The Mooch talked of respecting people such as himself who did “front stabbing” instead of “back stabbing.” Well, while I totally disagree with Liz Cheney almost everything, her absolute principled attack on Trump and MAGA is a refreshing change of pace.
U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) delivers an opening statement during the opening hearing of the U.S. House (Select) Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, on July 27, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. During its first hearing the committee, currently made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, will hear testimony from law enforcement officers about their experiences while defending the Capitol from the pro-Trump mob on January 6. (Photo by Jim Bourg-Pool/Getty Images)
In fact, that’s exactly what America needs at the moment.
But, I fear, because we’ve moved past the event horizon of tyranny, nothing that even Liz Cheney can do at this point is going to prevent us from either becoming an autocracy or having a civil war.
So, that leaves Cheney potentially being thrown into the next level of American politics should there be a civil war-level crisis at some point between now and January 2025. And, at this point, I would note that we should not sleep on the possibility of a civil war happening a lot sooner than you might think.
If Trump faces, at last, some criminal accountability for anything from January 6th to, pick anything else he might have done, or if Trump is named Speaker of the House, then the country buckles into chaos in a way not seen since the end of the first American Civil War.
It would be then that she would shine. It would, of course, be very ironic if such a thing happened, but it is possible. If one of the most conservative members of the Republican Party were to save the Republic as a part of Blue State leadership, well, that would be a bonkers historical flipping of the script.
It is a testament to how fucked things are in America right now that the thing that should happen, Mike Pence shiving Trump politically, isn’t probably going to happen.
Pence is never going to be a modern day John Dean.
Pence is the one person with the means, motive and opportunity to play John Dean in the Trump Show. If he were to politically immolate himself and turn state’s witness against Trump as some sort of Hail Mary pass to position himself to be the 2024 Republican nominee, then I would feel a whole lot better about where we are headed as a country.
But I think to think that this is in any way possible is to fall into the now-dead post-Watergate narrative where someone, somewhere breaks and does the right thing for the country out of guilt, or shame or principles or whatever. That just isn’t going to happen.
Watergate, it turns out, was a very specific set of circumstances. A lot of things went wrong for Nixon on both a political and personal level that simply are not practical. The press after Watergate became so cocky and started to believe it’s own…press…that they thought any major political scandal going forward would follow the same narrative.
After the Mueller Report was a bust, that was proven to be total bullshit. Trump is now above the law politically and he’s just as likely to become Speaker in 2023 as he is to be elected president in 2024.
So, while it would otherwise make total sense for Pence to be a modern day John Dean…just don’t see it happening. I say this, even though logically the only way Pence has any shot of being president is to rebrand himself as a Trump slayer and change the political equation so he is a more palatable option than the fascists of DeSantis, Hawley, Pompeo or Cotton.
If he could somehow destroy MAGA, then Pence a ticket of Pence / DeSantis makes a huge mount of sense. But we’ve passed the tyrannical event horizon. There is no stopping MAGA other than a civil war at this point. But that high risk, high reward option is so horrific I don’t like to think about it.
I’m growing exasperated with Twitter liberals who are completely oblivious to how popular the prospect of white autocratic rule is among a lot of Americans — especially the ever-crucial “Traditionalist” vote.
We have the makings of a massive clusterfuck in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.
Look at it this way — it’s possible that we could have cold, hard proof that Trump is criminally exposed for the January 6th insurrection and Republicans still win the House in 2022 and Trump still becomes speaker. Speaker Trump will impeached both Biden and Harris repeatedly and continue to stoke violence at every turn.
And, what’s more, given our status as an autocracy without an autocrat, even if you somehow magically neutralized Trump, the MAGA movement is so potent that someone else would step in to finish the job he started. In a sense, Trump has already wrapped up his historical job — show others that America is ready for autocracy.
But wait, there’s more.
Our transition into autocracy could still be bungled and we end up using WMD on ourselves and sending the whole world hurtling off a precipice into a dark and unknown future.
History has awoken. And either you see how dire things are, or you don’t. They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once, and so it is at least possible that things will be blown up rather abruptly. At some point between now and January 2025, everything we take for granted could be suddenly put into question.
Everything could grow existential. A lot of the folly of the modern center-Left were the issue of proper use of pronouns is more important than defeating real-world fascism will come to and end. Even your most fey latte swilling hipster will sit up and take notice with a gun is put in their face and they can’t use the Internet because of an EMP burst.
I have no easy answers for you. Get ready, is all I can say.
American politics is dead. The two sides’ positions have hardened to the point that if you try to talk to politics to with someone you disagree with — you just start screaming at each other.
Steve K. Bannon
The two sides no longer believe the same facts or live in the same political reality. There is absolutely nothing — NOTHING — that can get the people who are needed, Traditionalists, to make common cause with libtards like me. Nothing. They’ve made their decision and that decision is autocracy.
In other words, we’re fucked.
The last time this happened in America was the late 1850s. We’re careening towards autocracy or civil war. That’s it. The worrisome aspect to all of this is the MAGA New Right cocksuckers have a huge head start in the real world. Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast is a one-stop-shop of treason and hate. He’s telling his “shock troops” what to do in the real world so, when the time comes, he can flip a switch on an “administrative coup.”
What’s more, Trump is so popular and has such an absolute vise grip on the fascist Republican Party that he probably won’t even have to cheat to win in 2024. And he could even become Speaker of the House in 2023.
As such, we need something to counter Bannon. MAGA has the War Room, we need, I don’t know, The Radical Moderate podcast. Something like that. Something catchy devoted to helping people figure out what they’re going to with these last twilight years before we either peacefully transition into autocracy or we have a civil war.
Someone needs to do this. I would do it but I have no friends and no one likes me. And I’m poor. But I’m also very frustrated that we’re allowing Bannon and his hateful cocksuckers to steal a march on us in the real world while we’re wrapped up in writing Twitter threads with “booms” that don’t effect change in the real world where it matters.
One thing we have to accept is the January 6th Commission could lay out exactly what happened — to the point that Trump is found criminally culpable — and Republicans will STILL win the 2022 midterms, one way or another. So, lulz.
As I’ve repeatedly said — I got Trump wrong. But I was not alone. In fact, the people who voted for Trump in 2016 got him wrong too. And that’s the thing people like me going into the 2020 election totally misjudged — we thought Trump was an autocrat when he was just a fucking idiot.
The biggest mistake that Trump made was he did not strike when any other would be autocrat would have struck — in the summer of 2020. This is where Trump’s innate stupidity and laziness comes in. This is where him being nothing more than a vessel for white rage, rather than him being a Great Man comes in.
The moment that Trump let the election be called for Biden, was the moment he not only lost in the traditional political sense, but also when he started to panic. So, from that point in November to January 6th, Trump and his goons thrashed around, looking for some way to stage a self-coup, or autogolpe. The plan was something along the lines of, Trump would incite the insurrection and either that would be enough to browbeat Pence into not doing his job, or somehow something would go wrong in a big enough manner that Trump could literally stage the first autogolpe in American history. (In a very ham-handed manner.)
But everything — thankfully — went wrong for them on the day of. Pence, weirdly enough, did the right thing. And there were no counter-protesters to at the Capitol to give Trump a cause belli when it came to overthrowing the government via calling a “National Security Emergency.”
The key issue is what are we going to going forward?
When Trump’s autogolpe failed, the United States entered a very strange era where we’re an autocracy without an autocrat. We’re living in Weimar America. The failure of the January 6th autogolpe radicalized the Republican Party and set the stage for us to either slip peacefully into autocracy in four years or to have a civil war.
And, at the moment, it really could go either way. For the time being, I think we’re going to become an autocracy. But there is a small chance that things will get out of control and one side or the other will begin to leave the Union and we’re going to bomb ourselves into the Stone Age.
I wish there was something I could do on a personal basis to help prevent either one of those outcomes, but there isn’t. There’s no democracy defending organization to counter The Patriot Front. We need one, but it doesn’t exist. And, at the moment, our best bet is there’s something akin to a WW3 that so jiggles our domestic dynamic that Democrats can survive in power long enough for some severe structural problems in the United States to be fixed.
Absolutely no one listens to me. Absolutely no one cares what I think. And, with my luck, should anyone ever notice that my dire predictions for America’s future are, in fact, rapidly becoming a reality, they still won’t care because I’m a kook. I mean, it’s not like I write for Vox or anything. I need to work on my received English vocal fry for that to work — have to have that air of authority in my voice.
But the thing I think about all the time now is how the MAGA New Right would have to be EXTREMLY STUPID to push us into a Second American Civil War. It would be so stupid that I find myself reviewing over and over in my mind how something so dumb could possibly happen.
And, yet, Trump has time and again proven that he really is a massive self-own artist. He always takes the path of most stupid. He always says the quiet part out loud. So, I could see him at some point in late 2024, early 2025, about to become president again — and he blows it. He is such a fucking dickhead to the Blue States as he transitions the country to autocracy that states begin to pop off of the Union, probably starting with California.
Then I could see a form of revolution race through Blue States and we’re going to the show — civil war. Given the wide array of advantages that the Blue States have over Red States, I then could see Red States begin to use WMD on Blue States to make up the difference.
And THAT would be just the beginning.
One thing I find myself falling into is a sense that 2ACW would be just like the first with a clear beginning – middle – end, when, in fact, it could be far, far more muddled. You could see the most powerful nation in the world fall into a series of warlord – controlled areas and regional alliances. Race war in the South would be a real possibility. We’re talking fucking Turner Diaries levels of bullshit.
So, to that extent, the Republican Party has a Trump problem. If someone like DeSantis (who at least one person in my family loves so much that they want to “vote three times for”) is the nominee, then we really do slip peacefully into autocracy.
And let me note at that this point that I’m aware that I sound “hysterical” and got Trump and 2020 wrong, so why should anyone listen to me now? All I can say is, if we have to wait until I’m actually right for once for Traditionalists to make common cause with libtards, then, guess who is dead in a ditch because ICE got mad at them and who isn’t?
It is the refusal of political Traditionalists to not always, always, always succumb to negative polarization and to never take the threat of fascism seriously that forces me to read a book about the rise of Hitler. And that’s the thing — there is every reason to believe that we’ll turn into a fascist state peacefully just like Germany in the 30s.
In fact, all the momentum at the moment is for that very thing to happen. But there remains a little, nagging voice in my mind that tells me we just don’t know yet which way things will go.
The last time I felt this politically powerless, I started writing a novel which has now turned into FOUR novels. I just wish there was some sort of organization I could join that was preparing for the Battle Royale of 2024 – 2025. But, as far as I know, there isn’t a freedom defending counter-part to the bonkers hatred of The Patriot Front.
Who knows?
So, I dunno.
I guess I’ll just have to throw myself into reading about the rise of Nazism and the beginning of the first Civil War. Something, anything that I feel will help me prepare for our coming very dark future.
Or, maybe, I’m being impatient.
It could be that at some point closer to 2024 some sort of center-Left group will pop up in the real world that will try to figure out how to save the Republic should the absolute worst happen and we really do either slip peacefully into autocracy or have a fucking civil war.
I’ve already written at great length about how I joke all the time that if The End comes, I’ll either be the first person to die on the first day or I’ll be the guy who brings civilization (America?) back from the brink. Let me tell you a little story about myself that proves — at least to me — why I think this is so.
Many moons ago, I was at a bar in Seoul. It was about midnight and I was in a really bad place in my life. The bar was just up the hill from the main bar in the Haebangchon neighborhood of Seoul called The Orange Tree. Suddenly, everyone on the other side of the bar from me, the ones near the windows jumped up and rushed out the door. Curious, I walked over to the door to see what was going on. Much to my surprise, just down the hill, the second story window of The Orange Tree had flames coming out of it. Without thinking about it, I rushed down the hill, yelling, “Someone call Korean 911.” I got to the bar’s door, and it was locked. The door was glass with a mesh of steal re-enforcement. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and started smashing through the glass. Of course, I cut myself on my wrist right next to my veins and I stopped. I could have saved the day, but didn’t. Still hate that I stopped.
But the point is, I’m an idiot and rush towards danger, not away from it. I like to think that I work well in a crisis — five years of having every day be a crisis in South Korea will do that to you — and if civil war comes, I know what I’m going to be doing — trying to help the Blue State war effort in any way I can.
That’s pretty dark, though. Hopefully — hopefully! — it won’t come to that. Maybe I’ll sell these four novels I’m working on and I’ll be able to escape the clutches of autocratic President Ron DeSantis.
The American center-Left has to go beyond angry Twitter rants and move into the more difficult stage of figuring out what the fuck we’re going to do in the real world. The first thing we have to do is do triage. Things aren’t great.
American democracy is in its twilight.
Not only is autocracy very, very popular with huge swaths of the American body politic, you have Steve Bannon actively working on an “administrative coup.” So, it’s very possible that Trump is going to win fair and square without the aid of Bannon’s shenanigans.
So, what does that mean for people who believe in Lincoln’s dream?
We’re fucked.
If there isn’t a civil war, then I would suggest if you can to leave the country. Everyone who doesn’t believe in autocracy is going to leave the country gradually anyway, so lulz. For a lot of people, autocracy is an abstract that is difficult to understand in real terms. That is, of course, until ICE or The Patriot Front starts knocking heads and then, suddenly, the difference between autocracy and democracy becomes a lot more clear.
So, if we slip peacefully into autocracy, we simply gradually become identical politically to Russia and that’s it. In a generation President DeSantis will be eying a chunk of Canada in an effort to secretly have some sort of defense against a warming earth. (Or something.) Form follows function.
Now, we come to the other, more horrific possibility — civil war.
I still don’t think we’re going to have a civil war. And, yet, Trump IS a lazy idiot and the MAGA New Right IS rather bloodthirsty. So, it’s possible to imagine a scenario where the fascists self-own and Blue States are forced to deal with the existential. If that happens, then you have a lot of concrete things to address.
A lot of the excesses of the identity politics, or cancel culture, or whatever the fuck you want to consider will burn off pretty quick when you’re too busy bombing yourself into the stone age through seized WMD to think about your pronouns.
The same dynamic of the first Civil War or WW2 will be at play. Every able bodied person will have to contribute to the war effort. Everything will be thrown up in the air and everything will be up for grabs. There could be a race war in the South. New York City could declare itself a free state. The United States could have a civil war and there not be any sort of clear endgame.
We could just break up into a number of waring states with various shifting alliances and there won’t be any re-uniting of the nation. A lot would depend what California decides to do. If it just leaves the Union because it can then, we’re really fucked. But if it stays and fights, then it can be the Blue State arsenal of democracy.
Things would get a lot more radical. During the civil war, the two sides would grow more radical. In Blue States, especially, suddenly politics would start to work with a big bang because there are a lot — a lot — of popular policies that Blue States want to enact but haven’t been able to because of Republicans.
I don’t want a civil war. But there comes a point, much like 1860 – 1861, when history makes that choice for you. We have to do everything in our power to prevent and avoid a civil war.
But we also need to begin to game out what we’re going to do should one start at some point between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025.
One of the most frustrating things of late is seeing how fucking clueless some of the name brand Twitter “Resistance” accounts continue to be about Trump. While they’re sucking their own cocks with lengthy, breathless Twitter rants, bonkers MAGA New Right traitors like The Patriot Front are preparing in the real world for real world eventualities.
Twitter liberals still think they can just mentally masturbate their way to single handedly holding Trump accountable and saving American democracy from certain doom.
I mean, what the fucking what?
We have to see things for what the are, not how we believe them to be. The United States is only a democracy now because of a quirk of fate. And, if you want to be charitable, maybe Mike Pence simply doing his job. Otherwise, Trump would be in his second term and we would be talking about who his hand-picked successor was going to be and the upcoming Constitutional Convention to pass a “balance budget amendment.”
Huge swaths of the American political system want autocracy. Everyone from plutocrats to “real (white) Americans” in the Heartland want an autocracy. Some of them want an autocracy without even realizing that by supporting the MAGA New Right that’s exactly what they’re going to get.
Only when it becomes personal — a family member who won’t shut the fuck up about how President Ron DeSantis is a fucking tyrannical cucksucker, perhaps — will they sit up and take notice. This will be happening, of course as said family member is being taken away by ICE for God only knows what to happen to them. Then it will be to late. I, I mean, THEY, will be dead, or tortured or whatever the fuck ICE is going to start doing to be people who dare challenge the autocrat.
Or maybe it won’t be ICE. Maybe it will be the freikorps of The Patriot Front who will be doing autocrat President Ron DeSantis’ bidding. But the fact will remain — the people who could have saved American democracy by making common cause with libtards NOW, won’t fucking do it because they tacitly support the policy of the autocrat.
So, people like me are fucked.
Either I get out of the country while I still can or prepare to cross the autocrat. I guess if you really wanted to get dark, you might suggest that I could join the Blue States war movement should there be a civil war. All I can do is write and speak well….and that never did anything for anyone, right? Wink.
The Republicans Party is now fascist. By definition, the moment they gain power again, they’re never letting it go. Add to this cold hard fact the additional fact that Trump is turning the Republican Party into his own personal dream board and, well, lulz.
We’re fucked — democracy doesn’t die in the darkness in America, it dies in broad daylight because no one is willing to confront Republicans for the fascists they are.
Or, even more dark, there really isn’t anything we can do to fix this problem short of a civil war. MAGA New Right Republican voters want an autocracy so badly that every election is nothing more than yet another opportunity to lurch us closer and closer to autocracy.
I do not want a civil war — I really don’t! — but a civil war would be a high risk, high reward option to potentially re-found the USA. We could transition from Lincoln’s Second Republic, to a new American Covenant, based on, I dunno, California?
But I just don’t see that happening, at least at the moment.
What’s more likely to happen is around 2024 – 2025, there will be one last death spasm for democracy, and then that will be it. Wealthy center-Left people will leave the United States en masse until the autocratic (whoever that may be) makes that nearly impossible. America will be a shit hole country that continues to grow more inward looking, poorer, less creative and politically dark.
But.
While I don’t think there is going to be a civil war — the center-Left simply has no leadership at the moment — there is a small chance that Trump and the MAGA New Right might bungle the transition to autocracy (willfully?) for no other reason than they want the opportunity to murder people like me for political reasons. They might grow so blinded by their bloodlust that they fail to see that if they just cooled it and were patient, that they would get everything they wanted via political means.
So, I guess what I’m saying is I go in circles in my mind whenever I think about our 2024 – 2025 fate. Just about when I think there is no way we will have a civil war, I say to myself, “but……”
It could really go either way. It really could.
And, honestly, if history is any guide, usually the difference between civil war and autocracy is probably going to be a multitude of tactical decisions — and dumb mistakes one way or another — committed between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025.
Also, as I keep saying — Trump is so stupid and lazy that by definition him running again increases the chances of civil war dramatically. If it’s DeSantis (or anyone else) who is the Republican nominee in 2024, then I can just shrug and start to figure out if I can get out of the country before ICE rounds me up and shoots me in the back of the head.
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