Be The Power
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’ve started to “live tweet” Papa Bear Steve K. Bannon’s podcast. Here’s the latest thread if you’re interested.
Ok, here goes. I’m going to live tweet this episode of Steve Bannon’s piece of shit podcast. https://t.co/JpCpZsIe0V
— Shelt Garner (@sheltgarner) October 2, 2021
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m beginning to grow suspicious about why, out of the blue, the MAGA New Right pitched a fucking fit over a pretty mundane Late Show song-and-dance routine about getting vaccinate.
I’m not saying there was some sort of conspiracy, but the earnestness of the MAGA New Right people in their belief that it was all humorless “propaganda” is very odd. Colbert — and others — have been making fun of the vaccine hesitant for some time now. Why freak the fuck now….because of that specific gag?
It’s all very odd.
It makes me wonder if it’s something of a setup. They must know that Colbert will make fun of their freak out on his show. (Or, at least will / should.) Maybe they think they can draw attention to how unfair picking on the unvaccinated is or some sort of similar bullshit?
But, no matter what, the difference in views on the gag definitely lays bare the cold hard fact that American civil society is beginning to fray at the edges to an alarming rate. This is another datapoint that suggest we’re going to be faced with a historic, existential choice no later than January 2025.
When negative polarization grows so white hot and absolute that we can’t even agree about what’s funny — we got a problem.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I see our current lingering COVID19 pandemic as a national health crisis and, as such, we need all the help we can get to end it. If that means a late night talk show host does a silly song and dance routine about getting vaccinated, so be it.
But, no, the MAGA New Right hot takes were flying hard and fast tonight about how “unfunny” Colbert was for promoting vaccination. It’s shit like that which really hits home that the bolts are popping off the United States at an alarming rate.
If negative polarization has reached such a white hot level that we can’t even agree on what’s funny because we see everything through the lens of politics, something is deeply wrong.
But there’s one thing we have to understand about this difference in senses of humor — it represents a very serious problem. It makes me remember when I went to the MAGA rally in D.C. after Election Day. At some point, I started to get spooked because people were looking at me funny — I think they knew I was live streaming the event and not exactly giving it a thumbs up with my commentary.
I felt…alarmed. Like, under the wrong conditions I might be physically accosted if I stuck around too long. As such, there are real world consequences to this bullshit.
If we can’t even laugh at the same things, then we really are two nations, one Red, one Blue. Now what.
by Ender
I got a lot wrong about the COVID19 pandemic when COVID was first reported in Wuhan. The biggest thing I got wrong was how deadly it would be. Given the first reports of how much of a freakout the Chinese government was going through, I assumed we were in for The Stand levels of death ahead of us. I remember going to the grocery story and imagining what it would be like to rummage for food there in some sort of post-apocalyptic, COVID ravaged world.
Things turned out to be bad, but not that bad.
The worst we had was a run on toilet paper, of all things.
I went to the grocery store today and it wasn’t COVID I was worried about, it was a Second American Civil War.
I looked at the bountiful shelves of food and products and wondered if one day — probably at some point after January 2025 — I would walk into the same grocery story and there….just wouldn’t be anything there because the country had imploded into civil war.
This particular dark vision isn’t months away, but years away. And it’s only one of several potential options ahead of us. But for Trump running again, it’s easy to imagine my fears of political violence around January 2025 being way, way overblown.
All things being equal, if Trump isn’t the Republican nominee in 2024, it’s very easy to see us simply slipping peacefully into autocracy. The trains will continue to run on time, if you will.
But Trump definitely seems like he’s going to run again and, as such, the likelihood that he, through sheer idiotic incompetence will push the United States into civil war grows to at least 50 /50, if not more. And, what’s worse, the case could be made that it won’t even be the 2024 presidential cycle that does it, but the 2022 mid-term cycle.
I say this because Steve Bannon et al are aggressively working to corrupt the institutions associated with what we take for granted in the United States — the administration of free and fair elections. It’s at least possible that if it’s widely believed that the 2022 midterms were corrupt that a civil war could break out then, not as part of the 2024-2025 post-election day shenanigans that I fear.
And all of this is largely being planned in broad daylight. Bannon is organizing the staffing of election boards across the nation with insane, bonkers Big Lie advocates who might get a little bit too big for their britches in 2022 and push us into a civil war two years earlier than I currently expect.
Because, make no mistake, Bannon and his toadies are recalibrating from the failure of the January 6th Insurrection. It’s possible that they might concluded that if there’s no sexxy TV footage of people going nuts and storming the Capitol, that the talking heads of MSM will lulz things.
This seems dubious to me, but it’s that type of miscalculation that starts wars — civil or otherwise.
But there are too many known unknowns right now. Things could go a lot of different ways. I would suggest you start to think about 2022, and not 2024-2025 being the Fourth Turning, however.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Ok. This is going to take some brain power. But, here goes. When it comes to COVID, I think the MAGA New Right thinks (I use that term loosely) that it was designed in a lab in Wuhan and, as such, we should PRAISE Son Of God Donald Trump for the vaccine, but we shouldn’t take it to own the libs.
And, lib, you never know, it’s possible this is all a “plandemic” in the sense that it was big pharma who was funding the “gain of function” research in Wuhan and you don’t KNOW that Dr. Fauchi isn’t profiting personally from it, now do you? Something something something Jewish space lasers
.
Any change in behavior — however minor — to manage the pandemic is a brutal attack on lady liberty because “my body, my choice” and also you’re excited that Roe is going to be overturned soon.
To take the free vaccine would would somehow be a win to the libs and to Red China, so take Regeneron or horse dewormer instead. There can never be “Vaccine passports” or, God forbid, a vaccine mandate, even though there are a variety of existing vaccine mandates that have been on the books for generations.
The difference is mumble mumble mumble the politics are different mumble mumble and fuck you, lib.
Nothing short of reparation from China will do when it comes to COVID. And, if that doesn’t work, then nuke them and let Trump ride one of the bombs like Slim Pickins in Dr. Strangelove.
And, in the end, it’s all about “personal responsibility” and if the fucking lib still won’t shut up, just tell them “no it won’t” and claim that all the facts that they use are “bogus.”
Oh, by the way fuck Jesse Kelly.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
From what I’m able to glean, the MAGA New Right wants us to believe that COVID19 is just part of modern life now AND they want to attack the Biden Administration for “not doing as well” as the Trump Administration did handling the pandemic.
As such, the MAGA New Right is absolutely against mask and vaccine mandates and changing people’s lives in any way to address the lingering COVID19 crisis — and yet also wants to scream bloody murder that Biden hasn’t solve it, which apparently Trump was on his way to doing but for the evil Deep State “stealing” the 2020 election from him.
Now, I have to note that for the time being, this working — and may ultimately work to the extent necessary to flip Congress for the MAGA New Right in 2022. So, in essence, this paradoxical media narrative will be a success.
And, yet, the MAGA New Right has a problem — there is a real risk that the metrics that matter most will start to hurt their political chances. If it becomes clear that something, anything has to be done to mitigate the COVID19 uptick currently happening in Red States, then there might be a frantic too-little, too-late struggle to reverse course in mid stream.
This will be even more the case if some variant pops out that blows past our existing vaccine regimen and throws us back to square one.
But as it stands, Republicans literally would rather have a lot of people die of COVID than miss a chance to “own the libs.” To that extent, the MAGA New Right is a literal personality death cult.
If people like Ron DeSantis have a come-to-Jesus moment about COVID19, it will be so sudden, so unexpected that we will all be left in shock. And, honestly, the only way that will happen is if they see some sort of political advantage — a way to “own the libs,” if you will — by doing so.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Sometimes, I grow very frustrated with Twitter liberals. They went to Harvard and shit and yet relative to what I, a mere hayseed rube Internet crank rando believe, they are completely clueless. A prime example of this is what’s going on with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
All his thuggish behavior that is putting the lives of his own electorate in danger is exactly what not just the MAGA New Right base in Florida wants, but the NATIONAL MAGA New Right base wants in the abstract. The more thuggish he is, the better in their eyes.
They want autocracy. They want to “own the libs” no matter what the consequences are. And the more DeSantis’ political fortunes improve because of him being a demonstrable autocratic cocksucker, the more every elected Republican official who sees the next president when they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning will feel obliged to one up him.
Autocratic thuggery is now the sweet spot of modern Republican politics. Negative polarization is so absolute, so extreme now within Republican ranks that even the most overheated MAGA New Right fascist rhetoric could very well become policy once a Republican inevitable becomes president again. Then all my “doom shit” won’t look so hysterical.
Anyway, DeSantis knows what he’s doing. At this point, the only issue is if Trump co-ops him or the two of them have a political deathmatch to see who gets to be the first American autocrat.
Of course, 2025 is a long ways away. There are about a dozen other would-be autocrats who are going to fight like hell to get the chance to come to power in 2025 and….just never leave office for any reason. As such, DeSantis doesn’t have a complete lock on being our first true American Autocrat, but he’s definitely at the moment the chief contender.
We are so fucked. So very, very fucked.
I have no ready answers for you. I have no VOX Tik-Tok video spoken in formal Twitter liberal received English. I just have my two eyes and ears and simply “doom shit” logic to use.
We’re going to have to have some sort of United Front or hope we can get the type of radical moderate behavior that happened around the time Lincoln decided to free the slaves. Something gotta give. Something big has to happen, otherwise, DeSantis will become an American Augustus and establish a American Empire.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
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.
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.
Good luck.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Each time COVID bounces from one person to the next, there’s a chance it might mutate into something along the lines of the virus found in The Stand. It’s an admittedly microscopic chance, but it does exist. Throw into the equation people from all over the world in Tokyo at the moment and it’s easy to imagine a Stephen King-size clusterfuck.
So, it’s at least possible that at some point in the next few months (years?) we’re going to have to go through all of this again because an Omega Variant breezes past all our vaccines and starts killing people not in the thousands, but the millions.
But that’s all very speculative. It’s just if the COVID pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that when you’re dealing with a virus, all the narrative management in the world isn’t going to save us.
And, yet, it could be I’m over thinking all of this. I’m often wrong. I hope I am this time, too.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
If this was the pre-Trump Era, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would be well on his way to being a run-of-the-mill Republican president. He might even be a tick or two better than idiot George W. Bush.
But this is the POST Trump presidency era, and, as such, things are fucking bonkers. Instead of just a run of the mill Republican president, DeSantis, if elected would be more like an American Augustus — the first autocrat of our new post-democracy America.
All the hysterical, dystopian things I’ve been ranting about would happen during his presidency instead of ding-dong Trump’s. DeSantis is young, competent and not only knows how to weld the levers of power, but also how to be Trump without Trump. And, as such, he’s extremely dangerous.
DeSantis could turn into an American Putin and simply never leave office. There is already a well-organized move afoot to get a Constitutional Convention called and given how its members would be selected — via state legislatures — it’s a gimmie that it would codify MAGA “blood and soil” concepts into the Constitution.
And that would be it.
What’s worse, DeSantis is actively killing his own electorate at the moment by denying science when it comes to COVID19 in an effort to curry favor with those sweet, sweet MAGA base votes. We’ve reached the point where MAGA New Right voters are so absolute in their need to “own the libs” because of their abstract fears over Cancel Culture and Critical Race Theory that they would LITERALLY RATHER DIE than see COVID19 for what it is — a lingering national health crisis.
There is one other potential obstacle to DeSantis getting his opportunity to be the founding autocrat of Trumplandia — a 300 lb tub of lard who thinks HE should be the founding autocrat of Trumplandia. Trump is so fucking deranged and unwilling to let go of either power or the spotlight that it’s very easy to imagine him politically shiving DeSantis so he can run again in 2024.
Now, logically, Trump would pick DeSantis as his new veep, paving the way for Trump to put DeSantis in the position of being his autocratic successor. But Trump is a craven idiot who thinks in such a short-term, so it could be we end up with Vice President Michael Flynn instead of Vice President Ron DeSantis.
Anyway, the point is — Trump is such a political history disrupter that he could bend the nature progression of our history simply because he’s self-serving dick head. Or not. Who knows what that guy.
I will note, however, that DeSantis is extremely fucking popular with conservatives in general. But even if everything breaks his way, there are going to be a dozen other would-be autocrats stalking him in an effort to get him to trip up.
And, lastly, don’t forget the real possibility of some sort of civil war should DeSantis win the presidency only via the skullduggery of a MAGA Congress.
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