Category: Trumplandia

2024 Is Going To Be A Dark Year


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I just don’t think that Twitter liberals really appreciate how fucked the United States is in 2024. All the macro metrics point to something rather catastrophic happening one way or another — either we become an autocratic managed democracy or we have a civil war.

The reason why Twitter liberals are so blasé about all of this is they simply refuse to take MAGA’s glorification of political violence seriously. But a sizable portion of the American electorate has bought into the Trump Big Lie and we simply aren’t going to make it through the passions of another presidential cycle. The goal, of course, of Republicans in 2024 is sucker punch us by convincing the average voter that the only way a Democrat can become president is if Democrats control Congress. They’ve already conditioned us to accept a massive difference between the popular vote and the Electoral College as well as Republicans blocking any SCOTUS nominee that they have the power to block.

It’s just a brief jaunt to Republicans saying, “If we control Congress, we will nullify any Electoral College vote we don’t like.”

That will be the moment of truth. Either we shrug and accept this to be the case and Republicans simply run the country for generations to come because we’ve given up — or there’s a tragic and violent civil war. I would like for there to be some sort of middle ground, but we punted the problem of MAGA down the road in 2020 because of a very curious, very specific set of circumstances and it’s not going to happen again.

Everyone will face a stark, existential choice.

I guess there are a few less startling scenarios — like a MAGA Republican winning fair and square and then being content to have “hard power” while the center-Left has “soft power,” but that may be wishful thinking. Republicans no longer see liberal democracy as a legitimate form of government. They only see it as a means to an end: getting or keeping power.

You can only be hysterical about how much you hate CNN and MSNBC for so long before people take you both seriously and literally and decide to do something about them. So, it’s very easy to imagine some fascist MAGA POTUS starting off slow with clamping down on dissent, then growing more more brazen because form follows function if nothing else.

Then before the next presidential election rolls around, we’ve had a Constitutional Convention designed specifically to “root out woke cancel culture” once an for all. It will likely be marketed as some sort of “Second Bill of Rights” but, in fact, it will be a massive power grab meant to turn the United States into a white Christian ethno state.

But let me stress, again — I’m often wrong. I’m just sketching out what seems likely given macro metrics as of early 2021 and then extrapolating forward four years. Anything can happen.

Republicans Will Attempt To Nullify A 2024 Democratic Win


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Enjoy the next two years of normal life, is all I gotta say. The moment Republicans take control of the House (and Senate) things are going to be lit. The first thing they’re going to do, of course, is try to impeach Biden for Not Being Trump. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just if Biden is Not Trump, that’s enough to get him impeached.

And Republicans are going to demand as many witnesses as possible and probably pull in Hunter Biden along the way. But that’s just the prelude to the made event: in 2024, Republicans — if they can — will nullify any Biden win. Their hope in doing so will be people will assume that a Democrat can never become president unless Congress is controlled by Democrats. Then people just stop voting altogether and America’s decent into an autocratic managed democracy like they have in Russia will be complete.

What anyone who is not MAGA has to understand is Republicans live in a completely different political universe than we do. They live in the Upside Down which is full of surreal, paranoid conspiracies and a hate of POC and women with sexual agency to such an extent that they’re more than willing to accept tyranny. That’s why it’s so difficult to talk to MAGA people — the very thing I fear as a nightmare, they look forward to.

You can’t bring up systemic racism, because they don’t believe it exists. And pretty much anything you might bring up that’s based in fact that goes against their media narrative, they dismiss as “woke cancel culture.”

As such, that’s why we’re careening towards a “reset” of sorts in the United States in the 2024-2025 time frame. Shit is going to get real, as they say. The United States is either going to become a Republican-controlled autocracy or we’re going to have a violent, cataclysmic second American civil war. One so bad that the basics of modern American life will be in short supply. Electricity, the Internet, free press and freedom of movement — not to mention assembly — will no longer be things we can assume will be there.

And it’s all going to start as early as late 2024 or as late as early 2025. In fact, we may have a replay of the January 6th, 2021 capitol insurrection, only a quantum leap worse in severity. I can’t even tell you which side will be in rebellion. It could very well be the center-Left if, as I fear, Republicans in Congress simply refuse to allow Biden a second term because they no longer see anyone in power who is not a Republican as legitimate.

As I keep saying, I can’t predict the future. I have no idea if my dystopian predictions are anywhere near being close to what might happen. But I do know that on a macro level the conditions are there for the United States to either become a Russia clone or buckle and have a new civil war. A sizable minority of Republicans already glorify political violence. They’re chomping at the bit to have the opportunity to run around murdering center-Left people like me.

At least we have a few years of peace and quiet to prepare.

2024: Second American War Aims In Red & Blue


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can’t predict the future. I have no reveled truth. But as I keep saying, in the 2024-2025 timeframe it’s very, very, very likely that either the United States turns into a Russian style managed democracy run by white minority Republicans for generations to come — or there’s a civil war.

But I suspect it might be more of a spectrum, with civil war at one end and autocracy at the other. A lot depends on the specifics of what happens from the moment the Republican nominee is decided until someone is sworn in on January 20th, 2025. Let’s assume, however, that there is a Second American Civil War. What would be the war aims of the two sides?

One thing you have to understand is things are so spinning out of control that in the end, it could be either side that sparks a civil war, depending on how close the election is and how brazen the Republicans are in nullifying any outcome they don’t like. In a sense, the issue is who gets the USA “brand.” Republicans have already made the mental preparations necessary to start running around murdering people for political reasons and by 2024 they will be on a hair trigger to do just that.

I struggle to understand what Reds would want via a civil war when if they were just patient, they could get everything they want through politics. What they want is to turn the United States into Russia with them on top forever.

They are already well on their way to achieving that via gerrymandering, voter suppression and the existence of the Senate. No need to murder anyone for political reasons.

But the issue is — Republicans are impatient and because of the rot within the American political system on a macro level, they’re probably going to just nullify any 2024 election outcome they don’t like. And that will be the thing that sparks a Second American Civil War.

What makes predicting war aims for Red and Blue so difficult at this point is I don’t know who will be the US and who will be the Rebels. It literally could be either side. If Biden wins and manages to overcome Republican nullification attempts, then a number of Red states will attempt to bounce. Or they will simply try to take over the entire country and impose their will on Blue States. I guess their war aims would be to murder all liberals and ensure that white people are in control of the country no matter what.

If Biden loses or “doesn’t win” because Republicans nullify his election, then it will be Blue states who are the Rebels who either try to leave the Union or attempt to get the right to use the USA brand. At this point, for the Blues, everything would hinge on if California wanted to stay in the Union or not. California is so big on an economic and population scale, that it could be the engine for any successful re-imagining of the United States using Blue ideals. Without California, then Reds would have both Texas and Florida to draw upon and would probably successfully win any Second American Civil War. Though, Texas might not be all that stable because it’s shifting towards being a Blue state and it has a big enough minority population that it might just implode before it could help Republicans do much of anything.

And, remember, it’s very likely that WMD will be seized by both sides and we’ll just start nuking the hell out of each other until things that I can’t imagine or predict at this point happen and either the country is re-united one way or another or there’s some sort of long-term balkanization of the former United States.

But make no mistake — we’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked and the sooner we all start to take this absolute historical inevitability seriously, the better.

America’s Undead Politics & The Risk Of a Second American Civil War in 2024


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States continues to careen towards a very stark choice in 2024: autocracy or civil war. Those will be our only choices. I just don’t see anything happening that will allow us to punt the slow moving political crisis we’re in down the road anymore beyond that.

One big reason I see this being the case is the political talking heads on TV are completely oblivious to what’s really going on with the Republican Party. It’s not dying. It’s not imploding. It’s simply growing more hateful, vicious and autocratic by the moment. It’s nastiness has gone septic and in the end, when push comes to shove, the Republican Party would rather nullify any election they don’t like rather than allow a Democrat to be president.

American politics, American democracy is undead right now. It’s completely non-functioning and it simply will not be able to survive the passions of another presidential cycle. Either we stop being a liberal democracy altogether and become nothing more than an autocratic managed democracy like Russia, or we start murdering each other in cold blood for political reasons.

There is no in-between anymore because the Republican Party knows that because of the browning of America they will either die politically or have to restructure themselves in a pretty massive fashion if we continue to be traditional liberal democracy. Because they’re fucking cowards who love money and power and know they can continue to have both through fear — they are going to destroy the United States one way or another.

So the people on Morning Joe keep grasping for some explanation for why Republicans continue to act and believe the way they do, it’s because they are ignoring the obvious answer: we’re in the quiet before something very, very dramatic happening in our political history in the 2024-2025 timeframe. It’s going to be a massive reset of everything.

Either we fight it out through a civil war of some sort, or we simply turn into an autocracy where we’re governed by a deranged white minority for generations to come. Again, let me stress — there will be no middle ground. Everyone, of every political stripe, will have to pick a side no matter what. It will be an existential choice in the sense that when you make it, you’re going to feel like you’re putting your life, and the lives of everyone you care about, in danger if you pick wrong.

At this point, I still don’t know which path the United States is going to take. But I do know a path will be chosen.

We Have To Take MAGA’s Glorification Of Political Violence Seriously


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate violence. I hate guns. So, MAGA’s growing obsession with the glorification of political violence is surreal to me. But it’s something we have to take seriously — they are. The thing we have to be aware of is the fucked up fascist shit MAGA pulled in 2020 will be a quantum leap worse in 2024. Given four more years to stew in their fetid fascist juices, it’s easy to imagine the 2024 election being so rife with political violence that it’s not free and fair.

And if that doesn’t happen, the period between Election Night 2024 and January 20, 2025 may be simply one huge attempt on the part of every elected Republican official to ensure that Biden isn’t sworn in again. That may, in fact, be the whole point of the 2024 Republican Party — nullify any presidential election result they don’t like. They will have no other policies other than that and embracing political violence.

It’s very possible that Tucker Carlson or Lara Trump may win fair and square and we’ll simply slide into autocracy with a whimper not a bang. If that happens, then we will never have another free and fair election. Putin’s Russia is already beloved by MAGA Republicans. It’s easy to see his style of governance coming to the United States in some form.

The media will be purged. The ICE infrastructure will be weaponized. All the things that Trump wasn’t able to follow through with, his MAGA successor will be able to complete. There will be a moment in time when the Republican president will have hard power and the center-Left leaning media will have soft power and there will be some sort of truce.

For the average person, there won’t be much of a difference in everyday life. That is, of course, until suddenly all the late night TV hosts are abruptly changed and CNN is sold to Fox. Then there will be reports of people being pushed out of windows and, strangely enough, there won’t be any follow up.

It will only get worse from that point.

Republicans will never leave office and American will grow more and more inward looking, ignorant and poor.

Or there’s a civil war and we start running around murdering each other for political reasons. Ugh.

You Can Feel The Historical Forces Aligning To Cause Either A Second American Civil War Or Decent Into Autocracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s rare that you can actually see, first hand, significant macro historical forces at work. But that’s what we got right now in the United States. The crux of the issue, as is explicated in Ezra Klein’s “Why Were’ Polarized,” is white people are beginning to wake up to the looming inevitability of them being in the minority and a sizable portion of them don’t like it one bit.

All the fucked up shit going on in the United States spring from that fact. Everything from the fight over immigration (brown people scary!) to abortion (make more white babies!) to you name it comes from not “economic anxiety” but regular old racism.

There’s no such thing as reveled truth and I can’t predict the future, but I am enough of a student of history to know the America we have known for about 240 years simply isn’t going to make it through the passions of another presidential cycle. Or, if it does, it will only happen at the cost of a great amount of blood and treasure. Nothing short of a Third American Covenant [first: 1776 second: 1865)] will save our sorry asses at this point.

In other words — a civil war.

But that’s not the only option. We could just shrug when MAGA Republicans refuse to certify Joe Biden’s reelection and in January 2025 and that’s it. We’ll be run by hateful MAGA cocksuckers for decades to come. They will slowly at first, then faster and faster begin to crack down their pet peeves about modern America until they transform us in to Trumplandia.

But 2024 is it. That year will be make or break. But there won’t be any middle ground. The time for compromise will be over. You will have to pick a side, one way or another, no matter what the outcome is. And it will be existential. If there’s a civil war, then your personal safety will be decided by your politics. If its autocracy, then you either become a Good American or you get pushed out a window by a weaponized ICE agent.

As I keep saying, I have no idea what to tell you about how to prepare for this epic clusterfuck. I would suggest you get out of the country if that’s an option. But if it’s not, then make sure your personal politics align with the state you live in.

There are plenty of things that could happen that could punt this particular problem down the road. It happened in 2020, it could happen again. But Republicans are so far into fascism at this point that either they provoke significant political violence or they win and snuff out our liberties once and for all.

MAGA already glorifies political violence and it’s only going to get worse. But I have said over and over again, they are making a serious mistake on a strategic level by being so fucking bloodthirsty. If they were just patient and played by the rules, they could get everything they wanted in a peaceful manner. The entire system is already rigged in their favor in various ways. It’s when they overreach and steal the 2024 election in an extremely brazen fashion that the country will grow extremely unstable.

But, who knows. We might just shrug and let MAGA end our liberal democracy without any conflict at all.

Imagining Life In America During The Second Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because the United States is so big and diverse, there really isn’t one simple answer to what life will be like should we descend into civil war instead of autocracy at some point in 2024-2025. So, let’s pick my home state of Virginia and imagine what life will be like in, say, spring 2025 as the civil war started between election night 2024 and January 20th, 2025 rumbles on.

I believe Virginia would be one of the first states to sort its internal political differences out via armed conflict. So, probably what would happen is the conservative portions of the state would simply not recognize any outcome other than a MAGA victory and attempt to join forces with other MAGA parts of the country doing the same thing. But there’s a problem — they just don’t have the numbers.

They may have a lot of guns they want to fuck, but when you’re dealing with armed conflict it’s about population and economy. Being heavily armed helps, but won’t help you in the long run. It’s easy to imagine that once MAGA portions of Virginia essentially secede from the state that they will assemble some sort of organize militia and also be helped by MAGA cocksuckers from other states. This will lead to a very bloody war as the two sides try to figure out who will control the geopolitical entity known as “Virginia.”

This initial situation will lead to a radicalization on both sides. The media will be seized, purged and controlled and any man of fighting age my be impressed into service whether they like it or not. I generally think the Blue parts of Virginia would win such a struggle, but not after significant blood loss. So, let’s say by spring 2025 that particular situation has been settled and Virginia is firmly in the Blue camp.

What might shock us the most is how many political refugees Virginia would be home to and how bad the economy would be. There’s also a slight chance that the environment might be suffering the effects of a Little Death associated with a number of limited nuclear exchanges around the world since the United States imply was not around to prevent different countries from pulling the trigger.

But one upside — though bought with tragedy — would be a lot of political issues would magically be fixed because Virginia (and Blue America) could simply pass the legislation they wanted to because MAGA Republicans weren’t running around being crybabies.

And, yet, there would be some surreal aspects to all of this. Specifically, I’m thinking of how Blue political refugees from Red States might begin to repopulate the now-vacant parts of Red Virginia. This kind of shit happened all the time in Europe after WW2, but for Americans it would be totally alien. This would lead to a disconcerting re-arrangement of Virginia’s demographics.

As I’ve said before, a lot would depend on California. If California stays and fights during any Second American Civil War, then there’s a good chance Blue States would win. But this would not only drag out the war, but make it far more deadly because Red States would probably grow more and more desperate and probably seize WMD.

Then you have the whole issue of growing number of cities across the United States being vaporized, which would only make the two sides more radical and extreme. I generally like Blue States would win but their victory would not be a straight line. It could be that there would be a period of significant balkanization before we managed to put the country back together. Maybe via a Constitutional Convention of some sort?

But if Red States won, I suspect things would get pretty dark pretty quick for states like Virginia. There would be some sort of MAGA Reconstruction that disenfranchised minorities en mass and there would be the creation of an extensive secret police. A lot of people would just flee the country.

A new global era would begin, with American ideas spread across the globe and present everywhere…but America.

Enjoy This Peace & Quiet While You Can, Civil War Or Autocracy Arrives In 2024-2025


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that the shock is beginning to wear off for MAGA cocksuckers, they are beginning to plot their return to power. It seems their first goal is to eschew policy goals altogether and to wrap themselves up in the Big Lie of “cancel culture.” Using that to gin up the base, they will win back Congress in 2022 and use THAT as a springboard to nullify any election result in 2024 that doesn’t help them.

As such, 2024-2025 is it. We either shrug and become a Russian-style managed democracy or we take up arms and start murdering each other for political reasons.

It’s easy to imagine a scenario whereby Republicans, once they regain control of Congress in 2022, keep in 2024 and if they can’t strangle Biden’s re-election using voter suppression or highjacking local election boards, simply refuse to certify his Electors in early January 2025. Every step along the way, MAGA will be so astonishingly brazen that the likelihood of political violence will grow and grow until they finally we either have a civil war or we give up and turn into an honest-to-God autocracy.

So, in a sense, we’re going to solve the pressing structural issues of the day that we keep punting down the road one way or another in the 2024-2025 timeframe. Either we solve them threw violence or we solve them politically via an autocracy that does whatever the fuck it wants relative to the existential, abstract fears of MAGA whites you are afraid of being in the minority and women with sexual agency.

As I keep saying, I’m not smart enough to tell you what to do about any of this. I hate guns and violence, so my advice is you either get out of the country while you still can or move to a state whose politics fits your own. But even then, you’re going to have to make a choice at some point.

If there’s a civil war, you’re going to have to make some huge sacrifices so your side can win the war. If there’s an autocracy, you’re going to have to either be a “Good American” who follows the rules or risk your entire life being ruined not from some abstract “cancel culture” but because ICE agent thugs will either push you out a window or throw you in an ICE camp for speaking out against the party line.

I honestly have no idea which direction America is going to pick in 2024-2025, but I do know it will pick a direction.

The Macro Trends Hurtling America Towards Civil War Or Autocracy In 2025


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here are some of the macro trends that are eating away at our political system such that by the time 2024-2025 rolls around we are faced with a stark choice — civil war or autocracy.

Harding of Political Positions
The two sides are beginning to harden their positions in the wake of Trump. Or, put another way, Republicans have become fucking fascists who hate democracy to the point that no amount of political ratfucking is too craven for them. The recent Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 voting restrictions being a prime example of this. The two sides are now just talking passed each other in any political debate and, as such, our politics is beginning to lock up in fits and starts to the point that by the time 2024 rolls around it will collapse and a sizable portion of the population will see violence as their last recourse.

Miscalculations On Both Sides
Both sides are making some major miscalculations about the other. The Right things that if all else fails they can start murdering people to get what they want –without thinking through the practical implications of such a move. Meanwhile, the Left isn’t really taking the Right’s transition into a bloodthirsty mob seriously and think they can somehow magically get what they want via politics.

The Republicans Are Fascists
MAGA is now full-blown fascism and this subgroup of the Republican Party is dragging the rest of the party with it. So in 2024 there will be a number of different junctures where Republicans will test to see if they can simply nullify Biden’s reelection, no matter what the result. Their thinking will be that given we’ve already come to accept someone can win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote by a hefty margin that people will lulz Republicans “legally” nullifying Biden’s re-election by not certifying the vote in Congress. There could be dueling Electors at this point as well to muddy the waters even more.

Income Disparity
A wide gap between rich and more does not a stable nation make. So, it’s easy to imagine that being another systemic breakdown that will make the nation ripe for some sort of violent event in 2024-2025.

A Glorification Of Civil War By The Right
I know from my webstats that there’s a huge amount of interest in a second American civil war out there in the aether. Some of this, I think, comes from good old boys drinking a Miller Light and smoking a doobie on the back porch gaming out what happens when dem dar libtards try to take away their guns. And some of it is simply, on an abstract level, a glorification of violence in the name of political ends that is extremely poorly thought out and completely detached from reality. What I mean by this is — while I know it fits into the FOX News narrative that the center-Left is a bunch of unredeemable soyboy numales who are so limp wristed they could never fire a gun — in reality it’s human nature that when things grow existential humans do tend to adapt in whatever manner necessary to stay alive.

Notes On A Second American Civil War And Realpolitik For Bloodthirsty MAGA Types


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Anyone — especially a MAGA person — who wants a Second American Civil War is very, very dumb and misguided. MAGA is so fucking bloodthirsty because they’re fucking crybabies who think simply not getting want they want is a form of oppression. Add to this their belief that compromise is weakness and you have recipe for disaster in 2024-2025.

The thing that MAGA is completely oblivious about is the different dynamic between politics and war. With politics, you can screw over people by making it so difficult to vote that they don’t. Or you can control the media narrative such that a lying, racist, misogynistic piece of shit you support gets away scot free with any amount of criminal behavior.

But war is, by definition, existential. And you can be MAGA and have all the fucking guns you want to fuck and in the end you will lose because you just don’t have the things in aggregate to win. Blue States have bigger economies with better educated people — and women likely willing to fight! –than Red States. And, remember, that while the country is pretty much split 50/50 Blue States have more people in smaller spaces and a far more united polity than Red States.

What I mean by that is, the place where Red States would likely draw their most strength from — the old Confederacy — simply isn’t as united on an existential level. All the Jim Crow 2.0 that places like Georgia and Texas are up to now are power politics plays. But they won’t mean shit if things grow life or death.

If there’s a hot civil war and everyone has to take a stand and pick a side on a life-or-death basis this one, all the culture war talking points fate into oblivion and two things will grow very radical on both sides very quickly. All the systemic problems that we just don’t have the political will to fix — guns, racism, sexism, taxes, you name it — will be solved one way or another because the dead hand of history will force us to decide.

Or it could be a lot more messy than that with the United States splitting into countries that hate each other. Or the country could balkanize in a half-ass manner where bigger states like California, Texas and Florida are in various states of independence while the rest of the country is barely hanging on.

But I know there’s nothing I can do to stop MAGA from either running around murdering people like me in 2024 or finally getting their wish as the United States turning into a Russian-style “managed democracy.”

All I can do if there is a civil war is sit back and tell MAGA “I told you so” when suddenly all the globalist cuck soyboys they think they can simply murder turn out to have a lot more spunk than they predicted.