Of all the would-be autocrats we may find ourselves living under at some point, the idea that “promising young man” Josh Hawley might crush 240 years of American liberal democracy is just sad.
The fucking cocksucker piece of shit whose jackboot we’re going to live under won’t be a “Joe” or a “John,” but…Josh?
But that’s really besides the point — Josh Hawley could easily become president. All that would have to happen is either he gets named Trump’s veep and Trump somehow shuffles off this mortal coil, or he somehow manages to become the nominee and he becomes POTUS because MAGA Republicans nullify any Biden win.
Anyway, Josh Hawley would definitely be the one potential autocrat who would establish a traditional autocratic rule in the United States. It would be so traditional, in fact, people like me would scream at the top of our lungs on a daily basis that the United States is an autocracy and….either we get pushed out a window or nothing happens because we’re not seen as a threat.
Do I honestly think that will happen? I don’t know. Time will tell.
I really was very hysterical — and wrong — about Trump. But there was something I could not have predicted about him, and that is how fucking lazy and stupid he is. I made a huge assumption, and that was the same assumption that the people who voted for him made: that he was the “You’re fired” guy and, as such, would bring autocracy to the United States.
Turns out, I was wrong.
He wasn’t the “You’re fired” guy — he was just a lazy, bonkers moron who was an avatar for the rot in the American political system.
These days, I’m ranting about how no later than January 2025, we’re going to either have a civil war or turn into an autocracy. This has led my far more conservative relatives to poo-poo this because, well, lulz, I was wrong once about a dystopian nightmare, I’m obviously going to be wrong again.
And I could very well be.
But there is one thing I will be shocked to see happen — the United States continue to be a Western democracy in the way we have been for 240 odd years. If that happens under Republican control, I will be totally, completely shocked. And that’s the rub — my conservative relatives won’t see the autocracy for what it is. They will just be happy that, at last, the liberals are owned for good and “cancel culture” has been outlawed.
It will be a struggle, pitched rhetorical battle, to get my conservative relatives to admit that the media has been purged and the only way a Democrat can become president is if their party controls Congress. My conservative relatives will lulz all of this — they agree with the autocracy, afterall — until it’s personal. THEN they’re going to freak out.
But, then, of course, it will be way, way, way too late. I’ll be proven right, but it won’t matter. I’ll be dead at the hand of an ICE agent because I fucking wouldn’t fucking shut up about President DeSantis (or Pompeo) being a sack of shit.
Or, who knows, may be my conservative relatives will continue their debate nullification technique of saying “no it won’t” whenever they don’t have a ready answer to my very well thought out talking point.
As for the civil war, I still think that’s going to be a matter of how deft the MAGA person in charge of our transition into autocracy is. If it’s Trump, we’re going to have a civil war. He’s just too stupid.
Almost no one reads this blog. Like, no one. Maybe almost a 100 people on a good day. Otherwise, I’m just barking into the darkness. So, anything out of the ordinary catches my attention in this site’s Webstats.
Like, why are there people with French URLs who pop up out of the blue? Why are there people in Romania, of all places, who have started to read this blog? Is that one URL I think is a conservative relative who I think it is? And what was with that one person from Brooklyn who spent over an hour doing a deep dive into my rantings on this site? Should I be worried, or pleased with that one?
Anyway, another thing I’ve noticed is a teeny-tiny uptick in hits from China of all places. I think they’re people interested in my rantings about how we’re going to have a civil war at some point between now and January 2025?
Well, if that is the case, all I can say is — slow your roll.
Yes, the United States is as divided as it’s been since the Civil War, but that is going to change the moment there’s a major regional war. For the next four years, until we actually have that civil war (or turn into an autocracy) the United States will become a lot more united the moment we realize we have to gird our loins to save the world, AGAIN.
Around January 2025, however, all that could change.
It would be difficult for the United States to do anything about China — or the DPRK for that matter — if we’re too busy bombing ourselves into oblivion to do anything about it.
So, if you’re some sort of Chinese agent, reading this blog hoping to get a bead on the current American ability to defend Taiwan, that’s my advice.
The conservatives in my family generally believe I’m being “hysterical” with all my “doom shit” about the prospect of a Second American Civil War in the near future. I think they read this blog and aren’t telling me, but, lulz.
Anyway, the argument I’ve gotten from my conservatives relatives is we have more to worry about from “woke” corporations listening to us using our phones and “canceling” us for not fitting the media narrative than my fear of autocracy or civil war. But these same relatives tell me that Trump isn’t going is going to run because he’s “just not,” so, I dunno.
So what am I missing? Am I just being “hysterical” with my “doom shit?”
There are a number of very concrete metrics that I can point to that indicate to me that I’m not being “hysterical” and we’re totally, completely fucked no later than Janaury 2025. We’re going to face the choice of autocracy or civil war at that point and I still don’t know the answer as to which one we’re going to do.
One of the many metrics that cause me a great deal of concern these days is how the MAGA New Right simply lies if there’s anything that doesn’t fit their own media narrative. They claim it’s a false flag. Or we didn’t see what we know we saw. Or whatever fuck else they can say to make themselves feel better.
It’s growing very aggravating.
But, who knows. We may just muddle through all of this. And I’ll look like a fool. It won’t be the first time.
Something’s gotta give. The country is in a crisis. This crisis may fade in the coming days, or it may come to a head. The crisis was brought upon by Biden’s new COVID19 policies. The fit perfectly into the MAGA New Right’s narrative that “liberals won’t leave us alone” and, as such, they’re being forced to radicalize and to glorify potential political violence.
This leads us to, “So, what are they going to do about it?”
I don’t want to be right on this, but it’s easy to imagine if there was some sort of severe, organized political violence on the part of the MAGA New Right, the motive for it would be this — incite a civil war.
Whatever happened, they would hope that by blowing shit up in a coordinated way around the country –or, knocking important political figures off — that doing so would be enough to start some sort of MAGA New Right revolution. This is, of course, very similar to the motives of the Tate–LaBianca murders. Manson told his followers that the murders –that they wanted to pin a group of mysterious African Americans, as I understand it — would so outrage the white populace that a race war would be a direct result.
Or something like that.
Anyway, from what I can tell on Twitter, all the conditions are there for there to be some sort of shocking domestic terrorist attack in the near term. I could even see a false flag operation take place, whereby MAGA New Right cocksuckers try to pin whatever they do on Antifa in hopes that THAT will so shock the MAGA New Right that they get their civil war or revolution that way.
But we’re dealing with idiots, so I don’t know if they have it within them to be so diabolical.
This is the point where I say I’m always wrong and I’m being hysterical and don’t listen to me. Trump isn’t going to run again, there’s no risk of civil war and we have more to worry about from woke companies than any of the so-called would-be autocrats that I keep ranting about.
I’m still smarting from the “Mueller, She Wrote” Twitter account blocking me after accusing me of peddling “doom shit.” It bothers me because I struggle to see how, at this point, how that is the case.
In fact, my counter-argument is, a Twitter account inspired by the foolish early-Trump Era belief that a life-long conservatives Republican was some sort of liberal savior of the Republic needs to do some introspection. Much of the Trump Era was a bunch of high profile Twitter liberals sitting around hoping for, or telling us about a “boom” that was going to wrap this MAGA problem up and we were all in the Final Days of a nightmare.
Me, mid-2025
Guess what!
All of that was naïve bullshit.
Mueller, in the end, did such a bad job by wrapping things up rather abruptly and taking too narrow a view of his mandate, that Trump turned around the day after his testimony to Congress and did something that go him impeached.
So, sadly, we have to put aside any foolish thoughts that a “boom” out of the blue is going to save jack squat, much less us.
We’re going to have to save ourselves. And, what’s worse, not only are radicalized Republicans attacking the basic machinery of elections on a tactical basis, they continue a macro, decades-long push to destroy our liberal democracy via gerrymandering and voter suppression. And, what’s even worse, autocracy is popular!
Republicans on a systemic level, are autocratic, anti-democratic fascists who have so glorified political violence that someone may take them up on all their bullshit and a lot of people will get hurt in a rather dramatic, 9/11-level type situation.
While the most obvious scenario is a lone-wolf blowing something important up like what happened in Oklahoma City, given how radicalized the Republican Party has become, it’s just as possible that whatever happens could be coordinated and happen at more than one location.
And I can tell you would would cause it: Republican rage at what they perceive as Biden’s COVID19 vaccine mandates. Just that added bit of pressure on our political system may be enough to cause something violent and dramatic to happen a lot sooner than one might think.
You would be amazed how many well meaning liberals I’ve spoken to who apparently still believe we’re going to be surprised by some combination of “booms,” rainbows, pixie dust and unicorn farts.
But instead of pinning all our hopes on something that is obviously not going to happen, we need to prepare for the worst. And that worst will be the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. I still don’t know which one we’re going to pick. But no one is going to save us.
The modern day Slave Power of the MAGA New Right is ascendant and if we turn into an autocracy the only question will be how bad it will get and how quickly. If it’s a civil war, well, we’re probably going to bomb ourselves into oblivion.
Just, please ,don’t rest your hopes on “booms.” We just don’t have the political will to do anything about Trump. And, even if we suddenly did, there are a dozen other would-be autocrats waiting to dive to finish the job he started. Things are bleak, really bleak and we’re being lulled into a false sense of security right now because we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.
No booms this time.
Now, there are conservatives who would tell me that I’m being “hysterical” and simply say, “no, it’s not.” But your normal and I’m not. You have a family that loves you and I could walk off the face of the planet and almost no one would care. We’ll see who’s right in the end. What do I get if it turns out I’m not being “hysterical” after all? A prize?
Or a bullet in the back of the head from an ICE agent?
There have been a few times in recent years when I felt a vague unease about what what was going on in the country. The most recent instance of this was Trump’s post-election shenanigans in late 2020 and early 2021. It just did not seem possible that things could keep going the way they were — in other words, something would have to happen.
I feel the same way now.
The reason why I feel this way is Biden has put unexpected additional pressure on our political system with his new COVID19 policies. And I have long said that the country is a lot less stable we realize. And if there was any additional pressure put on the system, it might come crashing down.
And, yet, what exactly might happen?
While I struggle to pinpoint any specific thing, in general terms, I’m worried about some sort of co-ordinated domestic terrorist event on a scale of 9/11. Something that would happen out of the blue that would shock us to the level that 9/11 did.
But, if history has proven one thing, there’s a reason why to date most of our major domestic terror attacks have been of the “Lone Wolf” variety (with the notable exception of January 6th) — usually it’s extremely difficult for a group of domestic terrorists to organize. They usually get infiltrated by FBI agents and the whole the is a bust (thankfully.)
And yet, Biden’s actions have ratcheted up the swirling turbulence in our political system to the extent that something could happen suddenly, abruptly, and violently on an unprecedented scale.
I just don’t know in what form it would take. I can think of some pretty dark scenarios — usually involving MAGA New Right people trying to incite a civil war by attempting to a coup-like-event — but I just can’t think of any particular one that is the most likely to happen.
And, yet, maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe we still have until either January 2023 or January 2025 to have to think about such things.
Something that we have all taken for granted, living in a liberal democracy, has been if you do something bad on the national stage there are consequences. You resign in disgrace. You don’t run again. You maybe even go to jail.
Pray.
As Congress begins to look into the January 6th Insurrection, however, there is a dark, looming outcome that we have not thought about: nothing.
What if we learn the truth, it’s bad and it’s all a lulz? The indications that this will be the case, at least on a political level, are already there. Republicans have done a 1984-style job on what happened on January 6th to the point that the base is now willfully accepting their lies. So it seems very possible that even if, after much gnashing of teeth on the part of Republicans, we learn that there was direct co-ordination between the Trump White House, Congressional Republicans and the Insurrectionists, absolutely nothing will happen.
People like me will get upset. It will be a huge scandal for 60% of the population, but for that crucial 40% of the country that seems to control everything….it’s a lulz. They just won’t care. The power of negative polarization will be so extreme that the absolute best we can hope for is maybe Democrats continue to cling to power in Congress.
But even that might be a stretch because of the power of gerrymandering and voter suppression. This seems so likely that we have to prepare ourselves for it. Instead of worrying about how Republicans will, on a political basis, get away with such astonishing political crime, we maybe need to start thinking about how we’re going to handle the obvious implications of all of this: we’re going to have a severe, historic political crisis no later than January 2025.
Something so big that everyone will be forced to pick a side, any side, even if they don’t want to. And, what’s more, because of the nature of such a crisis, there will be moments when you may find yourself tested as to the choice you picked. Your life may even be threatened and you’re going to have to decide if your life — and the lives of the people you love –are worth the choice you made, the side you picked.
I’m well aware that this sounds like my usual “hysterical doom shit.” And, honestly, if you’re a normal person with a career and limited abstract thought abilities, I can totally understand why you might think that
I have been called, at different times, “hysterical” about the prospect of a Second American War and someone who peddles “doom shit” about our future. At the moment, everything is very abstract when it comes to such things. But let’s go through my current reasoning as to why, at the moment, I just don’t know if we’re going to have a civil war or simply slip peacefully into autocracy.
Now what.
The first metric is that I’m simply listening to the other side and taking them seriously. They’re telling people like me on Twitter: you’re forcing me to radicalize and one day I’m going to strike back with violence. They say it all the time like an abusive husband tells a wife, “I wouldn’t hit you if you didn’t make me.” It’s my fault that they’re snowflakes who get think of violence when they don’t get their way. Uh huh.
So, we have a very public glorification of political violence happening in broad daylight. I suppose the retort to this on the part of people who think I’m full of shit is it’s all talk. They don’t really mean it. It’s like all the autocratic talk that Trump did for four years — just ignore it. And, this reasoning goes, by not ignoring it, I’m simply a fool.
My response is, I think some of this is the people who think I’m “hysterical” are “normal” and have no vision. They barely function in the abstract world and they only react when a crisis has grown so dire that they absolutely have to do something about it. Then it’s too late.
Or, put another way, there are all these abstract macro trends tearing the country apart in subtle ways that all seem to be coming to a head either in January 2023 or January 2025. Either you see it, or you don’t. Either you’re alarmed at the prospect of organized political violence in the United States, or you’re not.
A far less abstract element of our potential doom is Donald Trump. I’ve long believed that what’s most likely to happen is the United States is going to slip peacefully into autocracy. In fact, at some point in early 2025, one of the big debates in the United States could be, “Does this mean we’re an autocracy now?”
Conservatives will ridicule people like me for being hysterical, even as President DeSantis begins to methodically purge the media, weaponize ICE generally consolidate power. It won’t be until it’s personal or our new autocrat somehow bungles the transition that instead of talking about autocracy, we’re talking about civil war.
Which gets us back to Donald Trump — Donald Trump is an incompetent idiot. I’ve been told, when I bring up the idea that Trump will run again that, “No he won’t.” And we all know that because of negative polarization and an extensive permission structure that the very conservatives who think “no he won’t” will vote for Trump AGAIN despite the Jan. 6th insurrection because they simply can not, will not, form a united front with liberals for the specific purpose of stopping Trump from becoming POTUS again. (Or at least the nominee.)
Given how abjectly stupid and incompetent Trump is, it’s very easy to see Trump single handedly doing something so stupid between late 2024 and early 2025 that drives us collectively into the arms of organized political violence. I don’t know what it would be, but Trump is so stupid and, yet, so attune to the MAGA volk that it’s easy to imagine a situation where he leans into political violence in an effort to nullify any Biden win, he misjudges the situation when it comes to everyone else — like he always does — and boom, we have a fucking civil war.
Part of why norms think I’m “hysterical” about all of this is they simply don’t think in the terms that I do. They can’t make the cognitive leap of looking at abstract macro trends and saying, “Oh boy. Something’s gotta give.”
But it has not happened yet. It’s possible that either we slip peacefully into autocracy that not everyone even acknowledges has happened or, I dunno, we kind of continue in an anti-democratic trend until we don’t even realize we had something that is now gone.
Yet, again — keep an eye on what Trump does.
If he runs, the chance of us having a civil war grows significantly.
While I spend a lot of my time pointing to January 2025 as the most likely moment in time that the United States might buckle into a “hot” civil war, there is another January that might be just as bad: that of January 2023.
As I keep saying, America’s political system is so rotten, so fucked up that literally the only thing holding everything together is we’re kind of in an Era of Meh. Biden believes in the norms and principles of a liberal democracy such as ours and no unexpected thunderbolt has put undo pressure on the system.
But — and this is a big but — we have the looming 2022 midterms to worry about.
There are a number of different ways this could play out, but the one that is at the forefront of my mind is the totally bonkers — but totally on-brand — ploy on Trump’s part to get himself third to the presidency by becoming Speaker of the House. He would like this idea because he would be in charge of any impeachment proceedings that took place AND all he would have to do is just show up to be named Speaker.
Now, I know, I KNOW this sounds like my usual “hysterical doom shit,” and given that Trump has proven himself such a fucking idiot that he can’t do even the most basic of autocratic plays, this may be just something that people like me worry about while “normal” people raise their grandkids and think of the next concert they’re going to.
So, it’s very possible I’ll be wrong AGAIN about Trump.
But it is very easy to imagine Trump becoming Speaker, impeaching both Biden and Harris and then inciting violence on the part of the MAGA New Right to such an extent that Senate Democrats feel forced to convict them “for the sake of the nation.”
Then Trump comes back early and we’re right back where we started from in January 2021, with Trump demanding to stay in office forever because of “lost time.”
And, yet, it’s possible that what got us into a civil war in the late 2022 – early 2023 timeframe would not be anything as creative as Trump being named Speaker. It could be that when it become clear that Republicans on a local level will nullify any election they don’t like, then, lulz, all hell will break loose. And we have a civil war not in early 2025, but early 2023.
And, yet, I’m being “hysterical.” Even though everything I see points to our current political limbo being untenable. We’re all going to face an existential choice between now and January 2025.
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