democracy.
If there is a Second American Civil War and the “Good Guys” — read, people like me — win, NeverTrumpers would be the core of any new conservative party, for better or worse.
We really need to destroy the Republican Party, by the way. It’s gone septic and its very existence as an organization is an existential threat to our democracy.
Way too many people have pinned their hopes on somehow everything magically going back to normal if we can just destroy Trump politically. In a sense, Trump has done all the damage he needs to do. Because he’s such a fucking idiot, he was a transitional figure.
Now that your typical ambitious Republican pol knows the conditions of the New Normal after studying Trump, we have about a dozen would-be autocrats who are chomping at the bit to finally put our undead liberal democracy out of its misery.
The current front runner for America’s Putin is Ron DeSantis. He is EXTREMELY POPULAR with my conservative relatives. Liberals hate DeSantis, so the “own the libs” box is checked. And, I’ve gotten to the point where I struggle to understand why Twitter liberals try to ascribe any logic to MAGA New Right cocksuckers at this point.
White Nationalism has gone mainstream within the Republican Party, as has autocracy and fascism. So…lulz? The historical momentum is now such that there is an open path for DeSantis to be Trump’s successor, become an autocrat through a MAGA Koch Brothers Constitutional Convention and that’s it — he’ll be POTUS for 40 odd years.
Ron DeSantis
As I keep saying, I keep vacillating wildly thinking we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy and thinking we’re going to have a civil war. If DeSantis is the GOP’s 2024 nominee then we’re definitely going to slip peacefully into autocracy. From what I can tell, he’s proven himself an adept governor — other than killing his electorate by seeing the COVID health crisis exclusively through the lens of partisan politics — and, as such, he could easily shepherd us into autocracy.
There are a few known unknowns, however, most of them deal with a 300 lb sack of shit known as Donald Trump. It would be pretty historically ironic if Trump shived DeSantis politically and so disrupted our now near-inevitable transition into a Russian-style managed democracy that we had a civil war instead.
The thing about DeSantis is if you combine how popular he is with the MAGA New Right base with his likely ability to hoodwink liberal soccer moms in the suburbs — he’s got a winning combination. To the point that he might even be able to win the 2024 election outright, no nullification on the part of a MAGA Congress needed.
It’s easy to imagine DeSantis wins fair-and-square and soon enough enough banks hard right into autocrat land and there will be absolutely nothing we can do about it. That will be it. He’ll start ranting about how we need a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment” and when it is called up somehow, mysteriously “religious liberty” will be codified in the Constitution and presidents will be elected for seven years, not four.
At the moment, that seems to be our fate. People like me will be murdered in cold political blood by ICE — one way or another — and that will just be America until we get so hot that we all have to move to Canada.
Zeroth Law A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. — Isaac Asimov
By Ender
The most powerful nation in the world is careening towards an existential choice: autocracy or civil war. I hate violence. I hate guns. Hell, I hate conflict. But we’ve approached a historical moment when the average self-aware American needs to do a gut check: what are you willing to do to maintain and, if necessary renew, the American Covenant?
As such, I feel forced by the human, American equivalent of Asimov’s “Zeroth Law” to say that given that I would rather die on my feet a free man than live on my knees a slave to MAGA that maybe we should begin to prepare for civil war. This is an extremely risky option.
There are no assurances that we, “the Good Guys” would win. A simple glance at the first Civil War is a huge warning not to think about it — from 1861 to 1863 the CSA had a very, very good chance of winning. That’s one of the many things about war that sucks so bad: you just never know. You could end up killing a lot of people and still not achieve your war aims. Just ask the multitude of Iraqis and Iranians that died in the early 1980s.
But at the same time, the MAGA New Right is telegraphing their objectives. They want the United States to be an autocracy, a managed democracy. They are doing this in broad daylight. If you look at the Twitter feed of people like Jesse Kelly, it’s pretty much full of the exact same things I rant about, only from the exact opposite end of the political spectrum.
What I fear, he wants, and vis versa.
I’m not proposing you buy a gun or anything — please, for fuck’s sake don’t — but I am saying you have at best about four years (January 2025) to get your affairs in order before we either slip peacefully into a Russian-style autocracy or we have a civil war of some sort.
If you have the means, buy a passport and get out while you still can. If you’re like me and don’t think you’re going to have the means to leave, you need to start to game out what you’re going to do. In some respects, a lot of this is macro and out of the hands of any one person. The choice of civil war or autocracy isn’t really in my — or anyone else’s hands.
But if we do have a civil war — which I pray we won’t — freedom loving people have to get over themselves and start thinking on an existential level how they can help the war effort. I know myself well enough to know that I’m probably going to throw myself into the revolution should it happen. I’m a good writer, speaker and organizer.
Should history decide to give me the opportunity to help save the United States, I’m going to answer the call.
Or, put another way, don’t let yourself be cowed by the civil war talk of the New Right. Rather, call their bluff and start to game out what you might do on an individual basis to combat those fucktards when the moment comes. The Blue States have a huge advantage when it comes to their economies, political unity and concentration of population.
The issue is, just like with the early days of the first civil war, if the Blue States will have the wherewithal to fight fire with fire. It could be that the Red States will sucker punch Blue States and while they’re recovering simply strangle what’s left of American democracy while Blue States recover from the inital blow.
But the Zeroth Law tells me, on a personal, abstract basis what to do.
The evidence continues to build that Trump was his own worst enemy when it came to the events of January 6th. If he wasn’t such a fucking IDIOT, his attempt at a self-coup or “autogolpe,” would have been successful. The crux of the issue is — the whole plot was done in a frenzied panic.
Me, if Trump is successful next time.
It gives one pause for thought to think that it isn’t that Trump isn’t an autocrat — he is — it’s just he’s so fucking lazy and stupid that he couldn’t pull it off even though he could have.
Or, put another way, the Hand of Fate pointed at Trump and gave him the opportunity and motive to stage a successful autogolpe in the United States. What he didn’t have was the means — he’s a barely cognizant man child who was simply playing himself.
This brings me to something I’ve found myself thinking a lot about of late: Trump is not a “great man.” He’s just an avatar. Right time, right place kind of guy. Hitler, or Stalin or whomever weren’t just playing themselves, they had agency — they warped history through sheer ego.
That avatar, not great man, element was in full display with Trump’s attempted autogolpe. Someone like Hitler wouldn’t have let the process get as far along as Trump did. And if Hitler was in such a situation, he would have used whatever means necessary to make sure he never had to leave office.
But Trump, oh boy. What a fucking moron.
We love you, Chauncy. You would never try to end our democracy.
Having said all that, there is the issue of Trump single-handedly, through sheer incompetence, forcing us into a civil war. It would happen either because Cyber Ninjas “proved” he “won” Arizona or he becomes Speaker when Republicans take the House in 2022 or he runs again in 2024 and there’s a nullification crisis when a MAGA Congress refuses to certify a Biden win.
Again, any of those scenarios would involve Trump being nothing more than a historical empty vessel. Any other autocrat would deftly transition the United States from liberal democracy into autocracy given any of those opportunities. But Trump is a fucking idiot so he could just crash into history and cause Blue States to bounce or Red States to bounce and cause the whole country to come crashing down unless the military decides to step in with some sort of temporary junta.
What I’m saying is — while we’re all going to be forced to take Trump both seriously and literally when the history of the United States is written, in a sense we dodged a huge fucking bullet (at least for the moment.) Almost any other person in the same political spectrum as Trump would have successfully destroyed American democracy.
I have no idea how to write a skit, but I do know how to tell a story. So, here you go, SNL — do something with this idea. One of the most beloved SNL skits is Phil Hartman’s “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.” I think Ron DeSantis looks just like that character, so I would get one of the Not Ready For Primetime Players to be “Unfrozen Caveman Governor.”
Ron DeSantis
The conceit is that he’s VERY conservative, like Stone Age conservative. The humor would be the wink and a nod to the bonkers things that MAGA New Right Republicans actually believe.
In a sense, it would be sort of Chauncy Gardner of Being There, only if he was a caveman pol.
When should you panic when it comes to my dystopian predictions about the “Fourth Turning” being the existential choice of civil war or autocracy?
Second American Civil War In some ways, this one is pretty obvious — there would be a catalyst that started the process of a states doing something akin to secession that would spark an event that we would refer to as “the Second American Civil War.” So, in a sense, you would know something was happening.
But at the same time, here are some metrics that would re-enforce the idea that the “Fourth Turning” of a civil war is about to happen. One is, Red people in Blue States and Blue people in Red states would begin to flee to states with politics that fit their personal views. This would be extremely dramatic. There are about 335 million Americans and if there was panic domestic political refugee movements it would be astonishing in scope.
Just as this happened, it’s likely New York City would be a massive flash point because a lot of conservative media is physically located there. So, if the United States really was about to buckle into some sort of Trumplandia and rump USA shooting war, it’s very possible that the offices of Fox News and the WSJ would be physically attacked by an angry mob of New Yorkers. Trump Tower, too, could be stormed and gutted.
If you start seeing shit like that — we’re going to have a civil war.
Also, if you start to see radicalization on the part of, say, the talking heads of Today or Good Morning America or NPR — we’re really fucked. Those guys are the last bastions of “everyone stay calm.” If they freak out, then buckle up, we’re fucked.
Another thing that would happen about this time is severe violence on a state government level. There would be coups and counter-coups in states like Oregon, Virginia and Michigan.
One other thing — the draft would come back in a rather abrupt fashion.
Autocracy The time to panic with autocracy in the United States is when the media is purged. This will happen in a way that the crumbling Establishment goes out of its way to minimize and rationalize.
Then, gradually, in fits and starts any form of protesting will be crushed and, yes, people will begin to mysteriously get pushed out of widows.
Jesus Christ are we fucked. It’s growing tiresome to point out how dire things are at the moment. All the conditions are there for the United States to drift peacefully into something akin to “lite touch” fascism. The only reason why it would be a bit mellow — at first — is the absence of a large-scale SA / SS paramilitary group.
We have them, but there are too many of them who are fractious and not really the jackbooted thugs that a fascism government would need. Add to that the so-called Deep State of people who simply want to keep our failing liberal democratic traditions alive in some form and at first there will be only one change: the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if Democrats control Congress, too.
Otherwise, things will — initially, at least — be the same as they always have.
The problem is, form follows function. Once white nationalist fascists realize they can do whatever the fuck they want and there will be absolutely no consequences for them, they’re going to grow more aggressive. Before you know it, my running gag about me being pushed out a window by ICE won’t be so funny anymore. (Gulp)
Soon enough, living in the United States and Russia will be like the end of Animal Farm — we’ll look back and forth between the two and they’ll look identical. Only when it becomes personal will the average white Christian MAGA person care about the abuses of our new white nationalist fascist overlords
As of right now, that seems to be our fate. We’re just going to peacefully transition into a white nationalist fascist autocracy without a peep of objection. We’re going to both-sides ourselves into autocracy. There will be a MAGA-originated Constitutional Convention and whichever one of the would-be autocrats who are chomping at the bit to succeed Trump wins will become an American Putin.
Generations of Americans will only know President Hawley, or President Pompeo or President Noam or President Cotton….the list goes on. There will be occasional big protests and occasional random acts of savage political violence on the part of the white national fascists. But, overall, America will be a national of “blood and soil” and indistinguishable from Russia or Hungry or Turkey.
There are a few known unknowns that could scramble what seems inevitable now. Trump is a fucking idiot who could push himself into macro historical trends AGAIN and force an avoidable civil war on us out of sheer incompetence. Or our transition into a white Christian nationalist fascist state might hit Blue States in just the wrong way and they bounce, causing a civil war.
But, in general, the Establishment simply isn’t taking the fucking New Right seriously enough. So, we’re fucked.
Here are three moments to think about in the future when it comes to the existential choice of autocracy or civil war that faces us.
Near term: The Cyber Ninjas Arizona Recount The Cyber Ninjas clusterfuck sham “audit” is one of those things I just can’t game out. I have no idea what the outcome of them “proving” that Trump “won” the state after all will be. Everything from civil war to it just being something Russian trolls piviot to on Twitter is a potential outcome. Trump already makes it clear he thinks he should be re-instated as POTUS as soon as possible.
I guess what I’m afraid of is a dynamic similar to what happened on January 6th, only on a national scale. The moment the Cyber Ninjas preliminary report is filed that tells Trump won, he’s going to freak the fuck out. Trump has a $100 million war chest to fuck things up, so maybe he would stop grifting long enough to use that money to put pressure on MAGA legislatures to have “Decertification Conventions?”
Or something like that.
And, yet, Trump pretty much has been saying this exact same thing — that if you’re MAGA and have the power to decertify Biden’s win in your state, get to it — and nothing has happened. It’s just kind of rolling around the far Right echo chamber with Mike Flynn. Something would have to change. People with something to lose would have to feel the base of the Republican Party was so juiced up with Big Lie rhetoric that they actually expected them to do something about it now that there was “proof” that Trump “won” Arizona.
Again, the Cyber Ninjas thing is something that is easy to imagine on paper, but in the real world…it could very well just become another MAGA New Right talking point for Jesse Kelly after he says, “Welcome To The New Right!” when he does something embarrassing he can’t properly defend.
I guess the point is — Cyber Ninjas in itself could be enough to push us into a some sort of secession crisis. And, yet, lulz. Who knows. Middle Term: The 2022 mid-terms It could be that what gets us is not Cyber Ninjas or the 2024 Congressional Nullification Crisis, but the 2022 mid-terms. It could be that we’re so fragile on a political level that just the added pressure of the mid-terms will be enough to cause us to collapse.
The way I imagine it happening wouldn’t be the mid-terms themselves, but what they would bring –a Republican controlled Congress. In this case, the civil war would happen not with Red States leaving the Union to form Trumplandia, but with Blue States leaving the Union when Speaker Trump impeaches both Biden and Harris and then incites a civil war when Senate Democrats won’t convict.
This option is a bit nebulous, but it is possible. It’s also possible that the mid-terms could turn tragic if it becomes really obvious that the Republican Party officially won’t brook the Democratic Party winning — ever. That might be enough to cause Blue States to bounce. Or not. Who knows. Longer Term: The 2024 President Election It seems to me that this is going to be it — if we make it through Cyber Ninjas and the 2022 midterms, it will be January 2025 that forces us to make the existential choice of autocracy or civil war.
Everything will come to a head in late 2024 to early 2025. Long term metrics of politics and demographics will come to a sharp point. There will, at last, be no middle ground for anyone — autocracy or civil war.
Either we allow Republicans to nullify the result of a Biden win, there’s another (successful) insurrection to do just that or we have a fucking civil war. Everyone will have to take a side. No exceptions.
January 2025 is going to be a momentous year in our nation’s history — if we make it to that point. But we could doge the situation if a major regional war popped up or, I dunno, some sort of COVID19 variant popped out that killed millions.
Otherwise, we’re fucked on a political history basis.
If the book The Fourth Turning is to be believed, we’re currently in a holding pattern until Something Big happens around 2025. I don’t believe in reveled truth, but that jibes with my personal belief that January 2025 is going to be huge because we’re either going to peacefully drift into an autocracy or, gulp, we’re going to have a civil war.
We’re kind of in a historical holding pattern at the moment. We live in an Era of Meh. But whenever that changes, everything is going to be thrown up in the air. People who currently are just kind of drifting through history may be forced to rise to the occasion.
One person this is very true about is AOC. She’s young, smart and articulate. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where when the crisis of January 2025 happens she is forced into the spotlight in a big way. She might find herself in a Giuliani on 9/11 type situation.
Or, put another way, a side effect of the impending chaos we’re careening towards would be someone like AOC. She’s ripe to be pushed into the next level of our political life for no other reason than she may feel compelled to take a stand that puts her in serious risk.
I have no idea what any of this would entail, but if the country is falling apart because a MAGA controlled Congress refuses to certify a Biden win in January 2025, AOC seems like the type of person who might lead the effort to stop such a tyrannical move.
There’s a lot of buzz of late about the “death of movies.” And, sadly, I fear some of it may be right. American culture is facing something of an existential crisis because the very idea of any sort of “mainstream” is now beginning to melt away. Identity politics is now so absolute that the legitimacy of any heteronormative story is up for debate in the overwrought conversations of Twitter.
I know I sound a little too Joe Rogan with the above, but it comes from a place of love — a love of movies as an art form.
You know it.
Here’s what I think is going to happen — movies are going to continue to drift into culture insignificance until one of a few things happen. If we stop being force fed movies about people running around in capes, then, maybe people might sit up and take notice. But this is unlikely to happen because you can make a shit ton of money with movies like that, so, lulz.
Another way to “fix Hollywood” would be to end “Woke Hollywood.” Instead of trying to make us more woke, tell us a good story. Don’t worry about identity politics — tell a good story. I want less Beanie Feldstein screeching about lesbian sex positions to a Plain Jane lead in Book Smart and more, I don’t know anything. I only keep ranting about how much I fucking hated Book Smart because I was shamed into seeing it by my center-Left echo chamber and the movie is the epitome of preaching to the audience about how being woke is so important.
But, as I always say whenever Book Smart is brought up — I wasn’t the audience. So if you’re a bi-curious high school girl in the suburbs of LA, you probably loved that movie.
Yet another way that movies may come roaring back is because of technology. It could be that once we fully transition to MX (VR and AR) or, hell, even some sort of Strange Days-like MindCap technology, that movies will, like vinyl, make a big comeback as young people grow disillusioned with immersive media.
The crux of the Hollywood’s current problem is a combination of industry dynamics and the need for it to suck its own cock when it comes to there being a “message” in movies. America is so tightly wound at the moment, that a huge segment of the potential viewing audience is turned off with Woke Hollywood, hence the popularity of message-free MCU movies.
I only get a little upset about this specific issue because I love movies. It’s not that hard to tell a great story in a movie. Hell, *I* want to tell a few of those great stories so bad that I recently bought Final Draft. So, lulz.
But are movies dead? Yes, in the short term. Long term, however, I believe they’ll turn out just fine. We just need a New Era of story telling that harkens back to the early 70s.
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