Tag: American Anocracy

To Think, The FBI Is ‘Trumplandia’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the strangest, most curious political developments in modern American history is the rise of the anti-FBI Right. Now, obviously, this is a quirk caused specifically by how the fucking cocksucker MAGA New Right hates that their Fuhrer is being held accountable, at last.

So, they get all squirrely and attack the source of the problem — the FBI. And, yet, in 2016, the FBI was described as “Trumplandia.” So, it’s all very strange. I suppose the point of all of this is, as MAGA grows more and more radical they are so determined to destroy anything that stands in their way that they don’t stop to think that most of the FBI agrees with them.

It’s one of those things where the FBI, by just doing its job, finds itself at loggerheads with a group it supports (in general.) This is a very unstable situation and it could be that once MAGA gains power again they will burn the whole thing to the ground and replace it with something a lot closer to the SS or SA than what you might think — the gestapo.

This whole situation is very surreal. And there’s no ready endgame. And, as such, we continued to be in a lingering, chronic crisis. The key issue is — there will be no “pivot” to DeSantis or anyone else for that matter. The MAGA base is enraged by the very legal, very justified raid on Mar-a-Lago and, as such, GQP elected officials are being dragged into a more and more absolute stance when it comes to Trump.

As such, there could very well come a point where the FBI, despite it all its empathy for the fucking MAGA New Right fascists, could, well, be “restructured” by the second Trump Administration to the point that it’s nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party.

America is far, far more unstable than we’re willing to admit to ourselves. Trump is so deranged and stupid that he could very well go transactional and tell his more and more radical followers to attack the FBI directly. The FBI HQ in DC, agents and various field offices across the country could be attacked by AR-15 welding MAGA nutjobs who want to martyr themselves for the Dear Leader.

I know that sounds very hysterical, but I also know that that is now at least within the realm of possibility.

MAGA Is Radicalizing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate to break it to you folks, but Trump now has America’s fate in his tiny, tiny hands. For some inexplicable reason, we’re reaching a political Singularity whereby two absolutes are going to collide — the absolute desire to protect the Fuhrer on the part of MAGA and the government’s absolute need to hold Trump criminally accountable.

I have long poo-pooed the idea that we’re going to have any sort of MAGA civil war or “revolution.” And, yet, it would not take too many MAGA lone wolves using their beloved AR-15s before something akin to a “MAGA revolution” would be marketed by the press.

There’s only be one time when Trump went something akin to transactional and that was January 6th. He did it because he was desperate and he thought maybe he could stay in power by simply inciting a mob to scare the shit out of Mike Pence.

So, if there was a real chance that Trump was going to be indicted and arrested, he could very well feel so trapped that he starts to demand that states begin to secede from the Union to put pressure on the Federal government to back off. If he did something so dumb, I could see Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, West Virginia, (maybe) Florida and definitely a number of low-population mountain states could do just that.

And, as is usual with Trump’s bullshit — he wouldn’t at least a first, even mean it. He would just be desperate and want to scare the Federal government into giving up. Only when things inevitably went out of control would he get really into destroying the country.

But that is very much very fantastical at the moment. A lot would still have to happen before Trump would feel so trapped that he would actually go transactional and demand states leave the Union.

Yet, it’s something to think about because MAGA is definitely radicalizing. And that radicalization is only going to get worse. To the point that when they steal the 2024 election the choice between autocracy and civil war could be so stark that there really will be no endgame.

My Current Hot Take On Why Trump Took Top Secret, Classified Documents To Mar-A-Lago

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The biggest question of the moment when it comes to Trump and all the fucking secrets he stole from the U.S. Government is, of course, “But why?” I struggle to imagine that Trump is smart enough to think of, in real time, any sort of sinister plot when he was leaving office.

So, here’s what I think happened.

Trump is both criminally incompetent and interested in our nuclear secrets for some reason and so, it’s very possible that as he was leaving the White House he just threw a bunch of shit into boxes. He didn’t have any idea what was in any of the boxes, other than he had, at some point, been interested in whatever was in them.

Now, let me be clear — this is both an extremely charitable explanation for what happened and no excuse for him to avoid prosecution. I said he was criminally incompetent. So, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And it doesn’t give us a ready explanation as to why he would both delay, delay, delay giving the documents back AND lie about still having them. But the case could be made that once the documents became an issue, his natural asshole tendencies kicked in and he just refused to cooperate because that’s just who he is.

And, yet, if things really got violent when he was indicted, I would give Trump a deal — we won’t prosecute you if you promise not to ever run for president again for the rest of your life. And as part of the deal, he would have to make some sort of statement demanding that everyone calm down and stop killing each other.

There’s a lot wrong with all of this, of course. We still don’t know the fullest extent of what really happened. We still don’t know the “why.” What I proposed is just a theory. And Trump has so many people who hate what he stands for as much as I do, that it’s possible we’re past the Event Horizon.

No possible deal will be offered because that train has left the station. And Trup wouldn’t even agree to it, even if it was offered to him. He wants to be POTUS again and he’s willing to burn the most powerful nation in the world to the ground to achieve that goal.

2025: The Year We All Become Antifa ‘Radical Moderates’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump is not only growing more deranged of late, he’s also growing more and more angry and radical. And he’s not going anywhere. The FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago has caused the entire MAGA movement to lurch into a frothy radicalism that sometimes doesn’t seem to make any sense.

And, yet, at the moment, the center-Left in the United States is so weak that we have to take even this new, bonkers version of MAGA seriously as a political force.

My fear is that by late 2024, early 2025, MAGA’s agenda for the United States will have grown so radical that once they steal the 2024 election and begin the process of consolidating power that what they want to do will shock even Traditionalists and away we go. There really is something akin to a revolution, and a group I call “Radical Moderates” will pop up as they usually do in times of political distress in the United States.

Radical Moderates are people who are usually pretty laid back, but because of the crisis that the country is in, they sudden are willing to entertain concepts that were once considered radical. The most notable example of this was when Lincoln freed the slaves and, suddenly “everyone was an Abolitionist.” The same thing could happen if MAGA flips out and ties to, overnight, turn us into Fortress America.

Blue States will begin to leave the Union as the MAGA counter-revolution begins to happen in Trumplandia. There could be a race war in the Deep South and we might find the United States in a situation comparable to Revolutionary Russia as the Russian Empire began to implode.

This makes me want to read a book about the Russian Revolution.

Anyway. There is a greater-than-zero sum chance of mass chaos and unprecedented political upheaval in the United States starting in late 2024, early 2025. But I’m always wrong. Always. I mean, I can’t predict the future. So, it might ultimately get punted down the road a presidential cycle. Or DeSantis becomes president and our decent into autocracy is far more gradual that might happen with Trump.

All I know is — we’re in the danger zone now.

The Possible Fourth Reich: You Say You Want A (MAGA) (Counter) Revolution

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I study my Webstats way too much and the one keyword that continues to bring a trickle of people to this obscure Website is the word “revolution” in the context of MAGA. Now, I’ve dismissed this to date because while I could think up a reason to believe there might be a Blue-initiated Second American Civil War, I just could not see how we might have a “MAGA Counter-Revolution.”

But now, I’m beginning to think there might just be a MAGA counter-revolution should Trump get re-elected in 2024. He’s just growing more and more radical as is his MAGA base and it seems as though should he gain power again, the changes to the US government will be so quick and so severe that they could very well meet the definition of a “counter-revolution.”

Or, put another way, MAGA taking power in 2025 could one day be looked back upon as the American equivalent of the Nazis taking power in Germany in 1933. It really could be that bad.

And, yet, the United States is far bigger and diverse than Germany in 1933. So, if MAGA really is as racialized at that point as I fear, the country probably really will descend into some sort of chaos. Blue states will leave the Union. There will be coups and counter-coups.

But it definitely seems as though a lot of the MAGA base wants an honest-to-God (counter) revolution. They really do want to burn the country to the ground and have an excuse to use their AR-15s to murder people like me in cold, political blood.

I don’t know. The one thing that people keep hoping will happen — that MAGA will somehow magically come to its senses — isn’t going to happen. I think a lot of our problems come from the United States being a lot less stable than we all think at the moment.

We’re officially in the political Danger Zone when virtually anything might happen.

MAGA’s Counter-Revolution Of 2025

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s possible that we’ll look upon the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago as the moment the United States began the final sequence of events that either led to autocracy or civil war in late 2024, early 2025. The issue is, I keep hearing respected people within my center-Left echo chamber come so close to understanding the gravity of the situation, only to pull away at the last second.

I’ve heard people ranging from the participants of Deep State Radio podcast to the Pod Save America crew all sort of say, “Well, if this isn’t the end of MAGA, we’re all in a lot of trouble.”

And that’s the crux of the situation.

Barring a severe 9/11 type tragedy that can be directly pinned on MAGA, the rancid, racist MAGA movement isn’t going anywhere. As such, we have to prepare for something nothing short of a political apocalypse. I keep saying — we have a spectrum of things that may happen — on one end you have a civil war and on the other end you have A Very American Autocracy.

And the more the system tries to work, the more radical MAGA becomes and the more likely that whenever they do gain power again that our choice is going to be even more stark — autocracy or civil war.

Now, let’s talk about the Nazis. I’m reading a book about their rise to power in Germany and going into the early 1930s, the Nazis still had to work out exactly what their vision was for the German state. There was sort of the NATIONAL Socialists and the National SOCIALISTS. I haven’t gotten to this exact part of the book yet, but as I recall, the SA wanted a more radical interpretation of Nazism, while Hitler wanted something that could fit within the traditional conservative tradition in Germany.

Anyway, Hitler won this particular power struggle. And it makes me wonder if MAGA, in the end, is going to have a similar situation on its hands. The nightmare scenario is, of course, that Trump grows not only extremely toxic but extremely radicalized by the long arm of the law finally reaching him and when he has the opportunity again he burns the country to the ground. Or, once we become a MAGA autocracy, we lurch into autocratic state a lot closer to Nazi Germany far faster than I might otherwise predict.

But if something happens to Trump and it’s, say, Ron DeSantis who becomes our new MAGA overlord, I think it’s safe to say that our transition into A Very American Autocracy will be more gradual and gentle so there won’t be any chance for Blues to organize any real-world Antifa or secessionist drive.

Yet, like I said, Trump is so deranged and holds such absolute power over the MAGA base that there could very well be something akin to a MAGA counter-revolution around 2025. They literally could end the FBI as we know it and turn it not into the American gestapo, but something a lot closer to the SS. We would become Fortress America and some of Trump’s more radical foreign policy dreams would become a reality. Which, would, in turn, cause WW3.

Or, put another way, Trump is far, far more dangerous than we realize. Things are so uncertain at this point, though, that I can’t game things out. It really could go any number of different ways. The most radical is Trump is re-elected and pushes through a Hyper-MAGA agenda, which, in turn galvanizes the Blues to the point that there’s a civil war. Or there’s a civil war starting in late 2024 when it becomes clear MAGA is going to brazenly steal the election. Or someone like DeSantis is the Republican nominee and we just kind of gradually drift into autocracy.

Or, Trump becomes POTUS again in 2025, but it’s not until his successor that we really see an attempt to establish Trumplandia. I still think Gen. Mike Flynn might be Trump’s veep choice.

Anyway, we’re officially in the political danger zone. Anything could happen at this point, and probably will.

American Anocracy In The Prelude To Stochastic Terrorism

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I fear that our anocracy has officially entered its “Stochastic Terrorism” phase. Such violence is when a powerful group in your society goes after another group so much and so publicly that it’s inevitable that someone, somewhere is going to hurt them. Think violence against Jews right before the Nazis actually had the levers of state at their disposal.

So, it seems pretty clear to me that at any moment we’re going to have a significant uptick in political violence. But not just general political violence, violence directed at trans people. Or Jews. Or pick a group that the MAGA New Right doesn’t like. And it could be that they go after FBI agents and judges.

But the point is — our anocracy is growing ever more unstable. And as I keep saying, it’s all going to come to a head in late 2024, early 2025. We’re either going to have a civil war at that point, or we’re going to become an autocracy. At the moment, I honestly don’t know which direction we’re going to go.

Stay tuned.

I Guess Trump Escapes Justice Again

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I honestly thought, for a few hours, that Trump stealing Top Secret documents might be The Thing that mortally wounded that malignant dingus on a political basis. But as of right now, it seems as though this is going to go the exact same route that all of Trump’s other scandals have gone.

Something Big and Bad happens
We all freak out that Trump did it
For a brief moment, we think we “Got Him”
MAGA Talking Points Emerge
We’re too divided for any consensus.
Trump escapes
Repeat

So, for the moment, I believe that I need to go back to working on my novels and reading up on the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany. Trump being investigated for violating the Espionage Act will be thrown onto the list of Bad Things that Trump Has Done and…then promptly forgotten.

Even if Trump is indicted, he will just wrap himself around it so he can play the martyr.

In short, we’re just as doomed as we were before all of this started. Oh well. Wake me up when we decide if we’re going to have a civil war or turn into autocracy. Otherwise, I have six (!) novels to develop and write before I drop dead.

The Latest ‘Powers That Be:’ Holy Shit, Did This Podcast Age Poorly

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok, I’m a notable idiot. I screw up a lot. I get things wrong because I’m too lazy to look them up. In short, I often live up to my reputation as a “failed reporter.” And, yet, when I listened to the above podcast where the interlocutors got REALLY EXCITED about how, essentially, it was a big screw up to raid Mar-a-Lago….I was taken aback. Something felt off.

Some of it was how the implication of the conversation was that Trump was “back in the game” and there was absolutely no downside to any of this. It definitely felt to me as if the two people talking thought it was settled — Trump was pretty much the president again already.

Then the events of today happened and I found myself thinking about the podcast conversation above. While I’m sure — sure — that Trump can figure out some way to elude justice yet again, I suspect Ron DeSantis feels a little bit better about his chances of being the 2024 Republican nominee now that there is evidence that Trump stole America’s most classified secrets — having to do with nuclear technology!

Anyway. I found the podcast above annoying and presumptuous, to say the least.

How Does Trump Wiggle His Way Out Of Having Top Secret Nuclear Documents At Mar-a-Lago?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As of this writing, Trump has announced on Truth Social that he is going to “encourage” the release of some of the legal documents associated with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Ok, at the moment, things look kind of dark for that fucking malignant dingus. But, to date, Trump has always, always, ALWAYS escaped justice. So, how does he do it this time?

Announce
One idea is, if Trump realizes he’s done a Big Boy Crime and he’s in Serious trouble, that he can always simply tell the Republican Establishment to fuck off and announce for 2024, like, NOW. This would blow out the newscycle for 24 hours and, lulz, by the time we get our bearings again Trump will say no matter what he has absolute immunity because he’s running for POTUS.

Fuck You, Lib
In this scenario, he simply shrugs the whole thing off. He knows his base and, in the end, he has Hitler-levels of fidelity from MAGA and all that happens is the two sides difference of opinion about Trump grows more and more sharp and severe. And, in the end, if he gets indicted, he just uses it to fundraise off of and to cry about how he’s being “canceled” by the “woke cancel culture mob” that wants to turn everyone gay. Ugh.

Something Else Happens
Never count Trump out. This is August, after all, and there’s a good chance that something huge could happen that diverts our attention from Trump and his stealing (and selling?) of secrets long enough that he escapes, AGAIN. This is not really a strategy on his part, but it is something that could very well happen at any moment.

Go Transactional
This is probably the darkest of the possible scenarios. Trump, in a panic, freaks out and tells his followers to get violent. The only reason why I say this is even a possibility is — what if this is like the Access Hollywood Tape situation where he didn’t really take it seriously at first…until he did? It could be the same thing. It could be that he’s going to lulz this…and then when he realizes that it’s actually gaining some traction, he freaks out and sicks his “shock troops” on the government. And then, at last, all the people who come to this site looking for information about a Second American Civil War will get their wish.

He Doesn’t Escape
This is the least likely of situations. It’s so unlikely, that I don’t even know what it would look like. Though, I suppose, it might look a lot like what never happened while he was in office — The Pence Pivot. In this case, it would be the DeSantis Pivot or something. After a brief freak out — in silence — on the part of the Republicans, they would pivot to Ron DeSantis as the standard bearer and they would act like Trump is a lulz from the distance past.

Frankenstein’s Monster
In this scenario, the absolute worst happens — at least for Republicans. He both becomes extremely radoactive (no pun intended) and, yet, refuses to go away. In fact, the fact that he’s indicted will only make him more angry and, in his own way, stronger. The base will forgive him for being a fucking traitor and if you throw in how we’re an anocracy not a democracy — he fucks with things to the point that he wins in 2024. His veep will be Gen. Mike Flynn and we all sit around waiting for the Russians to Red Dawn us.