Category: Cold Civil War

The Best Person To Defend Trump At His Impeachment Trial Is Himself


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ugh. Where to begin with this one. It’s so easy to think up crazy-like-a-fox autocratic things Trump can do. Then he, being just an idiot, manages to bungle any tactic that any other autocrat would see as obvious and use with great gusto.

Take impeachment, for instance.

Trump apparently is having problems finding lawyers to defend him at his Senate impeachment trial. Now, remember, impeachment is, by definition, a political act. Trump has no need of lawyers. He already has the MAGA-Qanon base of the Republican Party welding absolute control over the Republican Party. Why not lean into that by defending himself?

All he has to do is rant in the well of the Senate at every opportunity and Republican Senators will be so in abject fear of the MAGA-Qanon base that they will let Trump off simply to shut him up.

But the thing about Trump is he is such a lazy idiot and not an autocrat, that he just doesn’t have the abstract thought necessary to pull such a stunt off. He’s just going to find some knuckle dragger lawyer and hope for the best. Idiot.

Time To Do Preemptive Triage


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On a macro level, the United States is doomed. We have a very stark choice ahead of us — fascist autocracy or civil war / revolution. The election of Joe Biden simply punted the crisis down the road about four years. And that punt happened because of one person and one person only: Donald Trump.

Trump is such a lazy idiot that the very thing that any other thug in his position would have done, he didn’t do. If Tom Cotton or Mike Pompeo was president in 2017 I probably wouldn’t be writing this now because I would be locked up in an ICE concentration camp — or worse. Every republic has to fall and so here were are — the United States is an autocracy without an autocrat.

No one is going to save us. We’re doomed. The Republican Party will grow more radical and powerful over the next four years, not less so. And, so, in the end, the only real question is how violent will the transformation from liberal democracy to fascist autocracy be. Will there be a civil war / revolution as we transition, or will it be such a historical sucker punch that when the media is purged and people like me are snatched off the street will anyone even care?

I’m talking about macro trends here. On a macro level, the United States is fate is sealed. It’s over. The forces of white identity politics are simply too strong. Someone like Trump was going to rise in the 2016-2024 time frame, it just happened to be Trump. What everyone missed, however, was Trump was strictly an avatar — he was successful for simply being himself. A sizable chunk of the electorate sees liberal democracy as a threat and, as such, they wanted the guy from The Apprentice.

Thankfully for everyone else, when they elected “the guy from The Apprentice” what they got was Chauncey Gardner from Being There.

But this is simply a historical quirk that will work itself out soon enough. We have, in fact, crossed the Rubicon and we’re all in Rome waiting for Caesar’s forces to reach the city. As such, we have to accept that it’s over. America’s decline is set to accelerate to the point that we leave NATO and pretty much pull all our troops from the entire world so we are Fortress America. This is now a historical absolute. Trump simply sliced the seal on fascist autocracy. A big chunk of the American electorate wants a fascist autocracy because they’re afraid of the browning of America.

As such, we have to do triage. As I’ve suggested before, you need a passport. And if you don’t have the means to leave the country within four years, move to a Blue State. When the Final Fall happens, it’s likely to be a historical thunderclap. And, as I keep saying, my only question at this point is literally will there be a revolution / civil war in the 2024-2025 timeframe or will the fascist autocracy be established peacefully?

From my Webstats, I can tell that there is a huge amount of interest in second civil war porn. If my tiny little blog is getting most of its traffic now from people wanting to stroke one off to my dystopian hellscape scenarios, then, well, we got a problem.

Let me be clear — the extremism of the Republican Party is a feature, not a bug. As America grows more diverse, the Republican Party is only going to grow more radical and fascist. And, as such, we have to get woke to what’s really going on — the Republican Party is a fascist party and in the end they either split into the Patriot Party (MAGA) and the Republican Party or fascist Trumpism completely consumes the Republican Party. From what I can tell, it definitely seems as though any civil war in the Republican Party is over and MAGA won.

So, get out while you can. Move to Europe. Or Australia. The United States is rotting from within politically and will buckle soon enough. Something pretty big — something I could never possibly imagine — would have to happen to prevent this transformation. The era of indecision is over. Pick a side. Or it will be chosen for you.

Q Nation: ‘The Velvet Fist’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Of all the House Trump: Next Generation people I’m worried about, it’s Lara Trump that seems the most poised to finally strangle American liberal democracy. I say this because she’s demonstrably beautiful, smart and ambition — and something of a proxy for her much-maligned husband Eric Trump. My current thinking is something like this could happen — Lara Trump wins a Senate seat in North Carolina (because she’s actually willing to, like, work, unlike Ivanka) and after a major primary battle with any number of non-Trump autocrats in waiting, we get ourselves The Velvet Fist.

Lara Trump will be the sunny, beautiful exterior while someone like Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton is the “fist” while serving as her veep. This would be very in line with how autocrats work. As you may know, one of the ways Putin has stayed in power for about three decades now is he kept bouncing back and forth between President and Premier.

So that’s one of several options when it comes to how the United States finally lurches into its pre-ordinaed destiny of fascist autocracy. We’ll be so busy thinking, “Oh, Lara Trump would NEVER do that, would she…” that we are totally oblivious that Mike Pompeo (or whomever) is the REAL president behind the scenes who is quickly consolidating power in the 2025 – 2027 time frame. I have really come to believe that all my dystopian nightmares that I predicted during Trumplandia will still happen, it just may be Lara Trump (face) that it happens under.

We’re just not prepared as a nation for the historial sucker punch that is about to happen to us. American liberal democracy is going to be strangled by The Velvet Fist so quickly that by the time we process what just happened, the ICE Camps will be packed full of all the people Q Anon thinks are involved in some sort of evil cabal. (Which, oddly enough is pretty much just Jewish people all over again…ugh.)

And, really, Lara Trump instead of Ivanka Trump would square the circle of how Q Nation could start killing The Usual Suspects of Jews, etc without upsetting Ivanka’s tender Jewish sensibilities. She’s so complicit that by the time SHE realizes the monster she’s associated with, she’s going to be sharing a concentration camp with the equally gobsmacked Stephen Miller. Or, put another way, anyone who doesn’t think Q is simply a cover to murder “liberals” who also often happen to be Jewish is an idiot.

But this is all very speculative at this moment. It could be that it’s not the Velvet Fist, but the Orange Fist — our good old pal deranged Trump comes back, but only as something of a Trojan Horse. He would come back tan, ready and rested, but with Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton as he veep. They would, in the background, do all the horrific things I thought Trump would do the first time around.

The point is, again — America is an autocracy without an autocrat. Macro trends just aren’t in our liberal democracy’s favor. Something pretty huge that I can’t sketch out would have to happen to prevent Republicans having another shot at turning us into Q Nation. Again — either get out of the country in the next four years or move to a Blue State.

Things are going to get dark.

‘Q Nation’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate to break it to you, but the bad guys are going to win. There continues to be a lot of chatter around that the Republican Party is going to wither away because it’s too growing too extreme and is too consumed with the bonkers Q conspiracy theory.

Sadly, I think the opposite is true — we have to accept that for a sizable chunk of the population liberal democracy is no longer seen as a legitimate form of government. There are a lot — a lot — of reasons for this, but generally I would say it boils down to white blue collar men without a college education not being able to settle down and expect “the American Dream” to be waiting for them as they grow older.

As such, they voted for “the guy from The Apprentice” in 2016, hoping for a Putin-style autocrat. That’s what they wanted. But that’s not what they got. Yes, plutocrats got their massive tax cut. And social conservatives got their hundreds of young hack MAGA judges. But, in the end, when America was spread eagle in front of Trump, he, well, he couldn’t get his figurative autocratic cock up. He turned out just to be an idiot, like Chauncey Gardner from Being There. So, while he had plenty of autocratic or fascist impulses and inclinations, in reality he just didn’t have it in him.

So where does that leave us?

Well, barring something I just can’t predict, we have about four years of something akin to a Weimar Republic ahead of us. Or, even more specifically, we have TWO years of being in political neutral, then another two years of the Republican Party plotting how they can consolidate power once they win back the presidency in 2024.

Republicans now wallow in white identity politics to such an extent that when they do get back to 2017-levels of control, they aren’t going to let the opportunity slip through their fingers again. It will either be the Velvet Fist of Lara Trump / Mike Pompeo or just Mike Pompeo (or someone like him) being full autocrat.

And, really, at this point, the question is not so much if America is an autocracy without an autocrat, it’s when President Pompeo has two years to consolidate power does he cause a secession crisis / civil war / revolution, or do we just slip into an autocratic fascist state without so much as a struggle.

I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.

All I know is the ICE infrastructure is going to be weaponized in about five years and people like me are going to be thrown into concentration camps. All my nightmares from the Trump Era were simply a few years too early. They would have happened if Trump had anywhere near the political acumen that I — and people like The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman — ascribed to him.

The next time around, however, I’m going to be right. And probably starving to death in an ICE Camp somewhere.

The Rise of The American Fourth Reich: Rating Would-Be Fuhrers


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m reading a book about the rise of Hitler given that the United States definitely has a Weimar Republic vibe to it right now. When it comes to Trump, I totally got him wrong — he was a would-be Hitler (or Putin) but the stress on would-be. He had autocratic and fascist tendencies, but in reality he was just a big old ding-dong.

He was nothing more than a real-life Chauncey Gardner from Being There.

But there are a whole host of men waiting in the wings to do what Trump couldn’t do, despite his impulses: strangle American liberal democracy. Let’s look at who they are.

Lara Trump / Ivanka Trump / Don Jr.
Of all the Young House Trump people, Lara Trump is probably the most dangerous. She’s smart and could probably be very smooth in any type of “Velvet Fist” arragmentment with, say, Mike Pompeo or Josh Hawley. Ivanka and Don Jr are just too vacuous to actually get the nomination. Or not. The likelihood they could pull off such a stunt grows significantly with how much Trump goes with The Patriot Party concept.
Christ Christy
Christy is probably the best of a lot of bad choices. Since Christy would have to bank right in a big way to win the nomination, if he became president, he would probably be an autocrat, but one with a little bit of enlightenment. He would become an autocrat for no other reason than he would need to dance with the one that brung him. His heart probably wouldn’t be in it all that much because he would want to at least pretend to stay within democratic norms.
Ted Cruz
The thing about Cruz is he’s so craven and cynical that even his turn to autocrat would likely have air quotes around it. He would be an autocrat simply because he could be, not because he was all that into it. But the end result would be the same — we would be nothing more than a managed democracy for the foreseeable future.
Mike Pompeo
Pompeo is dangerous. He’s dangerous because he’s smart and seen Trumplandia up close. And he really sees the job as an opportunity to force Jesus to come back by starting a war between Israel and Iran. As such, he’s the real deal when it comes to a would-be fascist leader in the United States. Once he’s elected, there’s no going back. I say this in the context that I expect both houses of Congress to flip in 2022, so in 2025, he would have zero oversight, just like Trump in 2017. He would have a full two years to completely consolidate power and crush any putative “resistance” to him.
Tom Cotton
Cotton is even more dangerous than Pompeo. He’s the real deal when it comes to would-be American autocrats. He’s the autocrat that Trump thought he could be. He’s young enough — and smart enough — that I could see him holding back in 2024 so he could get into a “Velvet Fist” arrangement with either Lara or Ivanka Trump where he would be Veep and let one of them be the “pretty face” of autocracy.
Josh Hawley
As I understand it, it’s Hawley that the MAGA base likes the most after the usual suspects of House Trump. And people who know him call him a fascist. So, in a sense, the only thing stopping him going full Fuhrer on us is his personality. At what end of the autocratic spectrum would he fall? Would he be more of a Putin or more of Hitler? That, I’m afraid, I can’t predict. But what I can predict is it would be Hawley who would flip the switch to turn the existing ICE infrastructure into concentration camps where people like me would be put.

Person X
If there were more conservative celebrities, I would say the real danger is not from any of the above, but someone who is similar to Trump but younger and more focused. James Woods seems the ideal type second generation Trumpian figure to run for POTUS. But he’s kinda old and, to date, doesn’t seem to have any political asperations. Bruce Willis is too nice as is Tim Allen. It would have to be someone who was conservative, frequently played autocratic figures in the media and was actually more than just an empty suit.

Liberal Fever Dream: A Runaway Senate Jury


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is very much a liberal fever dream. It’s never going to happen. But it is mildly pleasant to imagine a situation where once the Senate starts its second impeachment trial of Trump that events cause what would otherwise be a pretty meh trial to go haywire.

Imagine if the two sides got into in a pitched battle of new witnesses and evidence as a series of huge new Trump Era scandals exploded in the coming days. We might even get to the point where John Bolton and Don McGahn finally spill the tea about what a criminal fucktard Trump has been the last four or so years.

But that’s never going to happen. Never.

Trump will be acquitted, run again in 2024 and we’re going to be exactly where we were earlier in January.

Fourth Reich: Hitler, Trump & The Rise Of The Patriot Party


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In the spirit of wanting to be where the puck will be, not where it is, I’m reading a great new Hitler biography. It’s part of a two book biography and talks about Hitler’s rise to power up until 1939. It’s a very easy read about a very dark and deep subject.

As I have predicted for some time, the United States is now in political neutral and will likely be so for about two years until Congress flips to the Republicans again. This, of course, will be the setup to Trump or someone like Trump becoming president in 2024.

Enjoy your liberal democracy while you can, America, things are about to get dark. Really dark.

The only reason why liberal democracy survived is because Trump is an idiot. He had the entire nation prone before him, ripe for the taking and he totally, completely blew it. He was all impulse and no follow through. He just isn’t as smart as Putin or as bloodthirsty as Hitler.

So, this brings us to the prospect of The Patriot Party, which be, at first, simply the MAGA subset of the Republican Party. I’ve seen some Twitter liberals gloating about how great such a historic cleaving of the Republican Party would be and all I gotta say is — slow your roll.

If Trump did pull the MAGA element away from the Republican Party to start the Patriot Party, any victory that liberal-progressives would get out of such a situation would be fleeting. Maybe one election cycle. The macro trends that have the United States lurching towards an autocracy are just too powerful. Either we become an autocracy under Republicans in 2024 or one under The Patriot Party in 2028.

You pick.

So, in a sense, the American First Republic has already fallen, history hasn’t caught up yet. The Patriot Party is going to be like that slutty girl who will do the political buttstuff that our old girlfriend won’t do. Broken free from the moderating force of the National Review wing of the Republican Party (the “establishment”) The Patriot Party is going to break any law, destroy any norm, do whatever is necessary — even violence — to obtain and keep power as soon as possible.

I still think in hindsight Qanon will serve as the basis for a new Holocaust. This time, the United States will implode like Cambodia in the 1970s and there will be American Killing Fields filled with…gulp…people like me. It’s going to all happen so fast, it’s going to be a political history suckerpunch.

I just don’t see any way this doesn’t happen. Something I just can’t predict would have to step in and prevent it from happening. I’m thinking something like a limited nuclear exchange with the DPRK or something. Something big. Something so big it would overshadow the rise of fascism in the United States on a macro political level — or at least punt the problem down the road until, I don’t know, the Singularity or First Contact happens.

So, in short, read up on Hitler’s rise now to prepare for how you, on a personal level, will address something similar in the United States at some point in the next decade.

Good luck.

A Trump…er POTUS…By Any Other Name #AmWriting


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that I’ve finally finished a solid outline and am really throwing myself into writing a great first draft…we’re no longer in Trumplandia. Ugh. One of the things that I’ve repeatedly said is I don’t plan to ever use Trump’s name in this novel, even though, in a sense, my rage against the era that fucker caused is the beating heart of the work.

Now that Trump is out of office — at least for the fucking time being — I wonder if I might at least be a bit more specific who “POTUS” in the novel is. And, yet, I really don’t want the whole thing to be dismissed as a liberal fever dream or screed. It’s just meant to be a fun, thought provoking novel in the tradition of Stieg Larsson’s work.

That’s it.

Nothing more complicated or deep than that.

But my rage against Trumplandia is so white hot, so totally consuming on a creative level — and I’ve gone through so many hoops to get here — that it does make me wonder if maybe it’s ok to go beyond simply a “Individual #1” level of description as to who the “POTUS” in question is.

One solution, of course, would be to cut the POTUS angle out of the story altogether. But that part of the story is existential. That’s the whole point of the story. I can’t help that it took me three years to get to the point where my novel raging about Trump won’t be finished until well into his successor’s term in office.

So, I think I’m going to continue to look at this as just a scenario. It’s not THE POTUS it’s just A POTUS. Who the POTUS at the time in question happened to be is pretty obvious, so that should be enough.

I like the idea of using proxies to rant about MAGA-Qanon-Patriot Party cocksucker fuckers. My goal is that simply by what I bring up in the novel, I will definitely give you some sense of what’s really going on. There shouldn’t be any need to be explicit about it.

You’ll know, if you’re not an idiot.

Or, put another way, the more I use subtext to explain how enraged I continue to be about Trumplandia, the better the story will be. It won’t be preachy and — hopefully — even center-right people can read and enjoy the novel as a novel and not some sort of Atlas Shrugged for liberal-progressives.

I just want to write a novel that’s not embarrassing.

Hollywood, ‘Fleabag’ & The Strange Case of The Dog That Didn’t Bark


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Looking back over all my ranting about Trumplandia, there’s one thing that really shocks me — we never got a “Network” for that era. It’s surreal. It’s almost as if Hollywood was scared to touch the epic shitshow that was happening all around us for four years.

For much of Trumplandia, the case could be made that it just takes time to develop and produce a movie. But in the four years of Trumplandia, we never once got a movie that directly referenced the insane situation we were in. And, really, in a sense it was Phoebe Waller-Bridges’ “Fleabag” that gave us the catharsis we needed.

How many times during Trumplandia did we collectively want to look at the camera of life with one of Fleabag’s expressions?

Now that Trumplandia has fallen, it does raise the question of will art ever address it. The novel I’m developing and writing hopes to do that, but the context growing very, very different every day. I struggle with how to tell the story I’ve always wanted without it seeming extremely dated.

The issue, I think, is to make the story a good as possible and also to really lean on character. If I can just make it a good story set in a specific moment in time — like, say “Ladybird,” then some of the more potentially dated aspects of the story will be “hidden” by how good the story is unto itself.

I really have a huge amount of reading to do, but I also have to put-up or shut-up. They say your first draft is meant to be shit, and so now that I have the structure of the story down pat, as soon as I’m mentally in the right space to do so –which should be very, very soon — I’m going to sit down and start writing a serious first draft. One, I hope, is the best first draft I’ve attempted to date.

But I must admit that I’m on a hair trigger to do something different if I feel I’m forced to. I have maybe three or four solid novel or screenplay concepts rolling around in my mind and if this current novel becomes untenable, I’m going to move on — even if it sucks and will hurt like a bitch.

Yet, that hasn’t happened yet. Gotta keep moving on.

I still think there will be an audience for a novel that wallows in the conventions of Trumplandia.

Trumplandia Has Fallen — Now What


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the stranger political events of my life is what didn’t happen — Trump turned out not to be an autocrat, but just a lazy idiot with autocratic impulses. Or, put another way, everyone — even me — fell into the trap of ascribing to Trump political acuity that he obviously did not, in fact, have.

So here we are.

Within a matter of days, something we all assumed was the “new normal” — Trumplandia — has vanished. The person who was in the center of the American experience for about five years, has dropped off the face of the earth. What I think will happen is we’re going to be in political neutral for about two years until the Republicans come back to power in Congress and the whole cycle starts up again.

An would-be autocrat (Trump? Pompeo? Cotton? Hawley? etc, etc, etc) will arise, use their base of support in Congress to win the election one way or another. All our fears will come true, just a few years late.

Enjoy your liberal democracy while you’ve got it — barring something pretty historic, the macro trends that caused Trump in the first place will cause a Trump-like figure (only this time younger and more focused) to win election and strangle it.

I keep saying — we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.

The moment the inevitable autocrat takes over, then, well, that’s it. We’re going to be no better than Putin’s Russia. And loudmouth people like me, who, to date, have had the luxury of a liberal democracy to allow us to shoot off at the mouth without the fear of the jackboot…will just fade away.