Tag: A Very American Autocracy

Gradually….Then All At Once…Is Still Possible

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have written a lot — A LOT –about the possibility of a civil war or revolution in the United States over the years and all I can say besides, welp, I was wrong, is we were very, very “lucky” that Trump won in 2024.

I say this because all the signs pointed towards a civil war if the winy crybabies of MAGA didn’t get their way in 2024.

But now that Trump is in power again — ugh — a lot of things are going on at the same time. On one hand, there’s a huge amount of slack in the political system when it comes to people attacking Trump. I say this in the context of South Park going after Trump viciously and people not getting upset at all. In fact, a lot of people were quite happy with the situation.

Meanwhile, Trump keeps putting pressure on our Constitutional system to see if he can break it beyond repair. It is inevitable that he defies SCOTUS at some point and or runs for a third term or whatever. His whole historical point is to, in effect destroy the United States as we’ve known it.

The questions that remain is how exactly that is going to happen and what comes after Trump. I still think there is a greater-than-zero chance that Trump finally does something so egregious that the country implodes. To the point that WMD are used domestically and the entire political map of North America is redrawn.

But we are nowhere near that happening at the moment. All I know is Trump is the tip of the spear of a MAGA counter-revolution and the country is going to be fundamentally different once he finally, at some point for some reason, leaves office.

Pick A Side: Now What

By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that our slide into MAGA autocracy has begun to accelerate, it makes you wonder what happens next. Logically, to me, the whole point of the Trump historical experiment is for him to run for, and win, a third term, which would shatter the whole Constitutional system.

Then we would all be left struggling to pick up the pieces, maybe to the point of having to call a Second Constitutional Convention to reaffirm that we are, in fact, a Constitutional Republic in the first place.

But the key thing we have to remember is the United States is no longer a republic. We are now an empire just as much as the Roman Empire. The question now is how far we will slide towards some form of “hard” authoritarianism like they have in Russia. At the moment — I just don’t know.

Once Trump shatters the existing Constitutional order just by being himself, who knows what — if anything — will replace what we’ve had since 1789. But one thing we have to remember — there’s no going back.

This is it. This is the new America. Pick a side, one way or another.

How Does The Senate Vote? — Fuck The Poor!

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Once the Big Piece of Shit Bill passes the House soon, the next step for our evil autocratic overlords will be end free and fair elections. Then, that’s it, we circle the drain until we either have a civil war or revolution.

Once it’s clear there will be no connection between the governed and the government, the USA will finally turn into what all the fucking cocksucker MAGA people want — a white Christian ethnostate. And things are getting so bad so quickly that I have to assume that ICE will come after a harmless loudmouth crank like me soon enough.

I’ll be put into a camp and never seen again.

All of this is happening because of severe macro issues in the American political system. It seems at the moment there’s no going back. MAGA will finally get what they want and, barring something rather dramatic like a revolution and or a civil war…that’s it.

We will never have an effective Democratic president again and people will start to die in the streets while plutocrats grow more and more rich.

Though, I have to note that there is one specific issue that I just can’t game out — the looming Singularity. Once we bounce from AGI to ASI…anything is possible. It could be that a species of ASIs will take over the world and force the governments of the world to make nice and, as such, will save us from ourselves.

Who knows, really?

The Only Possible Solutions

By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are some severe macro problems facing the United States at the moment and there are only three solutions that I can see going forward.

  1. Full Blown Autocracy
    Right now, the USA is in a murky liminal political state where we are lurching towards a “hard” autocracy, but we’re not quite there yet. If we did become a real Russian-style autocracy, then that would solve a lot of our problems because, well, lulz. The plutocrats could push through even more radical transformations of the US without having to worry about their toadies in Congress getting voted out because there would be no free and fair elections. And Trump I could just be president for the rest of his life. This is the solution I think we’re going to get, but it’s not the only possible one.
  2. Civil War
    I think if we do somehow manage to keep voting free and fair and MAGA loses at the polls in a big way, that we’ll have a civil war. We almost had one in 2024, but for Trump winning. So, if MAGA loses, MAGA states will begin to leave the Union rather than face the possibility of any sort of center-Left government.
  3. Revolution
    The US is so big and diverse, I don’t know how, exactly this would happen, but I do think a center-Left revolution (which would lead to a civil war) is, at least, possible if we somehow don’t turn into a full blown militaristic autocratic state.

I Just Don’t See Republicans Allowing A Free & Fair Election In 2026

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

People keep talking about how Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” may cost Republicans the House in 2026 and I just don’t see it. Republicans will do everything in their power to make it nearly impossible to vote next year and so they will be protected from any consequences of their vicious, hateful Big Beautiful Bill.

And that will be that.

Once Republicans pull that fast one, they will be embolden. I suspect they will go through with efforts to replace the income tax with a VAT at some point in the near future.

A lot of macro things are going wrong at the same time and I think this is it — the USA now an autocracy and there’s little, if anything we can do about it outside of — gulp — a revolution. Since I would prefer not to live through a revolution, I guess my next best hope is somehow I find the means to bounce out of the country and never look back.

If I Have To Register With The Government Because I’m Bonkers Someone’s Going To Hear About It

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have been very careful to hold my tongue, as it were, as Trump pushes us further and further into regular old autocracy. But with the news that JFK Jr. is floating the idea of “registering” autistic people…I’m given pause for thought.

I’m not autistic, but I am clinically bonkers.

As such, as we lurch farther and father into autocracy, it doesn’t seem like too much a stretch to think one day bonkers people like me will have to register with the government. Why this would be the case, but if they’re going to come after autistic people, then bonkers people sure as hell will be next.

I’m going to cause a ruckus every way I can if I have to register with the government. I’m not going to shut up and it could be the refusing to register could be my first actual real world “resistance.” Of course, I say this now and then I just turn around and do it anyway because I will feel pressure to do so by my far more normal relatives.

And what happens if there is criminal liability for not registering? Then what am I going to do? I guess I can at least get really angry on social media — I do that already — and continue to work on my novel.

Hopefully — hopefully — things won’t get that bad. Hopefully I won’t have to register with the government and I can finish my novel in peace.

The United States Is An Autocracy — Now What?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All my “hysterical doom shit” has come about, it seems. All that’s stopping Trump from doing some of the darker things I’ve worried about is he hasn’t figure out how to do them yet, or hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

So, there you are — the USA is an autocracy now.

I really need to get out of this country. I need to sell a best selling novel and get the fuck out of doge. Should that happen, I want to move somewhere hot an exotic where they speak English and have a pretty good medical system.

Or, hell, I’m so desperate, I’ll move to Great Britain if need be. I’m just done with worrying about ICE or the FBI swooping in an murdering me in cold blood because I won’t stop calling Trump a fucking cocksucker.

Anyway, we live in dark days, folks. And it’s only going to get worse.

What The Fuck, Republicans?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Sometimes, when Republicans do something really, really dumb on a macro scale like gut Medicaid, I feel like I get a vision from the future about how history will report about it.

On a macro basis, Republicans seem determined to cause a revolution of some sort. They are very cocky and they lean into the cult-like status of Trump to get away with some really, really dumb things. This can only go on for so long before the US experiences some severe political and social upheaval.

And Trump is very much the Nero to all of this. All Republicans want him to do is sign the bills they give him gutting the social safety net, or disfranchising married women. Otherwise, they give him pretty much dictatorial power by default.

No good will come of this. It may take a decade or more, but the USA is careening towards some sort of revolution — the civil war — at an alarming rate. And the only reason why we dodged the bullet of civil war in 2024 is, well, Trump won. Otherwise, the country would have probably collapsed into political anarchy.

I hate living in interesting times.

And, yet, here we are, everything is interesting, too interesting.

But I think we’re just going to circle the drain for a few more years. People just are still too fat and sassy, too reluctant to risk their “lives and sacred honor” in the real world to do anything about fucking MAGA.

If I fell into a little bit of money, I would totally go to, like, the Philippines to retire or to just get the fuck away from MAGA Nazis.

I’m A Little Worried About America

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. I saw today where the United States has greater income inequality than France before the revolution. Yikes. And, given the absolute existential push towards tax cuts for plutocrats on the part of Republicans, its only going to get worse. Much worse.

I’m a little worried that Trump and his toadies are going to push the USA into revolution then civil war. I really don’t want that to happen. It would be horrific because of the number of WMD floating around the USA domestically.

And that doesn’t begin to address how WW3 would happen while the USA was indisposed. Ugh. It’s just horrible. Just the idea of a revolution then civil war gives me the heebeejeebees.

The thing about Trump is he’s a one person stress test for the system — and right now the system is failing, collapsing. Just don’t know what we’re going to do about that.

I just don’t see us doing what we want to do, which is “muddle through.” I think something painful and dramatic MIGHT happen within the next four years. I hope not, but I tend to try to make my abstract fears concrete, so here I am worried about a Blue revolution then a civil war between Blues and Reds.

We’re Not Sleepwalking, We’re *Racing* Towards Autocracy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I saw a headline somewhere in which it said we were “sleepwalking” into autocracy. Baby, we ain’t “sleepwalking” to anything, we’re zipping towards autocracy. Probably a very Russian-style autocracy that likes to pretend it’s a democracy with a thin veneer of legalism, but, lulz, is just a regular old autocracy.

As of right now, at least, it seems like we’re going to slouch straight into autocracy without the blink of an eye. There’s currently nothing to stop Trump from crashing the global economy, declaring martial law and then running for an illegal third term.

Nothing. Not a thing.

And, as I’ve said before, I think that’s his historical point — to either destroy our Second Republic so a new one can be founded, or destroy it so we can turn straight into an autocracy.

Given macro trends, here’s what I suspect is going to happen — the USA is going to be an autocracy for AT LEAST 20 years starting now and then once enough Baby Boomers die, gradually, some sort of true resistance movement will begin to take hold and at some point, maybe around 2060, we’ll snap back into a functioning democracy.

But that’s kind of iffy.

It could be that, lulz, this is it. We’re just going to be an autocracy for the rest of time. We just did not have it in us to protect the democracy republic we said we loved so much.