Category: The Resistance

So. This Is It

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though the US is going to transition into some sort of white Christian ethnostate — one of blood and soil — in just a few days. If we’re lucky, we’ll endup somewhere between Hungary and Turkey politically.

If we’re not lucky, we’ll endup — in a few decades — somewhere around Russia.

Then we’ll have to wait decades for the Singularity to happen so AI Androids and the underclass can make common cause against our fascist autocrat overlords.

But I continue to worry that Trump is so lazy and stupid that he will try to consolidate power in one fell swoop and, as such, there will be an extreme reaction from Blue states. Then Trump uses Red National Guard units against Blue state protests and, ta-da, we’re going to the show.

And if Trump was somehow deposed, or whatever, THAT would cause a civil war because Red States would leave the Union in protest.

I do not think anything so drastic is going to happen, but I do worry about it. Probably what will happen is Trump will either be secure enough that he won’t try to turn us into Russia overnight or it will all happen in fits and starts to the point that lulz, it won’t matter.

We’ll just wake up in 20 years and wonder why Eric Trump is serving his third term.

A Possible Future

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though This Is It — the USA is going to become a white Christian ethnostate. As such, we will no longer have free and fair elections as long as I’m alive.

The only hope I have is maybe sentient AI androids make common cause with the underclass in a few decades and there’s some sort of revolution? I’ll be long dead, but it is something to think about.

It would make the great basis for a novel. But I have too many other things I’m working on to do such a thing at the moment.

What The Fuck Are Blues Going To Do Now

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Blues have two options ahead of them, it seems — bank Right or bank Left.

Banking Right
The United States is definitely lurching Right, AGAIN, and, as such, the center-Left probably needs to bank Right in response. Doing so could very well cause the Far Left to go nuts and cause some serious trouble but given how far Right the United States has drifted since 2016, it seems as though Blues shifting their center of gravity Right might be a good idea. While I’m an trans rights advocate, the whole thing doesn’t play very well in the Heartland. As such, it would make a lot of sense if Blues kind of cooled it with all the rhetoric about “protect trans kids” when, well, there really aren’t that many to protect in the first place. Being so wrapped up with such fringe issues makes Blues seem out of touch with the meat-and-potatoes issues that working families are really concerned with.

Banking Left
The case could be made, meanwhile, that banking Left, at least on economic issues, might be the right thing for Blues to do. This is option that a lot of the squeaky wheels scream about — they want Blues to embrace a more Leftist agenda in hopes of co-opting the populist flair of MAGA. I have some serious doubts about this because to do this means, by definition, leaning into all the kooky Leftist social agenda stuff that got us into this problem in the first place.

I am far more anti-MAGA than I am Leftist. In fact, I kinda fucking hate far Left Leftist for a variety of reasons. And, lulz, none of this matters — Trump is going to consolidate power and turn us into a white Christian ethnostate that will last for the rest of my life. Unless, of course, he is so dumb and lazy that he causes the general public to freak out and he gets deposed. (This is highly unlikely, given how blasé most Americans are.)

Trump Is Quiet. Too Quiet

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Like a two year old in the other room who suddenly goes quiet, Trump is up to no good right now. Usually, he’s screaming at the top of his lungs about this or that thing. But since the election, he’s been (relatively) quiet.

I continue to believe that we’ll see Trump as a transitional figure. It will be his successor who ultimately consolidates power for MAGA and puts us somewhere on the Turkey –> Hungary — > Russia spectrum of autocratic states.

It seems as though, in general, we’re going to see the world order thrown up in the air pretty soon. Nothing is off the table. Everything from the end of NATO to Trump pretty much acting as an actual tyrannical dictator from day one is on the table.

This brings up an interesting issue — what if when Trump’s tyranny concrete people freak out? Right now, a lot of the worst things Trump wants to do — like mass deportations — are rather abstract in people’s minds. But when actually does that shit, whoa, buddy, could things go to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly.

And, really, for me the issue is Trump is so dumb and lazy that he could enact such a lurch forward into tyranny that people try to depose him, which, in turn, would cause a civil war because Red States would get angry. But that’s extremely speculative on my part.

Probably what will happen is we’ll just shrug our way into tyranny and either I am forced to flee the country or I get a ICE bullet to the back of the head because I won’t shut up about how big a cocksucker Trump is and how much I hate MAGA.

Trumplandia: It Appears America Is Entering Its Imperial Era

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely looks as though Trump is going to be a transitional figure that leads us into a full blow autocracy that is semi-imperial. I suppose this means that whomever succeeds Trump will be Augustus Caesar, the person who formalized the transition into a semi-monarchal form of government.

How, exactly, this works out is still up to debate.

But Trump seems determined to destroy the last vestiges of democracy in the USA and only his age prevents him from simply changing — or ignoring the Constitution and being “emperor” for the rest of his life.

Yet I can’t predict the future. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But it will definitely be interesting to see how far Trump’s tyranny can go before someone, somewhere notices it and there are, I don’t know — protests? Maybe that will never happen.

Maybe we’re just going to shrug ourselves into autocracy.

Trump 2028? (Ugh)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I need to get the fuck out of this country. I fucking hate MAGA with a white hot passion and, yet, here I am, stuck in a country swirling the drain into autocracy. So, I just stew in my juices, I guess.

The latest offense to common decency — among many — is the idea that Steve Bannon is floating that Trump can run for a third term. This makes me very angry. I want to pin down my far more conservative relatives — who I love dearly — down about if they would vote for a third Trump term.

But I know what would happen — they would either wave the concern off, or laugh in my face or somehow just simply not answer the question. Because I know, in the end, they probably would vote for Trump’s third term.

When Trump’s Abstract Tyranny Becomes Concrete

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems to be we are in something of a lull before the the mass chaos of the second Trump Administration. There are a lot of elements to the prospective Trump Administration are only vaguely comprehended.

What happens when Trump actually does begin to arrest prominent “Resistance” politicians. Then what? What is going to happen? Will there be a huge reaction in the streets, or will people just shrug as we slide directly into hard autocracy?

I guess the point is — maybe we need to buckle down the hatches for what might be about to happen.

Trump Won Because Of Macro Issues

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the last remaining elements of our barely functioning democracy is there is an ebb and flow to presidential elections. It just so happens that the center-Right in the US is a fetid miasma of shit.

So, it was inevitable that Republicans would win one way or another. Or, put another way, the average person simply could not take the cognitive leap to think, “I have to vote Democratic to save democracy.”

And thus, here we are.

The Morning Joe Kerfuffle

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I used to listen to the Morning Joe podcast (the first hour of the show) pretty religiously. But since the election, I don’t think I’ve listened to it once. And now that’s learned that Joe and Mika went down to ding-bat Trump’s Mar-a-Largo to kiss the ring and bend the knee….ugh.

Just fucking ugh.

This reminds me of how the Biden Administration is thinking of giving preemptive pardons to a number of people that the MAGA fascists have said they want to imprison.

But I think such thinking misses the point — MAGA doesn’t care if the people Biden might pardon are innocent or not. They just want to hound them — into prison or out of the country.

So, I don’t know what to tell you. We just have to accept that the USA is probably going drift gradually into a legalistic autocratic state like Russia. And if Trump does the obvious for him — do it all in a kneejerk way — then, oh boy. Maybe things won’t happen as calmly as we might otherwise want or believe.

It Seems Inevitable That Trump Will Arrest Congressional Democrats One Day

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

With all the talk of the coup attempt in South Korea, I find myself thinking about how something similar could happen here. The most obvious way is at some point after the Congressional mid-terms (should the Democrats win) they decide to impeach Trump for something and he decides to arrest them all en masse.

I think *that* would be the last shiver of American democracy, more than anything else because I think he would get away with it. SCOTUS has already said he’s above the law, so, lulz, seems like he could pull off such a coup scenario pretty easily.

All the lawmakers would be in jail by the time enough people realized what was going on, given how big and distracted the country is, in general. I have a very low, dark view of how things are going to play out over the course of the next four years.

I think 2024 will be the last free-and-fair election in America history for the rest of my life — at least. We’re going to become a legalistic autocratic state like in Russia and that will be that. And because I will never bend a knee, Trump — or one of his successors — will order my death.

Good times!