If you want my opinion on the chances of that the United States will slip peacefully into autocracy, I will give you the following allegory.
Suppose someone from the future actually popped up and it was provable. How would history address this situation? How would the average person? The idea of the reality of time travel could very well be too much for everyone’s poor minds to process and it would be time travel, not first contact that caused mass chaos.
The point of this allegory is how would the average person process the idea that the United States is no longer a democracy? If Trump (or someone like him) was brazen enough in their transformation of the United State into Trumplandia, would the average person shrug or would they freak out? Would they process the presence of time travel calmly or would it break their brain?
It’s my inability to figure out how the average American would process the death of 240 odd years of American democracy that leaves me unable to figure out if we would have a civil war in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe or if we’re just going to become an autocracy peacefully and with our eyes wide open.
Let me be clear — I definitely don’t want a civil war. I’m a man of peace. A man of ideas.
But, fuck, would it be sad if Trump (or someone like him) was able to take away our democratic birthright in broad daylight…and nothing happened. For the moment, that’s definitely what seems like what is going to happen.
If it’s Ron DeSantis who does the transformation, it’s likely to be so subtle that, lulz, the average Traditionalist conservative won’t even notice or care that we’re no longer a democracy because they’re complicit and like, nay, LOVE his policies. Only when a loved one say, ME, won’t shut the fuck up about what a fucking cocksucker autocrat DeSantis and ICE swoops in and puts me in a re-education camp without due process with these Traditionalists realize that maybe they should have made common cause with libtards like me when they had the opportunity.
But by then, of course, it will be too late. Way too late.
Saying this over and over again is growing tiresome — Trump is above the law. We just don’t have the political will to do anything about the fucker. We know what he was up to in the lead up to January 6th Insurrection and it’s a lulz.
The man was actively attempting to destroy American democracy and was only thwarted through a combination of how pell-mell the execution of the self-coup was and Pence simply not going along with the plan at the last moment.
And now Trump, like an face-hugging xenomorph from Alien, is hell bent on turning the Republican Party into a shiv to murder American democracy once and for all no later than, say, January 2025. Remember, Trump is so popular that he probably will win the 2024 election fair and square — no cheating needed.
Yet, of course, none of this has happened yet.
The thing that “hysterical” people like me get dinged for is we make arguments that make sense, then don’t come to fruition for this or that unexpected event or historical miscalculation. I mean, how could I have known in the fall of 2019 that a pandemic would throw everything up in the air? How could I have known that, in the end, Trump was too lazy and stupid to do even the most basic of autocratic moves going into the 2020 election?
So, he lost.
And, honestly, this time around, it’s very possible that something similar could happen. I mean, if Trump doesn’t run, then the likelihood that we’ll simply slip peacefully into autocracy grows. And there are plenty of people who will shrug if we become an autocracy and won’t event acknowledge the transition until it affects them on a personal level.
Then, of course, it will be way, way, way too late for people like me who simply will never fucking shut up about, say, what a piece of shit President Mike Pompeo is. Fucking cocksucker.
A little lite reading.
Anyway, while all the signs point to something akin to a Fourth Turning / Great Reset in roughly the 2024 – 2025 timeframe, it hasn’t happened yet. But all the metrics are pointing to such a thing happening. All the lights are flashing red. Get ready.
Let me make one thing clear — I’m using the term “Great Reset” in a far different way than, say, someone associated with The Patriot Front might. I’m not suggesting any kind of grand global cuck attack on the home and hearth of white Christians (or whatever the fuck they think), I’m talking about everything we take for granted being thrown up in the air.
Here are some reasons why we will have a civil war.
Republicans have come to glorify political violence Something you see a lot these days within the bullshit echo chamber of the MAGA New Right is the belief that because “liberals won’t leave us alone” that they are being “driven” to extremism. There’s a lot of leading not-so-vague talk as to what all this would ultimately mean. But it’s clear that for a number of “thought leaders” within the MAGA New Right that they have accepted that at some point in the future, they’re going to have to resort to violence to get what they want.
Republicans no longer believe in democracy It is now clear that like any good fascists, Republicans no longer believe in democracy unless it’s for the specific purpose of gaining and keeping power. This view of the system they’re supposed to a part of leads them do extremely destabilizing things that help push the country to the brink.
Trump 2024 Just Trump being the 2024 nominee would, in itself, be enough to cause a civil war at some point in late 2024 – early 2025. He just has a special knack for “owning the libs” in such a way that if he stole in 2024 election and said the “quiet part outloud” that Blue States would grow so enraged that it would be they, not Red States, that left the Union and caused a Second Civil War. But Ron DeSantis is polling exceptionally well at the moment, so either Trump politically shivs him at some point, or he co-ops him, making him his VP, opening the door to DeSantis becoming America’s Putin at some point down the road a little bit.
Steve K Bannon. Bannon and his toadies are actively working to destroy the framework that weuse to administer free and fair elections. So, it’s very easy to imagine a situation where this gambit works in ways that Trump himself is too idiotic to pull off personally and it will be so egregious that, again, Blue States leave the Union and we have a Second American Civil War.
Extreme negative polarization We’re in for a bump four or so years, no matter what, because negative polarization, on a systemic level, has reached a critical mass. When one of your political parties is fascist and would rather crash the global economy instead of even appear to work for the good of the nation — you got a problem.
A lack of shared values As the big blow up on Twitter in the last 24 hours about a Stephen Colbert song and dance gag about getting vaccinated proves — we can’t even agree on what’s funny. A combination of this and negative polarization is leading to the United States being two nations, one Red, one Blue and when we get around to attempting to elect the next president, the system simply won’t be prepared for the passions it will stir up.
A potentially historic miscalculation on the part of Republicans It’s possible that, much like European powers in the lead up to WW1, when the time comes and Republicans have a choice between peacefully transitioning us into autocracy or fucking with us all so we want to take up arms, they will choose the latter not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s possible that by the 2024 — 2025 period, Republicans will see a civil war as their only choice to consolidate power, even if it’s clear that they could get everything they ever wanted within the system they so obviously loath.
It’s now very clear to me that either we slip peacefully in to autocracy around 2024 – 2025 or we have a fucking civil war / WW3. History has awoken from a 70 year coma and it’s pissed. We’re lurching towards a dark future of nothing short of mass chaos. This has been referred to as “The Fourth Turning” but, lulz, whatever.
We’re fucked.
Macro trends are not on America’s side. As I keep saying, 2024 is going to be it. It’s the year when either the United States turns into a Russian-style “managed democracy” or there’s a civil war. Now, this isn’t going to be a complete list of the 50 states, but I am going to highlight some of the states that may be more problematic should a Second American Civil War erupt.
Oregon The state is really two states and, as such, is probably going to be a major flashpoint in any Second Civil War. What’s likely to happen is Portland will buck any attempt at a putsch on the part of bonkers Right wing nutjobs in the rest of the state and, as such, either there’s a really blood struggle in the state or there are a massive amount of political refugees from the Portland area as the rest of the state sides with MAGA.
Virginia Again, this is really two states. There’s the NOVA-Richmond-Hampton Roads urban corridor and everything else. It’s very easy to imagine a situation — especially with Virginia’s historic ties to the first Civil War — where the state implodes as we grow closer and closer to a Second Civil War. Too many good old boys in the rural areas of Virginia might get wrapped up in the “Lost Cause” mythos and decide to seize places like Danville (the last capitol of the Confederacy) or Richmond (another Confederate capitol.) If nothing else, simply because of the larger population of the “Blue” parts of the state, there will be significant violence and political refugees as the Blues consolidate power.
Michigan I don’t know as much about this state, but it definitely seems as though once the pre-war process of coups and political consolation begins that there will be at least a coup attempt on the part of the Far Right. Again, don’t underestimate how once you actually start murdering people that the dynamics of things change significantly. It’s very possible that there would be a coup in the state, it would fail, and there would be significant political violence as the state’s Blue population fought back and put the state firmly on the Blue side.
New York Yet again, we have a situation where once politics fails us that the otherwise banal regional differences in a state tears it apart. New York City is far more progressive than the rest of New York State and, depending on how things work out, it’s possible that New York City could become a revolutionary hotbed to the point that is tears itself away from the rest of the state and proclaims itself a Free City. This almost happen during the first Civil War. If nothing else, there will be a serious jiggling of the relationship between NYC and the rest of the state to the point where it aligns itself in any Second Civil War with New Jersey and Connecticut in a way that update New York does not. Or, again, there could be significant political consolidation as Blues from all over the northeast flee to New York and the MAGA-friendly natives of the state flee elsewhere.
Maine I really don’t know that much about this state other than a vague belief that the northern part of the state is far different than the southern part. It’s very easy to imagine significant consolation in the state one way or another as people flee to it as the rest of the country buckles. The state is big — if sparsely populated — and it’s strategic location near the Canadian border might be enough for it to be the home to large refugee camps.
Texas Texas would be in an odd situation as the country fell into civil war because its long-term political trend is shifting Blue, but it’s part of the South and a lot of people consider themselves Southern and MAGA. So either it simply buckles into its own intra-civil war or the MAGA cocksucker fucktards push out all the Blues who flee to Blue States nearby. The end result would be a lot of pissed off former Texans who would be of great benefit to the Blue cause.
California In a sense, the whole fate of the United States rests on what California does. If it simply bolts from the Union, then that significantly hobbles the Blue cause on the ground. California sitting on its hands and become its own nation in the event of a Second Civil War makes it far more likely that either Red states win or there is some sort of half-ass balkanization of the United States. But if California stays and fights, then they could provide not only the necessary economy and population for a Blue state victory — after many, many dead — but also something of a vision for what America would look like after we’re finished bombing ourselves into oblivion.
The Deep South It’s very easy to imagine at the onset of a Second American Civil War most of the old Confederacy on a political level getting extremely excited and having a massive amount of momentum to either leave the Union outright or support the Republican controlled Congress’ attempt to brazenly steal the election. Then reality would sink in — all of the Southern states have significant African American populations and once politics is no longer a viable method of solving problems then the far more brutal dynamics of realpolitik would kick in. I just can’t imagine millions of African Americans lulzing a return to the Confederacy, no matter how badly the white political establishment of those states may want it. So, even though the South has a lot of people and a big economy, it would be, on a regional basis, too busy fighting a race war to really help the Red cause all that much. If things really grew as radical as I fear they will — probably because WMD are stolen and cities start to get vaporized — it’s the Deep South where you’re most likely to see some WW2 level atrocities as radicalized whites begin to murder blacks en mass.
As for the rest of the states, their ability to pick one side or the other is probably far easier and their biggest problem would be dealing with political refugees.
And, honestly, I can’t tell you what to do to prepare — I don’t write for VOX, after all — but I can give you a hint about how to prepare relative to what I do know.
Figure out what you’re willing to suffer for in the real world.
That’s all the advice I have for you. When the shit hits the fan, there will be no narrative, no value — just survival. And it’s going to be state sponsored chaos, too. If you hold up in the woods somewhere with a lot of guns and ammo, that is only going to get you so far. They’re going to come for you, eventually.
In other words, if you have the ability to bounce to a part of the country that agrees with your politics, take it. Don’t become John Brown somewhere in the hills of a Red State. You’re simply the delaying the inevitable and you’re depriving the Blue States of your talents.
Anyway, again, we are soooooooo fucked. Totally, completely. And, what’s more Republicans run around screaming at the top of their lungs how giddy they are to turn us into an autocracy. And, yet, there are still people who refuse to admit it.
Here are some reasons why we won’t have a civil war:
It’s not in our nature to have a civil war. For all the hateful rhetoric on the part of the MAGA New Right, it’s possible that in the end, they manage to pull off a peaceful transition to autocracy. In fact, at first, at least, the chance from democracy to autocracy could be so subtle that only a few hysterical people like me even notice. For the average person, it will just be a replay of 2000, only worse: it will simply be accepted that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if that party also control Congress. People will say “the system worked” and move on.
Republicans have gamed the system. It could be that by 2024 – 2025 the actual administration of elections will be so corrupt that it will be a fact of life that people shrug and take for granted. It will be the first step towards Americans becoming Russians in that they will no longer feel as though the government expresses the will of the people. And that will be that.
Not Trump 2024 Another reason why we could slip peacefully into autocracy is it’s not Trump who is the Republican nominee, but someone other than Trump. If this is the case, when I honestly don’t see why we would have a civil war. Autocracy is so popular within the United States –and the opposition to it is so weak — that our transition to an actual autocracy will in the end be so easy to pull off that there will be no need to resort to violence. Blue States will get angry, but, lulz, they always get angry, right Mr. Eastman?
Autocracy is very popular in the United States A sizable portion of the United States’ electorate wants an autocracy. They want one so bad that they seem like a cult to people who aren’t all that thrilled at the prospect of one. So, it’s possible that they will wrap up the transition into autocracy without any violence at all. By the time people realize what they’ve lost, it will be way, way too late. The United States will be nothing more than a Russia clone with an identical political dynamic. There will be a MAGA-themed Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment” and we’ll still have President DeSantis (or whomever) 30 years from now.
Anti-MAGA forces are just too weak willed. Again, it could be that when push comes to shove, the whole thing will be over before it even starts. There will be a lot of angry tweets on Twitter, but in the end, because Twitter liberals aren’t willing to risk anything in the real world, we slip peacefully into autocracy and that, as they say, will be that.
I used to think that Republicans have some sort of huge civil war between its MAGA base and the pro-Ukraine Establishment. But, now, oh boy. It appears that what I thought was going to be a civil war may turn out to be more of just a drunken scuffle.
It seems as though the vast majority of Republicans are going to go all-in with their support for Putin. So, should there be a war between Russia and Ukraine the lines of domestic American politics will be pretty clear — Democrats support Ukraine and Republican support Russia.
If that doesn’t make your head spin, I don’t know what will. After 70 years of ranting about how Russia was a threat to the American way, Republicans are going to collectively throw in the towel because of a fail reality TV star. But, as iI keep saying, all of this is the macro trends associated with a declining empire paying themselves out.
Something like this was going to happen the moment Obama won a second term and white people began to freak out about their imminent loss of power within American society. (Something about Obama’s *second* term freaked white people out the way his first term did not.)
So, now, have a potential situation where the vast majority of Republicans side with America’s historic geopolitical adversary because their presumptive 2024 nominee has such a tight bond to the white conservative volk that they can’t dare cross him, even though his support for Putin is comically unseemly.
I honestly don’t know what to tell you. It’s going to be really weird. But that seems to be the direction we’re going. If there are a number of miscalculations across the board, it could be that it’s THAT that costs Republicans Congress in 2022. (Though, let’s be honest, Republicans have so rigged the system at this point that they’re going to win, even if they don’t win. Or, they’re not going to lose, as is always the cause with autocrats.)
It could be that not even something marketed as WW3 can prevent our decent into autocracy or civil war and, in the end, our civil war in the 2024 – 2025 timeframe only makes a bad WW3 situation worse because we’re going to vaporize ourselves into the Stone Age.
Man, oh, man, am I nobody. I got a bum ankle, warm laptop and Internet access. That’s all I got at the moment. But I do have something else — I’m good at scenarios. So, I’m rather alarmed with the recent shenanigans of the fucking paramilitary group The Patriot Front and want to game out what their long term goals may be.
The Patriot Party Flag
I’m not an expert, but I do know enough from what I can see with my own two eyes to figure out some sense of what their danger is. Here’s what we know about them. They are well organized. They work in the shadows and with stealth. They have an infrastructure built out enough to swoop into a hostile Blue city like DC or Philadelphia and get out safely before they get their asses beat.
So, where does that leave us?
It seems as though they are plotting the ability to do some sort of attack in a major city in the Eastern Corridor at the time and place of their choosing. What might trigger such an attack is anyone’s guess. But probably it would be done in the context of the country descending into mass chaos. Although, you make the case that The Patriot Front is auditioning for something akin to the SS, should we become a true autocracy which would find a modern SS quite handy.
Anyway, I’m probably going to write a lot more about this in the future. Stay tuned.
I’m still smarting over how poorly I predicted the 2020 presidential cycle. So, I keep looking for reasons why my current personal conventional wisdom of us slipping peacefully into autocracy (with a high risk of civil war) could possibly be wrong.
Right now, the only thing I got is WW3.
WW3, which would be a series of major non-nuclear regional wars (Russia – Ukraine, China-Taiwan) happening at the same time, would be the only thing that could potentially give Biden the ooph necessary to get across the finish line fair and square. All other options have either Steve K. Bannon stealing the 2024 election successfully, we simply vote for autocracy with our eyes wide open or we have a civil war.
I’m not saying I want WW3 — it could too easily turn into The Day After type situation — but it is, in fact, one way our democracy might live to fight for at least another four years.
I’m a huge fan of David Rothkopf — even though I fear he’s come to think I’m an Internet crank — but I have to disagree with him on what’s going on in the United States at the moment.
He wrote about the “cold civil war” going on in the United States at the moment, and, from what I could tell, he seems to think this is a potentially long-term solution. He just can’t come out and say what growing numbers of people — especially those few who read my writing know I believe — that the United States could very well be living in a modern day antebellum period.
It’s actually possible that the world’s first hyperpower is on the cusp of willingly bombing itself into oblivion. And if that doesn’t happen, then we’re going to slide peacefully into autocracy.
Or, to be more succinct — America is careening towards the two existential choices of civil war or autocracy. Either we play the high stakes game of who has the best military or we simply let an autocrat “make America great again.”
And there are no quick fixes to this problem. No “boom” is going to save us. No, “this is big” Twitter thread. And we just don’t have the political will to take down TrumpWorld using the legal system.
So, in essence, we’re fuuuuuucked.
Why am I so sure about this? Well, all the metrics point in one of those two directions. A huge swath of America no longer believes in democracy. While another group of MAGA is bloodthirsty enough that they could very well start a civil war just because they want the opportunity to hurt people like me on a physical level for my political beliefs.
Anyway. You have a few years. I would say, if we’re lucky, we’re living in 1857 right now. Slave Power will either take over the whole country or we start a civil war around 1860 – 1861. Good luck.
I was astonished to see the footage tonight of the fascist paramilitary group the Patriot Front swooping into D.C. then leaving as quickly as they came. This is very disturbing for a number of reason, among them being that usually when a democracy is in its death spiral, paramilitary groups like the Patriot Front begin to pop up.
The fascist, white supremacist group Patriot Front is marching on the national mall in Washington, DC, right now. pic.twitter.com/UDeKdQfXA5
— Read Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire (@JoshuaPotash) December 4, 2021
So, my general belief that we’ll in the beginning stages of a very bumpy few years is beginning to hold water. If hundreds of far Right nut jobs can spirit themselves into the capital without anyone knowing about it, then this is a dry run for something far more nefarious.
Because it takes an extensive infrastructure and logistical command to pull of such a thing. You don’t just get that many people into a hostile center-Left Blue city in broad day light just for the lulz of taking some tourist pictures.
These guys are plotting long-term.
But, what?
There are any number of things that they could be up to. I think they’re going through their paces in the lead up to something Really Big at some point as we grow closer to the potentially very turbulent 2024 – 2025 timeframe. When they feel they can make a difference in the control of the government, they strike. But they know they have a few years where they can do dry run after dry run after run in preparation of that.
Or, put another way, this is another macro metric that is difficult for us to understand the context of. Is the Patriot Front doing shit like this a ping from a dark future, or is it value free? Or is it both? I honestly don’t know. But it doesn’t exactly make me feel any better.
This blog exists in oblivion. Outside of the odd, seemingly random scraping of it by the Internet Archive and some site in Iowa using Microsoft Azure, the only traffic I really get is people who are worried about a Second American Civil War.
I’ve kind of said my peace for the time being on the matter, but given the steady flow of people interested in a 2ACW, I thought I’d pontificate some more.
The key thing to remember when talking about a 2ACW is it’s at one end of a wide spectrum of possible outcomes in the next three to four years. At the moment, all signs point to the United States slipping peacefully into some sort of ever-tightening autocracy. A 2ACW is just potentially too far away in time for me to be able to say for sure one might happen or not.
Or, put another way — all the conditions are there for the United States to transition peacefully into autocracy no later than January 2025. I think MAGA is popular enough that they won’t even have to cheat. They will cheat anyway, but by January 2025, the United States will be on the path to becoming a political clone of Russia.
And that would be that but for one thing — Trump.
Or, to put it another way, the combination of Trump being a chaos agent and the bloodthirsty nature of the MAGA New Right could very well be a set up to the Right self-owning in a pretty astonishing fashion by starting a 2ACW that they could very well lose.
It is telling that so many people are low-grade freaking out about the potential for a 2ACW that they’re goosing my website’s traffic. But, again, at the moment I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Autocracy is just too popular.
One metric that I’m keeping an eye on is how insane Republicans when they regain the House and Senate. If they put bonkers people in their caucus in positions of power, then, well, that’s a pretty good indication that in the 2024 – 2025 time frame Republicans are going to push us to the political limit.
There are plenty of reasons to think that our political system will ultimately bend, not break, but, lulz, we still have time to fuck things up.
So, do I REALLY think we are going to have a 2ACW? Maybe. Ask me again in a few years.
Any discussion of the rise and rise of Trump has to be done in the context of America’s receding empire. Unlike ’30s German, America isn’t aggrieved, we’re just struck with a severe bout of existential malaise. In a sense, 9/11 marked the beginning of the end of America’s empire because we were to find ourselves in Mesopotamia and Afghanistan before it was over with.
By 2016, a huge segment of the American electorate was growing tired with empire — and with the liberal-progressive social changes of Obama’s second term — and the time was ripe for an autocrat.
And everyone assumed it would be ding-dong Trump who would ascend to power, turn the United States into an autocracy and that would be that. But ultimately, Trump was just an empty suit. He did have one specific autocratic ability, despite his laziness: once you got into his personality death cult, there was no going back.
But this leads to the question, why?
The answer on an individual basis for the whole clusterfuck can be found in the personal instance of Dr. Ronny “Feel Good” Jackson. All he had to do is lie and say Trump was not over 300 lbs, and therefore obese, and he would find himself with a nice, cushy — an safe — Republican seat in Texas delegation to Congress.
Just take that amount of power that Jackson got for selling his soul and expanded upon the broader US government, and you have a recipe for a seriously fucked up situation. By the time Trump got impeached the first time, the US government was totally off the rails. It was being run like TrumpOrg, which is, not very well. Everything was ad hoc and a lot of idiots who otherwise would never have any direct link to power were meeting with POTUS on a pretty regular basis.
So, in a sense, there was a direct link between Trump’s management style and him getting impeached the first time. When it began to sink in with people who knew better that Trump was treating the US government like TrumpOrg, he got impeached. He got impeached the second time because he his failings as an autocrat were put on display when he put all his chips on Mike Pence “doing the right thing,” (at least relative to Trump.)
This was all happening in the context of a derogation of democratic norms, institutions and beliefs within the broader society. So, next time, I think Trump is going to win fair and square (-ish) and the autocracy will be established quite peacefully.
But there is always a chance that, lulz, we have a civil war.
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