The case could be made that but for how racism and misogyny are warping American political life, Trump would lose in a rather historic manner. Trump is just a bad candidate.
But the thing you have to accept, though, is because of the MAGA permission structure created by Fox News, et al, is that even though Trump is a weak candidate on a persona level — he could still win.
That’s why it’s so difficult for me to game out what might happen later this year. And that doesn’t even begin to address the very real possibility of a Black Swan event that will throw everything in the air.
So, there are two different forces at work. There are the macro forces that continue to give Trump the Idea momentum and there are the tactical problems with Trump that make him a very, very weak candidate. As such, I dunno. It could go either way.
And, what’s more, there is a real possibility that no matter what happens there could be severe political violence in late 2024, early 2025 because either Trump loses and there’s a civil war or he wins and he causes a Blue Revolution.
The thing about Trump is he is, on a personal basis, a very weak malignant ding-dong. He continues to prove day after day that he’s an idiot who is just an avatar who rides the wave of history, rather than bend it to his will. The *idea* of Trump, however, is very, very powerful.
As such, Trump is very dangerous on a political and historical way, but he as a person is so lazy and dumb that he could very well bring the country to its knees if he’s re-elected because of what he represents to the people surrounding him. That’s why even though Trump is a idiot and lazy, the forces around him are smart enough to generate ideas like Agenda 47 and Project 2025.
So, the thing is — Trump is an embarrassing idiot, but a very dangerous embarrassing idiot. Too often, we conflate Trump the man with Trump the political idea. I still continue to worry that Trump in his stupidity could destroy America because he will thrash around in his tyranny in a way that the American people won’t be able to stand.
That, at least, is the nightmare.
If anyone else was in Trump’s position, they would be able to peacefully guide the United States into a Russian-style white Christian ethnostate autocracy. That’s my real nightmare at this point — that Trump will literally snatch people off the street in 2025 and that will lead to America being pushed beyond its political limits and some pretty fucking weird things will happen.
What that might be, I don’t know — and I’m not advocating anything.
But I still have some hope that it’s possible that Biden will win and we’ll punt all of these structural problems down the road for another four years. (I’m still worried that no matter what happens with the 2024 election we will face severe political violence, but that’s just me being paranoid.)
What the fuck are we going to do about Trump. He tectonic demographic and political history forces that have put him in the situation he’s in are so powerful, so potent that it definitely seems he’s going to become POTUS again, no matter what.
Then the shit is REALLY going to hit the fan.
A second Trump Administration would be a total, fucking catastrophe in a way not seen since 1865. It would be truly ironic if we found ourselves caused by a civil war that Lincoln wanted to prevent in 1860 and one that Trump wanted to cause in 2024.
It’s really going to be interesting to see how bad things get. Everything is so fucked up and there doesn’t seem to be any ready way to fix things going forward. Trump is so dumb and yet so powerful as an idea to the MAGA fascist New Right that, lulz…virtually ANYTHING could happen between now and early 2025.
Marc Andreessen retweeted the above image from I assume Reddit and I have to say I agree. There does seem to be some bad juju in the air at the moment. It does seem as though Something Bad is about to happen in the near, near future.
Now, obviously, my interpretation of this potential Bad Thing is different than his. He thinks some sort of woke DEI hellscape is about to happen, while I think the exactly opposite — I think there’s a real risk the United States is going to lurch into an autocratic state.
Sigh.
Marc Andreessen is an very interesting guy. He’s obviously been Red Pilled and he’s so rich that should the absolute worst happen — the United States decend into anarchy because of fucking ding-dong Trump, he can just hop on a jet and flee the country.
Trump, besides being a malignant ding-dong, is something of a political terrorist. And he get his power from how people conflate his political power with actual power as a person. Politically, because he is an avatar for some pretty messed up shit in our political system, he is something of a God King.
But as an actual human being, he’s just a lazy, dumb piece of shit.
The point is — if he becomes president again, it will say more about us as a nation than him as a political leader.
He’s not a Great Man. He doesn’t warp history to his personal needs, he just rides its trends. And, at the moment, there is a macro trend towards the United States become a white Christian ethnostate — or being forced to decide if it wants to become one — and, as such, Trump could very well become POTUS again.
This, despite what a fucking idiot he is.
So, I dunno. It really could go either way this fall. And if Trump becomes POTUS again, we will have only ourselves to blame.
The 2024 election could very well give political historians a great deal more insight into Hitler’s democratic assumption of power in 1933. I say this because Trump is demonstrably a weak candidate at this point. And, barring some Black Swan event, he should be in line to lose to Biden in a pretty dramatic way.
But because of two issues, Trump could STILL become POTUS.
One is how fucked up our political system is. Even semi-functioning democracies like ours have a political ebb and flow to them on a macro basis and as such, Trump remains 60,000 votes in five swing states away from being POTUS, no matter what the fuck he does.
The man is above the laws of the state and of politics. He could eat someone. He could murder someone. He could marry Ivanka. He. Can. Do. Anything and STILL be 60,000 votes in five swing states away from being POTUS again.
The other issue is Trump’s supporters like the “idea” of Trump. They want a white Christian ethnostate where there those sweet, sweet white babies are plentiful and gay people know to be quiet and stay in the closet. Which makes you wonder if that’s what happened with Hitler as he rose to power. To this date, people continue to debate how inevitable it was that Hitler, specifically would become the leader of Germany.
And if Trump is re-elected this year, then the case could be made that the two men are a lot more similar than you might think. Both had a certain momentum to their rise to power and, as such, when the time came, History Found A Way to part the seas so they could take over their nations.
But we’re not there yet. It could go either way. On paper, at least, Trump should lose. But, then, on paper, there was no reason to believe Hitler would be named Chancellor in January 1933.
And yet he was.
As such, I think there is a 50 / 50 chance at the moment that Trump will become POTUS again and all hell will break loose. Some stunning events could happen starting in late 2024, early 2025. Things that we’ve simply never seen before in American political life.
Political opponents might be snatch off the street or flee the country. Thousands of wealthy, well educated people might vote with their feet and leave the country. The idea of “show your papers” might be the central issue of the day. A Constitutional Convention might be a very real possibility.
What’s more, it’s possible that Trump will be so bad at being a tyrant that the Poors in Blue States who don’t have the means to leave the country might actually pull of a General Strike the crashes the economy and forces the U.S. Military to do something about Trump. (Not that I’m advocating anything.)
Anyway, I’m waiting for some future historian to write “Hitler And Trump, a Dual Biography.”
It seems as though the Petite Singularity is careening towards a reality just about when I predicted — at some point in late 2024, early 2025, just as political Fourth Turning is also taking place.
So, it’s possible, we’ll have something akin to a Perfect Storm of disruption in which we kind of lurch forward with a Vibe Shift where we come out the other side in a totally new political and technological era.
Or not, who knows.
But it does seem as though after about 20 years of being in one era — the post 911 era — that we’re about to enter a new, unknown era. It could be that a lot sooner than any of us could have possibly predicted, the movie Her will just be our reality.
We will have AGI and instead of there being *any* humans involved in the production of *any* entertainment, it will all just be AI generated. As an aspiring novelist on the cusp of wrapping up my first novel in a few months….I don’t quite know what to make of that.
If Trump wins the popular vote, he will also almost inevitably win the Electoral College, given how much it favors Republican candidates. If he wins this way, it will remove most discussion of whether his presidency is legitimate, when it clearly is based on the rules set forth by law and the Constitution. Certainly, his actions will be highly unpopular, but this outcome minimizes the antibodies raised against his administration. Certainly there will be protests, but as long as he doesn’t massacre protesters, it will be hard to convince anyone in Democratic leadership to reject the legitimacy of the federal government. Even most Democratic voters are likely to grudgingly admit the legitimacy of his second term, and this will dampen willingness to resist, even as Christian nationalism seeps in and democracy dies.
Perhaps the best modern example of a dictator riding out postelection protests is Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who arrested only protest leaders and just waited for the anger to subside. Trump would be wise to follow this model. Given Trump’s ties to Russia and respect for all things in the Russkiy Mir, he might be convinced to ignore his first instincts to crush protesters violently.
Trump will almost certainly do the things he promises regarding women’s rights, immigrants, LGBTQ people, the environment, and weaponizing the Department of Justice and FBI against Muslims, Dreamers, and anyone else against whom he’s promised vengeance. His government will absolutely spread this to all 50 states, but the perceived legitimacy of the regime, and the belief that “we’ll get ’em in 2028,” will prevent any real resistance. Republicans will pretend that free and fair elections in 2028 will absolutely happen, until they don’t. The government functionally becomes a competitive autocracy, much the same as Russia’s or Hungary’s. Elections are meaningless, other than serving as an anesthetic to public grievances.
For most people, life will be boring and tolerable. For the people targeted by the regime, it will not be easy to survive in the U.S. It will also lead to a wave of people (particularly trans individuals) attempting to flee to other countries. Corruption and graft will run rampant. The government will primarily serve the interests of Christian nationalists, and a tiered system of justice will become more and more apparent. Most people will decide that getting ahead in life (or keeping your head down) is better than asking pesky questions about where your transgender neighbor went. The result is a mix of the modern Hungarian political system, Russia-like apathy, and Nazi-esque zeal for creating a pure culture. As happened in all three of those countries, democracy dies with barely a whimper in this scenario.
By Shelt Garner @sheltgarner
It seems as though the author is really going out of their way to avoid addressing the obvious — if Trump wins re-election there is a really good chance we’re going to have a revolution / civil war.
I say this only because Trump is such a chaos agent that it’s difficult to imagine that he would be able to peacefully transition us into autocracy. He’s just too dumb and lazy — and impatient — and he’s far more likely to thrash around as tyrant than he is to allow history to work its course and have us drift peacefully into autocracy.
Any other Republican in Trump’s position would do exactly as propose in this scenario. But this is Trump we’re talking about — he’s a complete idiot.
Here are my own thoughts on this general scenario.
The issue is, the United States is at the moment a huge nation that has a strong democratic tradition and is pretty decentralized. Many — many — people have some pretty basic assumptions about their relationship to the government and if as we transition into an autocracy that were to change in a quick, dramatic fashion….holy shit.
It could be, however, that I’m over thinking things. The core group of people who would otherwise be the ideological tip of the spear against autocratic “Magdonia” will slip out of the country and move to the south of France where they will continue to the smug liberal celebrity podcast grift without blinking an eye. Those “Smartless” episodes aren’t going to produce themselves, you know.
So, at the moment, I think Trump wins re-election and that’s that — America begins its transition into an autocracy. And, in the end, it will be not Trump but his successor who is our “Augustus.”
In fact, I will be quite stunned if Blues can get their act together enough to really try to put a stake through the heart of the autocracy that is beginning to grow within the American political system. In short, we’re fucked.
This is a repeat of the 2016 election. It will highlight the ongoing weaknesses of the Electoral College, having put Republicans who lost the popular vote in office again for the third time in three out of the last seven elections, and three out of the four total times that a Republican has won in that span. But it is a win without cheating or deliberately breaking the system. This will blunt the resistance to Trump, along with the belief that the government is illegitimate. There will be protests, to be sure, but so long as Trump doesn’t choose to have protesters massacred, they will fizzle out as they did in 2017.
This outcome is the hardest to predict. Trump will absolutely let his team attempt to implement Christian nationalism across the U.S. and use every means available to achieve its vision of an America with no immigrants, no trans people, no Muslims, no abortion, no birth control, Russian-style “Don’t Say Gay laws,” license to discriminate based on religion, and all government education funding going to religious schools. Blue states will try to resist this and invoke the same states’ rights and “dual sovereignty” arguments as red staters in scenario one, but it’s unlikely they will succeed due to conservative bias on the Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s willingness to blow off court rulings it doesn’t like.
If Trump goes straight to a massacre via the Insurrection Act, civil war is on the table. It’s highly unlikely that Trump and his Christian nationalist allies will allow a “soft secession,” but it’s possible that the U.S. balkanizes along many of the same lines that happen in scenario one, if blue state resistance is sufficiently strong and the federal government is unwilling to take steps that lead to the civil war outcome. If Trump manages to bring blue states to heel via legal means, and resistance is insufficient to compel blue state governors to refuse to comply, then we end up with option four: fascist, theocratic, hereditary dictatorship.
By Shelt Garner @sheltgarner
This is where I really disagree with The New Republic. The author is making some assumptions that make no sense. Remember, only half the country wants a white Christian ethnostate. There are millions of people in the the most economic productive parts of the country who would balk at the idea of Trump ruling them as a Mad Red King.
As such, here’s my own prediction of how things might go down.
If Mad King Trump really tries to rule the Blue parts of the US a tyrant as it seems clear that he does, then…oh boy. It just makes absolutely no sense to me that Mad King Trump could do all the tyrannical things he plans to do without any SA-like stormtroopers.
That is the key element of Hitler’s consolidation of power.
All these people who are aghast that I think there might be some reaction to Trump going full tyrant are making a basic mistake — they are assuming that if Trump starts to corrupt the administration of law and of justice that Blues are just going to roll over and let it happen.
As I always say at this point — I’m not advocating anything. I just believe in freedom loving Americans to refuse to live as slaves under MAGA tyranny. That doesn’t mean that a lot — A LOT — of smug Twitter liberals won’t flee the country.
They will.
But simply invoking the Insurrection Act isn’t some sort of MAGA fascist magic pixie dust. Rather than having “optimism bias” by proposing all of this, I think I’m being rather radical, clear minded and realistic.
I’m proposing that when pushed into a corner by MAGA fascists that Americans, en mass might rise up against the MAGA Trump regime in a stunning, historic way.
Just broaching this type of radical proposal is rather ironic coming from me, someone who hates any form of violence at all. But even the Constitution enshrines the right of the populace to revolt if need be. It’s weird that that particular provision of our founding document hasn’t gotten more attention of late, given all the bullshit that’s going on at the moment.
I have no idea of the specific of such a dire situation, but you, gentle reader, have to remember that not only is Trump NOT Hitler, but he also doesn’t have the SA to do his bidding. AND, what’s more, the US is far bigger, far more decentralized than Germany in 1933 and it would take time for ding-dong to build out the infrastructure necessary to knock heads the way Hitler did in early 1933.
That would be a window of opportunity for Blue forces to fight back against Mad King Trump. If we are VERY LUCKY, we might be able to co-ordinate some sort of General Strike that might cause such chaos in the country that the U.S. Military might step in and depose Trump in some way.
I know, I know, that’s pretty crazy sounding at the moment, but stranger things and all that.
The key thing for me is Traditionalists. These are people who are MAGA-friendly and they just want to see brown children torn from their families and put back in cages. When things get personal for them — say, when Trump uses a weaponized ICE to snatch their (white) relatives (like me) off the street then all bets are off.
The moment Mad King Trump loses the Traditionalists, then the lock is ticking. If we’re absolutely lucky, then Trump is successfully impeached because of the pressure of a General Strike. If we’re NOT lucky, then there is some sort of “Glorious Revolution” that doesn’t involve much violence, but does result in Trump and his veep being forceably deposed from power.
Now, obviously, this is the point where you say, “But won’t Traditionalists just become modern day Good Germans?”
That is very possible. But, remember, as I mentioned, Trump won’t have any SA shock troops as he enters power again. He’s dealing with 335 million Americans, most of whom have a basic assumption that the rule of law will be fairly and equitably administered.
Without an SA to remind Traditionalists to keep their heads down, there is a chance that their principles might kick in and they might, if nothing else, kind of look the other way as the more radical elements of the center-Left take charge.
I don’t want any of this to happen. But this is kind of personal for me because I’m a loudmouth drunk crank who simply will not, can not shut the fuck up about what a fucking cocksucker Trump is.
I will never, ever fucking shut up.
I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees a slave.
If Biden wins the election but Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives, it is very likely that Speaker Mike Johnson will refuse to certify the election, invoking the Twelfth Amendment to decide the election. This lets the House of Representatives—the one elected in November—determine the outcome, and each state gets one vote. That vote is decided by which party controls the majority of House seats elected by that state. Using that method, Republicans are virtually guaranteed to have 26 votes, and Trump becomes president. The only thing that might stop this is a few moderate Republicans in the House being unwilling to go along with such a plan, but most of them have already left. Remember: Two-thirds of Republicans in the House refused to vote to certify the election in 2020.
It’s also unlikely that the Supreme Court (which is already seen as illegitimate by a large percentage of the public after the shenanigans Republicans used to get a 6–3 majority, and after the Dobbs decision) will overturn this scheme, since it technically follows the rules. As a result, most people in blue states are likely to reject the legitimacy of the (gerrymandered) House Republican majority, the president, and the Supreme Court. Governors in blue states will be under intense pressure from their constituents, particularly those who fear for their lives if Trump takes power again, to reject the legitimacy of a Trump administration, much less give in to its extreme agenda.
This outcome results in the most intense “antibodies” being generated at the fastest rate possible. The immune system generates antibodies in response to a perceived viral or bacterial threat, and the greater the threat it perceives, the more vigorous the response is. So it is with political resistance: The more people perceive a second Trump administration to be an existential threat to their lives, the more they will resist.
Trump’s response will likely be to invoke the Insurrection Act and put down any resistance to his administration with the military. If this results in fatalities and mass detentions, it will probably only exacerbate the situation, leading to many people on both the left and right concluding that violence is the only viable option for change, resistance, or as a response to resistance. Right-wing elements have long been itching to use violence to put “those people” in their place. But the missing ingredient for a civil war is people on the left concluding that the only possible way to preserve themselves is violence. The outcome tilts toward the civil war scenario more than any of the other election outcomes.
By Shelt garner @sheltgarner I clearly think that civil war is a lot more possible than the author of these scenarios. In fact, I think it’s not civil war we have to worry about so much as a revolution then a civil war. If Trump wins and goes full tyrant on us, all bets are off. Trump is such a unique figure in American political history that he could, unto himself, cause a revolution and then a civil war.
If he starts to round up 20 million people and use the National Guard of Red States in Blue States….oh boy. That is a recipe for disaster. If people in Blue States begin to feel like they’re being lorded over by Trump and MAGA like he’s some sort of fucking Mad Red King his actions could prompt what would otherwise be impossible – a successful Blue General Strike.
If that happened and the U.S. Military somehow, magically decided to depose Trump and his Veep, then that, unto itself, would cause a civil war because Red States would then leave the Union in protest.
It all sounds very hysterical event to me, but, lulz, who knows.
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