It has been speculated that global climate change was responsible for the current COVID19 pandemic. If that is the case, then the argument could be made that Trump was the first political fatality of our new hotter-than-ever age.
Watch out for that last step.
If things continue the way they are currently going, there’s going to come a point when American politics is going to change in a rather dramatic fashion — potentially a lot sooner than you might think.
If a huge chunk of Florida and Louisiana simply sink into the sea, those people — voters — have to go somewhere. Imagine what happens when Miami sinks into the sea and all those voters have to find somewhere new to live. Where ever they go, they’re going to change the political dynamic once they get settled.
And, remember, a huge swath of the the Rust Belt has been depopulated over the last few decades. If things really get as hot as we fear, then, on an existential basis, it’s easy to imagine cities like Detroit, Buffalo, and other, similar places having a rush of new residents.
Given how badly we’re fucking things up, this could happen a lot sooner than you might think — it could be so soon that our apparent inevitable march into autocracy might, if not be stopped, at least slowed or the context changed a little bit.
Anyway, what do I know. All I know is, long term, we’re fucked.
When the history of Trumplandia is written, two people will stick out as having changed everything by what they did — or didn’t do: Bill Barr and Mike Pence.
What makes their actions so weird in hindsight is neither one of them was ever mentioned as the “guardrails” that were going to save us from Trump’s excesses. In fact, they were some of the biggest toadies for Trump — until they weren’t at very crucial moments in time.
Bill Barr — at least in my opinion — had a specific purpose when he was originally hired: end the Mueller Investigation. He wrapped that up and did plenty of really shitty things. And then in the 2020 – 2021 timeframe he did something that saved American democracy for four more years: nothing.
He sat on his hands.
So, even though Barr intimately knew on a personal basis how badly Trump wanted DOJ to indict the Bidens, or Hillary or Obama or whomever, he was able to simply slow walk all of Trump’s would-be autocratic moves so they were moot. Without Barr doing that, it’s very possible that all the autocratic things I thought up in 2020 Trump would have done and he would still be president.
Then there’s Mike Pence.
Pence is the consummate Trump sycophant. Or, at least, he was until January 6th. After defending Trump at every turn for any and everything he did, no matter how horrible or autocratic, on January 6th Pence gave American democracy a second chance by simply doing his fucking job. (Which in the specific case of certification was simply to announce the certification, he didn’t really have to do anything other than not nullify the certification by going rouge.)
And, so because of the actions of two people everyone assumed would be Trump’s lapdogs, American democracy was spared for a few years. You honestly could not make such shit up.
What happens next is up to us. We aren’t going to be as lucky, next time.
There are some assumptions we have made about the world since the end of WW2 that may not be grounded in reality anymore. One of them is the United States is powerful enough that it, unto itself, is enough to prevent a major regional war from breaking out.
And, yet, I don’t know if that’s still the case.
The specific instance I’m thinking of is China and Taiwan. China is now powerful enough that it could attempt to retake Taiwan and…what would happen? Anything? The United States isn’t going to nuke them because of MAD and the United States and China are so tightly linked on an economic level that there’s not a lot, in real terms, the US could do.
As such, the argument could be made that China — far sooner than we might expect — could made a grab for Taiwan and the United States would make a lot of noise, but wouldn’t do much about it.
The big wildcard of such event, of course, is World War 3 would start because once China proved they could do whatever the fuck they wanted, then other, similar hotspots would also erupt and we would have a number of regional wars happening at the same time that would be marketed as “World War Three.”
It could be that China will simply way for the United States to buckle as part of a civil war to strike. Or, a MAGA president might make us Fortress America and then China could strike because we won’t care about the outside world anymore.
The point of all of this is — it’s possible the existing global order is a far more fragile than we might otherwise believe.
The guy above is one of a few MAGA New Right “thought leaders” who establish the talking points that will be watered down and disseminated throughout the Right wing bullshit echo chamber. These now far more palatable talking points will be parroted by your conservative relatives at, say, Thanksgiving Dinner.
That’s why such people like Kurt Schlichter are actually far more important than you might think. Even though some of what they rant about is nothing more than bad faith bullshit meant to “own the libs,” usually the general drift of rhetoric on their part does give you some sense of what they actually believe.
As such, it definitely seems as though the on-going fascist radicalization of the Republican Party continues. And, as I’ve mentioned before, it definitely seems as though should Republicans ever gain power again — they’re never going to peacefully give it up.
These days, I vacillate widely between thinking that when the MAGA New Right autocracy finally is established that things aren’t going to change the much for a while, to thinking there’s going to immediately be a civil war and or military junta established.
It’s possible that when the autocratic white Christian ethno state is finally established, the Republicans will drift towards a Russian style autocracy, but, at first things won’t change that much. There will be excesses — like the media will be purged — but for the time being people like me will be allowed to continue to rant about what fucking cocksuckers the MAGA New Right is.
Though, truth be told, if it’s Mike Pompeo who is our autocrat, that may not last very long –that guy is a real asshole who, once president, will be just as corrupt and autocratic as Putin has ever been.
Anyway, back to Schlichter. His Twitter thread definitely gives us a sense of what we’re up against. It’s not like they’re hiding their vision for America. All I can compare it to is how Hitler wrote a whole fucking book laying out exactly what he was going to do….and then he did it.
I can’t predict the future, but the macro trends definitely indicate that the conditions are there for at some point between now and January, 2025, there is going to be some sort of catalyst that forces us to make the existential choice of autocracy, civil war or military junta.
The Right, as exemplified by Schlichter are locked and loaded to strike Blue States on an ideological basis. They’ve established what they’re going to do and why they’re going to do it. But it hasn’t happened yet. Something would have to happen for me not to think we’re just going to peacefully transition into autocracy.
12/27: Trump threatens Rosen to replace DOJ leadership + install Clark 12/28: Clark sends draft GA letter to Rosen 01/02: Rosen says won’t sign 01/03: Clark tells Rosen: Trump has decided to fire him and make Clark the A.G. 01/03: DOJ threatens mass resignation; Trump backs down https://t.co/QaggTbS3SE
The key issue — the one that set up Pence to save American democracy for about four years — is “1/03: DOJ threatens mass resignation; Trump backs down.” It is a testament to how Trump has always been playing himself that he backed down at that point.
A true Great Man would have pushed ahead, despite mass resignation. The autocrat is willing to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — see, also, how Hitler handled the SA — while an idiot ding-dong like Trump goes through all the trouble of getting to that point then backs down.
By January 3, 2021, it was well established that on a political level, Trump was above the law. Nothing, in real terms, would have happened to him if there were mass DOJ resignations. He could have easily gotten what he wanted — to stay in power — and the mass resignations would have been seen as just a blip. This would especially been the case once he was in second term and he could simply purge the media to control the narrative of how he secured a second term.
That, at least, is what an actual autocrat would have done.
The question is, will it be Trump that attempts to shepard us into autocracy in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe, or will it be someone far more adept like Ron DeSantis? But as I keep saying, we have three options ahead of us as of the moment: autocracy, civil war or military junta.
Who organized the Pence Gallows in front of the Capitol? Sometimes, the biggest tell about an event comes from something we simply take for granted. In this case, it took some planning to set up a gallows for Pence on January 6th. That thing didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere. It suggests that there was a specific point to the insurrection — scare the shit out of Mike Pence so he wouldn’t certify the vote.
Why did Trump give Jim Jordan the Medal of Freedom on January 11? Again, it’s easy to dismiss this by saying Jordan was such a long-term toady of Trump’s that of course he would get the Medal of Freedom before Trump left office. And, yet, the case could be made that Jordan did something specific in that prompted Trump in his zero-sum-game mind to feel compelled to give Jordan a “gift” in exchange for…what? Silence? Actively fucking up any investigation into what happened January 6th? Why did a Proud Boy leader visit Trump in the days before January 6th? This is one of those things where what actually happened is kind of nebulous. Did a Proud Boy leader get a tet-a-tete with Trump in the White House? What did they talk about? There are a lot of conflicting stories about all of this, but someone needs to ask some questions to figure out what happened. How much did Trump know about the plot for January 6th? It is reasonable to believe that Trump was the driving force for what happened on January 6th….but just like with the Russia conspiracy stuff, it was probably very chaotic and haphazard. Trump probably would dip in to a meet every once in a while to give “his people” a general goal then wonder off. This gives him legal “plausible deniability” because all he had to do was incite the mob — he likely didn’t know exactly that was going to happen. He just knew there was a good chance they would attack to Capitol in such a way that it could scare the shit out of Pence so he didn’t do his job.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is very, very popular with my conservative relatives. The origin of his popularity is he is perceived as a “fighter” who attacks “the libs” on every front for any reason.
This is probably the most destructive of Trump’s legacies and the thing that could ultimately be his political downfall. My theory is this — now that Trump has established the blueprint for being a successful Republican politician, he no longer serves much purpose for his many, many would-be autocratic successors.
Trump, unto himself, is a blockage in our now inevitable transition into autocracy. Trump is just a big old ding-dong who is way too lazy and idiotic to successfully shepherd us into autocracy. His would be younger, more focused — and potentially more bloodthirsty successors, however — don’t have those problems.
As such, it is within the realm of possibility that there will come a political tipping point where people like DeSantis support Trump’s political demise because he’s outlived his usefulness. He has shown the path to autocracy, but doesn’t have the good sense to get out of their way, so they’ll be there throwing punches when the end comes, if it ever does.
Or, put another way, DeSantis, specifically, is growing popular enough that either Trump tries to co-op him by naming him is 2024 veep or he’s able to destroy Trump should the two have at it at last.
At the moment, DeSantis appears popular because he holds out the promise of MAGA without Trump. A lot — A LOT — of people who support the craven, racist ideals of MAGA can’t defend Trump and DeSantis gives them an out. In their mind, if the debate over MAGA is strictly one over polices — and not the fascist and ethical implications of it all — it’s a win.
They point is — as I keep saying, America is an autocracy without an autocrat. Once the autocrat is in position, we’re probably just going to transition into an autocracy and that will be that. There is a chance, of course, that either the military steps in or we have a civil war or both.
I can’t predict the future, I don’t know.
But at the moment, DeSantis has it within his power to destroy Trump. It will be interesting to see if he uses it, or allows himself to be co-oped.
These are the times that try men’s souls, as Thomas Paine would say. The reason is, we now are confronted with the cold, hard fact that every election we have now is existential — if Republicans gain power again, they’re unlikely to ever peacefully give it up.
Combine this with Republicans’ growing glorification of political violence as a means to an end and their blaming of liberals for “forcing” them to radicalize and you have a recipe for disaster.
In the end, we either have a civil war with the specific objective of destroying the Republican Party or we slip into autocracy peacefully. At the moment, that’s what I think is going to happen. It will become political conventional wisdom that that Republicans — one way or another — always win the presidency, people stop voting and ta-da autocracy.
The only reason why I’m willing to entertain then notion of a civil war in even abstract terms is the MAGA New Right’s alarming, and growing, glorification of political violence. They keep ranting on Twitter that their fascist radicalization is the fault of liberals who “just won’t leave them alone.” Jesus, what a bunch of fucking cocksuckers.
We have to begin to gird our loins for the very real possibly that the otherwise peaceful transition into autocracy will somehow be bungled and we do, in fact, have a civil war. The North’s, er, I mean, Blue States‘ war aims should be: destruction of the Republican Party, a just and equable Reconstruction of the former Red States then a Constitutional Convention.
In short, we would need to renew the American Covent that has we last forged in 1865.
But, again, because the method that the MAGA New Right intends to use to initially turn us into an autocracy — the whole throwing things into Congress — is actually in the Constitution, that’s enough hook for the press to shrug and tell everyone to calm down.
The way the MAGA New Right might bungle things is if they are so aggressive and ham-handed in their efforts to win that people see it for what it is, then, well, the country is going to buckle and a civil war will start.
I find myself these days thinking a lot about what the U.S. Military will do should our transition to an autocracy somehow be bungled and it’s clear we’re going to have a civil war. I’m beginning to think rather than a civil war, the U.S. Military would step in — acting President Jim Mattis, anyone? — and that would be the way, ultimately, things would be sorted out.
The U.S. Military is the one remaining institution with the means, motive an opportunity to save us from ourselves.
So, I guess there are three, not two, choices facing us: autocracy, civil war or military junta.
I’m too lazy to hunt down the details of what I’m about to write — I’m not writing for VOX, after all — but here is a rough outline of what I know about the events leading up to Trump’s January 6th attempted autogolpe. I’ve added relevant text from another post I’ve written to flesh out this post.
Background When the history of Trumplandia is written, two people will stick out as having changed everything by what they did — or didn’t do: Bill Barr and Mike Pence. What makes their actions so weird in hindsight is neither one of them was ever mentioned as the “guardrails” that were going to save us from Trump’s excesses. In fact, they were some of the biggest toadies for Trump — until they weren’t at very crucial moments in time.
First, Bill Barr. Bill Barr — at least in my opinion — had a specific purpose when he was originally hired: end the Mueller Investigation. He wrapped that up and did plenty of really shitty things. And then in the 2020 – 2021 timeframe he did something that saved American democracy for four more years: nothing. He sat on his hands.
So, even though Barr intimately knew on a personal basis how badly Trump wanted DOJ to indict the Bidens, or Hillary or Obama or whomever, he was able to simply slow walk all of Trump’s would-be autocratic moves so they were moot. Without Barr doing that, it’s very possible that all the autocratic things I thought up in 2020 Trump would have done and he would still be president.
It is a testament to what a lazy ding-dong Trump is that in the summer and early fall of 2020 he was not far more aggressive against Biden. Anyone else in Trump’s position would have leaned into the fact that he was now politically above the law and, as such, could do anything to stay in power and it work. If Bill Barr wouldn’t indict the Bidens, then a true autocrat in Trump’s position would have fired him in the middle of 2020 and found someone who would. Trump talked a lot about indicting Hunter Biden or Joe Biden…but it was all talk. He didn’t even simply fire anyone necessary to have something akin to the Second Comey Letter released.
We can only conclude from this that Trump is a historical and political avatar. He’s not a great man, he just kind of drifts through history reflecting the rot of our undead liberal democracy back at us. As such, it didn’t really sink into Trump he might be forced out of office until the moment it was too late to use politics — the moment the election was called for Biden. It was at this moment Trump both freaked out and, on a political level, all of Trump’s options ended.
Thus, Trump would have to use extra-political means to stay in office.
The Modern Republican Party
Autogolpe When, on a political basis, all of Trump’s options faded away, he began to freak out and think up ways to stay in office through an autogolpe — self-coup. His first idea was to berate and lean on the people who certified the election results in an effort to get them to nullify Biden’s win that way. He was calling up election officials from all over the country — and even inviting to the White House –in a panicked, desperate attempt to nullify Biden’s win at one of its weakest links.
When that didn’t work, Trump continued to panic. He began to lean on the Justice Department, hoping that they would simply say “the election was corrupt.” That’s all he wanted, just like with Ukraine. He just wanted people with authority to announce an investigation into the “corrupt” 2020 election and then he and Rudy would use the same agitprop techniques of the last five odd years to, through sheer ego and bullshit — force the election into the House and Senate.
Here’s something to mull — it’s very possible that our autocracy will come “legally’ when Republicans starting in 2024 always push POTUS elections into the House and Senate. Because Republicans have a majority of House delegations, they will always win. Let me repeat that: They. Will Always. Win. Because this up-to-now obscure element of the Constitution is their ultimate failsafe for winning elections, Republicans will use it to establish white Christian minority rule.
In fact, if America slips peacefully into autocracy, it will be because of that specific provision of the Constitution. It will be “Constitutional” so it will give the liberal media a hook to explain to the average person why they should cool it with talk of a civil war. This development will be framed just like the Bush V. Gore decision and, gradually, it will be such conventional wisdom that Republicans always win presidential elections that Republicans will finally get what they want: people will stop voting.
Of course, Republicans, once they know they can do whatever the fuck they want, will inevitably abuse their power to the point where we’re indistinguishable from autocratic Russia or there’s a civil war. I think we’re probably just going to become an autocracy and that’s it. At the moment, I just don’t see us breaking the seal on civil war.
If civil war happens, it will probably happen directly because of Trump’s personal incompetence at some critical moment in history. If history picks anyone else to shepherd us into autocracy, then it’s a done deal.
Let’s go back to the autogolpe. In the end, what spelled the demise of Trump’s autogolpe plot was how fucking lazy and stupid he was. He came up with all these ideas for how to throw the election into the House and Senate…and he just couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. He just was too deranged to simply fire anyone necessary to get that accomplished.
All the conditions were there, but, in the end, it was Trump, specifically, who fucked up and gave American democracy a few years of breathing room.
Because Trump could not pull the trigger, the last ditched effort of the autogolpe was something like this — gather a bunch of die hard MAGA fuckers near the Capitol, incite them in a speech, and then see what happened. At moment, there is no evidence that Trump knew how successful the insurrection would be, but he and his toadies knew, in general, what was likely to happen. In this respect, Trump gave himself some “plausible deniability” should the insurrection actually be a success.
So, from what I can tell, what Trump wanted was to get the mob to browbeat Pence into not certifying the vote. Why else were they chanting, “Hang Mike Pence?” This would throw everything up in the air and then Congress would get involved and that’s where Trump thought he would win because in the House each state delegation would get one vote and Republicans have a majority of delegations
The specific uses of the Electoral Count Act elude me, but it might have bene the middle step that Trump and Rudy could have fucked with to get a win. But the point remains — weirdly enough, we all owe Pence a lot of gratitude for destroying his political career by doing his fucking job.
Pence is the consummate Trump sycophant. Or, at least, he was until January 6th. After defending Trump at every turn for any and everything he did, no matter how horrible or autocratic, on January 6th Pence gave American democracy a second chance by simply doing his fucking job. (Which in the specific case of certification was simply to announce the certification, he didn’t really have to do anything other than not nullify the certification by going rouge.)
And, so because of the actions of two people everyone assumed would be Trump’s lapdogs, American democracy was spared for a few years. You honestly could not make such shit up.
Anyway, once Pence certified the vote, Trump lost.
No matter how much the modern Slavocrats may think they can defeat the “woke” soyboys of the Blue States simply by starting a dumb, tragic Second American Civil war, they face a huge fucking obstacle to any such victory: California.
The thing that would make California a new “arsenal of democracy” should a civil war break out is its economy, population and unified polity. It’s a big enough state that it, itself, is a nation. This is where it becomes VERY OBVIOUS how fucking stupid a civil war would be. If you look at what the war aims of the Red States would be, they’re very self defeating.
How could Texas and / or Florida fight back against a California plains state blitzkrieg if they’re fighting a fucking race war? The MAGA New Right wants to establish a white Christian entho state — not something that really engenders a lot of support from POC.
The Liberators
As such, if you can just get California to stay in the Union, you put the state on a war footing as quickly as possible, secure Oregon and Washington then race across the mountain and plains states to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Texas would likely be suffering from an intra-state civil war so you catch them on the back foot. The fighting would be horrific, but California would win. At the same time you have another horrific battle in Ohio and Indiana, but the momentum would be on Blue State’s side.
If things have gotten THIS BAD –where is the Federal government and U.S. Military? — then a race war has erupted in most of the old CSA. you do a peincer movement heading west and south in hopes of hooking up with Atlanta which is probably a strong Blue holdout.
Wildcard: if Red States are panicking, they’re going to use stolen WMD.
And, remember, the entire post WW2 global liberal order will have collapsed so to add to what’s going on domestically in the United States, a number of limited nuclear exchanges will likely have happened.
This entire clusterfuck would be the Fourth Turning. A huge reset. What the endgame would ultimately be would be up to us, if we survive.
Background The bonkers thing about what happened on January 6th is Trump was so fucking lazy and stupid as an autocrat that he waited to the very last moment to attempt an autogolpe (self-coup). Any other autocrat would have wrapped up the theft of the 2020 election before it was even held by firing whomever stood in the way of an indictment of Joe Biden.
It is testament to what lazy, moronic brat Trump is that even a rando like me kept thinking up the most obvious ways to steal the 2020 election and Trump just could not comprehend how to do it. The political conditions existed for Trump to steal the election without an autogolpe right up until the point where the election was officially called for Biden.
January 6th
The Plot First, given what we know of how Trump thinks, I doubt there were all that many specific elements to the plot. Probably, Trump knew what he wanted — stay in power no matter what — and he just ranted about that around his toadies so much that they began to use the spaghetti method to see what stuck. For some reason, a number of opportunities for Trump to pull the trigger on the “just say it was corrupt and I’ll take care of the rest” idea — and he didn’t do it. This is is very, very weird. Why he would choke simply because of the prospect of mass resignations is very strange.
But back to the plot.
I suspect it went something like this — in a general way, Trump and his co-conspirators created the conditions for a mob to attack the Capitol in hopes that when Trump told them to attack they would and this would either buy them time or force Pence’s hand on the certification of Electors or both.
When you have a very powerful brat to deal with as normal human being, your main goal is to buy time so you don’t have to deal with their disappointment. The theory Trump had was every moment the election wasn’t certified by Congress was a moment they might be able to somehow win.
But more specifically, they probably had a two pronged approached to their autogolpe — neutralize Pence and get the election thrown into Congress where Trump and Rudy could muddy the waters on a political level so much that they might, just might, get within shouting distance of winning that way.
If they could just put enough pressure on Pence so that he refused to certify the election — even though that isn’t within his power to do — then they would throw everything at Congress. All they needed was to get the extremely poorly written Electoral Count Act involved and all the bullshit agitprop techniques that were so successful for them over the years would take care of the rest.
Once they got past the huge personal obstacle of Pence, and they got the Electoral Count Act involved, their next goal would be to get the election thrown into the House and Senate. If the House picks POTUS, then each state’s delegation has just one vote.
And that would be how Trump would “win” in such a way that gave Fox news a media narrative that would simply be Bush V. Gore Redux. Get over it, libs, you lost, Trump is YOUR president, too, (again.)
An unknown is what was Jim Jordan’s involvement in this plot. Why did Trump in the waning days of his administration give Jorden, of all people, the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Was there something specific that Jorden did over and above the call of duty in this particular plot that Trump felt forced his hand? Does Jorden know something that no one else does? He got the medal AFTER January 6th, so it sure does sound like Trump was both thanking him and making sure stayed loyal in the future, no matter what.
I do believe there was a specific, coordinated attempt to stage an autogolpe on January 6th. What I don’t think happened was it was all that well thought out or had any specific sequence of events they thought they could pull off, which was why it failed.
They just wanted to buy time, get the election thrown into Congress and then attack the process with everything they had. It’s possible that some very smart, well educated people actually did have a specific goal in mind — get the House to pick the president — but they failed because of how stupid, lazy and disorganized the leader of the plot — Trump — was.
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