Category: The Resistance

A 2024 Black Swan: What Am I Missing?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If 2020 proved anything, it’s that I just can’t predict the future. As such, I keep searching my mind to think up what I could possibly be missing about late 2024, early 2025 that would somehow give us an offramp from all my “hysterical doom shit.”

At the moment, I got squat.

It seems we’re going to lurch into a very dark and turbulent fate starting around November 2024 and things could be pretty rough for a number of years after that.

Or not. I just don’t know.

The most obvious thing that might throw everything up in the air is some sort of “health incident” that one or both of the old codgers who are running for president might experience. As for Trump, I don’t wish physical ill on him for no other reason than if ANYTHING happened to that fucker, the country might collapse into severe political violence not seen since the death of Martian Luther King Jr — only this time it would be red necks burning things to the ground because they believe the “deep state” did in their false prophet.

I suppose maybe a war — DPRK, I’m looking at you — might throw things up in the air. Then Biden would be a War President and he MIGHT be able to unite the country just long enough to defeat Trump.

If — God forbid — Something Happened and Biden was no longer the nominee, that would REALLY scramble things a great deal and things could go in directions no one — least of all me — could predict.

As an aside, I will note that it definitely seems as though Republicans may lose the House this year, which would que up Trump being impeached sooner rather than later if he went “full tyrant” on us. Throw in an actual effective General Strike and it’s at least possible THAT would be how we got rid of that malignant ding-dong.

But all of that is VERY speculative.

I have no idea what is going to happen. I just want to live in a peaceful, prosperous America that has a functioning democracy. That should not be too much to ask.

It’s Too Late

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I fear it’s just too late. There’s simply nothing that can be done — barring something I can’t predict — to prevent political catastrophe starting in late 2024, early 2025.

I mean, when headlines like this:

…do nothing to stop Trump from being 60,000 votes in five swing states away from being POTUS again….we got a problem.

As such, I think all I can ask of my Traditionalist relatives — whom I love dearly — at this point is that they will give me material support should the country collapse and we find ourselves on opposite ends of the sudden very real political divide in a country torn asunder.

That’s it. That’s all I got.

The Fire Next Time: ‘Implosion’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The issue with Trump going full tyrant should he be re-elected is there is a real chance that the whole political infection that is MAGA is the risk it might go septic, that it might cause a real fucking catastrophe.

So, let’s think about how that might play out. We’re going to go most likely to least likely when it comes to people MAGA might try to put in Trump-branded camps.

Undocumented People
This is the gimmie. This is the thing that Trump will use as cover to build out the infrastructure for all the OTHER bad things to happen. But, remember, Trump is dumb and lazy so there will be a window of opportunity between the time he says he’s going to round everyone up and when he actually does it.

Gay People
If you just follow the current trends of the Gay Scare that the US is undergoing, it seems logical that gay and transgender people will eventually, inevitably, be rounded up and put in the camps that were originally built for undocumented people.

Various Other People
I think, in the end, because of Trump’s personal prejudices, that MAGA will soon enough come after the mentally ill, alcoholics and the handicapped. It’s all a matter of time.

The big question of course, is what the reaction by Blues will be to such tyrannical behavior. That, I’m afraid, I can’t answer at the moment.

I’m Growing Worried About My Personal Safety In Late 2024, Early 2025 Because Of National Political Turmoil

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. I am well aware of how hysterical this sounds, but here goes — I’m afraid I’m going to be driven out of my home in late 2024, early 2025 because my politics don’t jibe with my part of my state. I live in a deep, deep Red part of my state and every time I see some ultra-MAGA bumper sticker, I wonder if that’s a portent of things to come.

They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once, and so my fear is everything will be normal until at some point after the 2024 Election and then….blammo…some beefy, armed redneck will knock on my door and tell me to get the hell out of town because I’m Blue.

And, yet, now in early 2024, that type of talk really does seem rather hysterical. But I’m kind of paranoid (obviously) and, as such, I like to game out what I will do should the absolute worst happens. A lot depends on the specifics of me being driven out.

There is a big difference between being driven out peacefully and having to flee because the whole country is collapsing into revolution and or civil war. But I suppose there’s only so much I can do right now.

When MAGA Fascism Becomes Personal

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Talking to my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — I am taken aback by how while in general they’re all-in for rounding up 20 million undocumented people and their families and forcibly removing them from the country, they…really haven’t thought through the implications of doing such a thing.

They just, in general, want brown people out of the country so white people can be on top again. Or something. Something like that. I have tried my best — to little success — to make this extremely abstract issue (in their minds) as concrete and personal as possible. I point out that a lot of the people who would be deported would have adult children who are Americans and they just wave this concern away.

“Oh, I haven’t really thought about the specifics,” is what they tell me.

And Trump has specifically said he wants to do away with birthright citizenship as soon as he’s in office again. I’ve pinned my conservative relatives down NOW to establish that at least as of early 2024, they believe that if you’re born in America, you’re an American citizen.

I have a feeling despite having done that, that once the MAGA propaganda and talking points of the issue are issued once Trump does do away with birthright citizenship, they will just chuckle and not answer when I point out that they have had a change of heart.

The ONLY THING that gives me some hope is how ill-thought out much of the tyrannical MAGA agenda is. First and foremost, there’s no MAGA SA. And any of the various options that MAGA might use to create such stormtroopers will take time to build out. Also, the moment people married to brown men and women find themselves stopped an interrogated about the citizen status of their mate….there is going to be a lot of hell to pay.

As I keep saying, maybe some Black Swan event will give us an exit ramp that allows us to not to have to worry about MAGA fascism in the United States…but I dunno. I’m just not one to not at least game out various scenarios. I like to make my abstract fears, concrete.

Blues Need To Get ‘Woke’ About The Dangers of MAGA Fascism In The USA

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that it’s mainstream Republican orthodoxy that the insurrectionists of January 6th are “hostages,” I wish members of the center Left would gird their loins for the battle royale we face. My fear is that it won’t be until Trump is re-elected and he goes full tyrant that a lot of center Left people will stop being keyboard warriors and start to think about how they can address MAGA fascism in the real world.

I’m not advocating anything. I hate violence. I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. But I am saying that just telling people to “vote” or “pass it on” on Twitter won’t mean jackshit when 500,000 armed, weaponized ICE agents are running around snatching people off the street if they don’t have their “papers” or if they’re “an enemy of the people” because they wrote that Donald Trump can suck their cock on their little blog that no one reads.

I just want center Left people to get “woke” in the real sense of the word — they need to change their mental frame of reference. Center Left people need to realize that we may be going to the show in the sense that all my hysterical doom shit may be just….the reality that we’re going to have to live with in just a few months.

How likely is all that? I don’t know. I can’t predict the future. All I know is the center Left can’t allow itself to be sucker punched in January 2025 when Trump does exactly what he has been saying he will do for years now — become a tyrannical dictator who rules over Blue portions of the country as a king.

The Hypocrisy Of The Right

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Where to begin with this one. But, let’s try. The issue is because of “vibes” the American Right thinks the world is out to get them. They see any possible slight against their movement as The End Times. They are, in short, a bunch of fucking snowflake crybabies.

But the thing to remember about the Right is at their core is a willingness to be hypocrites without blinking an eye. Take, for instance, how Republicans are “free speech absolutists” when it gives them the two-fer of “owning the libs” AND demanding all their mistaken-for-Nazi rhetoric is allowed to spew forth online like just so much sludge.

Then, the moment they feel that clamping down on free speech will help their never-ending efforts to establish a fascist white Christian ethnostate, suddenly, it’s all, “Lulz, can’t have THAT speech be free, now can we?”

They do this all the fucking time! On every subject! They pick the most extreme position possible, then when someone calls them out on how using their own logic they’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites they just hand wave the issue away and piviot to how “the big guy” sold out America to Chinese interests in the name of his son. UGH. (Even though we know for a fact from recent reporting that ding-dong Trump did the very thing the Right screams at the top of their lungs that Biden did!)

It’s all very aggravating.

And, at its heart, the issue is just “vibes.” White Christian (men) are spooked by how America, in general, is becoming more brown, female controlled and secular and it freaks them the fuck out. So much so that they would hand the American birthright of democracy to a malignant ding-dong like Trump so he can snuff it out.

As I keep saying, I’m not so much interested in what Tyrant Trump will do should he become POTUS again as I am what the REACTION to such tyrannical behavior will be on the part of the “center” that usually doesn’t really care about politics and when pressed they “both sides” any controversial issue into oblivion.

If Trump really does try to deport 20 million people out of the country and he literally starts to snatch people off the street in broad daylight….will these so-called “centrists” take notice? Will they even care? Or will they be just fine as long as brown kids are back in cages, screaming because they’ve been separated from their parents?

Will only be when things get personal for them, specifically, that “centrists” get woke and decide to do something in the real world about the Red King? What they might do, I have no idea. But I’m a little unease as to how unstable the United States MIGHT grow to be in late 2024, early 2025.

Imagining The Implosion Of Virginia Starting In Late 2024, Early 2025

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I often say, Virginia is actually two states — one Red, one Blue — fused together who hate each other. The divide is pretty much rural versus metropolitan. The thing about a National Divorce, should it happen starting in late 2024, or early 2025, is what happens to states like Virginia?

If Red States really do start to leave the Union, there will be a massive rush from rural MAGA counties for Virginia to follow suit. Meanwhile, the urban areas of the Commonwealth will remain loyal to the Union. I think we would see coups and counter coups in Richmond if the things really got bad.

On a practical basis, if Virginia imploded, I would have to figure out what I would do on a personal basis. I think I would head to Richmond where I have some relatives. But that would probably be just a makeshift solution. Even Richmond would not be safe to stay in very long. I would, I fear, have to leave Virginia altogether for a more stable state north of the Mason – Dixon line.

I would like to think an infrastructure will have been built out by the point that I have to leave RVA, but, who knows. I know I can’t predict the future, so it’s very possible that all of this is just me and my usual hysterical doom shit. But who knows.

All I do know is the United States is a lot less politically stable than we would like to to think. The MAGA Right grows more and more radical by the day and should the time come, I have no doubt that states where MAGA Republicans control the governments will begin the process of leaving the Union.

I suppose what will happen is roadblocks will begin to pop up between Red and Blue states as the process of collapse begins in force. I suppose that Red States — who at this point I think will be the ones leaving the Union — will issue their own passports. And the new Trumplandia government will have to attempt to seek recognition from other countries, probably with our enemies like China and Russia being the first to rush to do so.

But, again, let me stress, all I’m trying to do is make my abstract fears concrete. It could be that some sort of Black Swan event will happen and we’ll simply punt our severe structural political problems down the road another four years. But I do believe, in general, that our next Republican president — whomever that might be — will ben autocrat.

An Attempt To Imagine What Would Have Happened If Trump Had Gone To The Capitol On January 6th

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know why this is so difficult for me to game out, but here goes.

If Trump had gone to the Capitol to press his case on January 6th, 2021, what we look back upon as kind of a .5 of a 9/11 would have jumped up the tragedy scale to a full-blown 9/11-sized event. The idea that a president, even a president as crazy as Trump, would go to the Capitol at the forefront of a crazed mob wanting to stage a coup would been a Day The Earth Stood Still type of historical event.

The imagery alone of the event would be embedded into our collective consciousness just as much as the JFK assassination or 9/11.

Here is where things get even more sketch — would Trump’s second impeachment have gone any differently?

I have my doubts. Trump is such an avatar for some pretty astonishing problems in our political system that he’s kind of an immutable historical force. I doubt even him literally be the head of the spear of a crazed mob trying to intimidate Mike Pence into not doing his job would have been enough to cause Senate Republicans to convict him.

In fact, it’s very possible that Trump would be seen as some sort of uber-patriot in the eyes of MAGA for doing such a crazed thing. No one is going to save us from Trump.

We’re going to have to save ourselves.

A Red King: Tyrant Trump & The End Of American Democracy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A lot of people are still being very delusional about Trump. They think through some combination of rainbows and unicorn farts, Trump will simply fade away and we can go back to normal. Sadly, barring some sort of Black Swan event in 2024, Trump remains 60,000 votes in five swing states away from being POTUS again.

The question is, how, exactly will Trump end American Democracy?

Logically, what would happen, if form follows fascist function, Trump would soon after getting re-elected demand a Constitutional Convention that will make “America First” changes to the Constitution in such a way that Trump never leaves office.

But there are at least two issues to consider.

One, Trump is old as fuck and while he can destroy American democracy, it will be up to his successor to be in office for decades to come. Second, if Trump literally begins to snatch people he doesn’t like off the street, There Will Be Consequences.

And, yet, may be I’m being too sanguine. Maybe if 1 million smug Twitter liberals leave the country and take their smug, circle jerk podcasts with them, that will be that. American democracy will be snuffed out and we’ll all shrug.

I can’t predict the future. Anything is possible.