I’ve noticed a bit of an uptick in the number of people interested in my dystopian hellscape scenarios about a Second American Civil War (or Revolution.) And it’s occurred to me that there is one sure-fire way for Trump to start something that might be marketed in the press as a “revolution.”
Drop dead.
It doesn’t matter how he did it, if Trump shuffled off this mortal coil peacefully in his sleep, the MAGA base is so primed to assume that it was the Deep State that did it, then, yes, there’s a good chance that a lot of major American cities would be suddenly be on fire.
It would be a lot like what happened after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King — only it would be white people doing the sacking of cities. So, if you’re a MAGA true believer who wants an excuse to grab your AR-15 and murder in cold political blood people like me, there’s your answer.
That’s how you get your civil war or revolution immediately, not at some point around late 2024 – early 2025 when Blues leave the Union because the 2024 election was brazenly stolen.
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.
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.
The mystery of the moment is why in the world would Trump have all this Top Secret information — including, apparently, nuclear secrets? What the what? Even if you are the most charitable and say it’s all an “accident” that still leaves a lot of questions.
You mean to tell me, Trump just randomly got some of the most top secret document that America possesses because it would be “cool?” Come to think of it, Trump is a big enough idiot, so I suppose it’s at least possible that was his logic.
But while Trump is very stupid, we also know he’s very craven.
So, it’s at least possible that he has a movie-level understanding of secrets and thought he might be able to make a quick buck off of them by selling them. Even though Official Serious Person Tom Nichols has made it clear that’s not how Top Secrets work. But that’s how TRUMP might have thought they work.
Anyway, the point is, the “why” is a ticking time bomb for the entire country. What happens if we have definitive, cold, hard evidence that the reason why Jared got $2 billion from the Saudis was access to those secrets? Then you have something of a Singularity whereby on one side you have the absolute need to go after Trump criminally running up against the absolute need to protect the Dear Leader on the part of MAGA.
It goes without saying that that is a very unstable situation.
The consensus that is developing around Trump and these secrets is so bad that I half think we should try to impeach him AGAIN so he can never run for office again. But, I think, on a political level things may get dark for Trump for the next few days, but ultimately this will simply be one of the, say, top three Bad Things that Trump has done.
On a political basis, he’ll bounce back with the MAGA base for various reasons, he’ll announce for 2024 and away we go.
I got so angry about Trump’s administration that I started a novel project which is now up to six novels. And one of the things that made me the angriest was the “tender care facilities” that happened with little kids because of Trump’s shenanigans on the border.
I think of that now that we know it’s possible that Trump may have stolen nuclear secrets, of all things, and hidden them at Mar-a-Lago. This really makes me angry. It enrages me. It enrages me for a number of reasons, chief amongst them being that there’s a very good chance that Trump, yet again, will get away with it.
He will do something, anything to muddy the waters so the usual shuck and jive will happen where we all get really angry then gradually lose interest and Trump escapes. And the chief thing I think Trump could do to escape would be to announce his 2024 bid.
That is typically how Trump operates.
Whenever he’s cornered and we all think we have him, he does something even more stupid and dramatic and horrible and corrupt and no consensus can develop about what to do with him. I suppose Trump could also go transactional and get his mob of angry idiots to try to overthrow the government in an effort to protect himself. He hasn’t tried that lately.
Welp, I have to give Trump credit, it’s at least possible that a nation founded by Washington and renewed by Lincoln could be at last destroyed by malignant dingus Donald Trump. Pretty much all that has to happen is Trump go transactional and that’s it.
The United States would buckle into something akin to civil war. There would be no narrative, no ready endgame and we would careen into a very dark and uncertain future.
The fact that a legal raid on Mar-a-Lago would cause the Right to race to cling Trump as close to them as possible says America is far, far more fucked up than we could possibly have imagined. And we’re doing it willfully, with our eyes wide open.
The key issue is Trump, on a political basis, back in the game now. And all he would have to do to have some sort of immunity again would be to announce his 2024 bid. Now, obviously, the darkest scenario is Trump is indicted, runs anyway and in a bid to protect himself does something akin to being transactional.
Or, at least transactional connected, like he did with January 6th.
I guess what I’m saying is — I have no idea how any of this ends. And one way it ends is severe, chronic political violence that would be the setup for either autocracy or a far more traditional civil war situation around late 2024 – early 2025.
I just don’t think we appreciate how weak and unstable the United States is right now. If Something Big happened, I’m not so sure that the United States would be able to unite to do anything about it. We’re so divided, that we’re just as likely to collapse into open warfare as we are to unite to save the world again.
The reason why I say we’re in a crisis is we still don’t know what documents the FBI found when the raided Mar-a-Lago. All we know is whatever it is, it was bad enough that the Trump is trying to get ahead of it all by saying the FBI “planted” incriminating evidence.
What’s so alarming about all of this is there is no ready endgame — the classic definition of a crisis. There are, however, a few different ways this all might shake out.
One way is there’s a tragedy of some sort that makes the country stand still for a few hours (days?) while we process what has just happened. It would clear the air and we would all take a deep breath and realize maybe some of the Right wing rhetoric was a little too frothy for its own good.
The other, darker endgame would be that there’s a tragedy of some sort and, rather than calming everyone down, it only escalates things. The two sides begin to violently attack each other and we have the first long-term political violence in the Republic’s history since the end of Reconstruction.
The other, more subtle endgame is no endgame — we all feel like we’re racing towards a tragedy….and then nothing happens. The country is on edge for the long term until late 2024, early 2025 when all my dystopian hellscape predictions about a civil war or a transition into autocracy would take place.
Right now — I have no idea which of these endgames we will ultimately see happen.
For all the talk by myself and others comparing Trump to Hitler, there’s one way where the two men are very different and that’s how Hitler would handled what’s going on right now. If Herr Hitler was feeling the long arm of the law just about to reach him and the Right was so primed and ready for political violence, he would lean into it.
Hitler at this point would go transactional.
Maybe he wouldn’t say it outloud, but he would tell the SA or SS to go out and knock some heads, or blow some shit up. I suppose the direct analogy would be if Trump told the Proud Boys directly to commit some political violence immediately in an effort to make everyone so mad that it was practically impossible for the government to prosecute him.
Usually, Trump escapes from justice no matter how bad he is. But two things are at play at the moment. One is, there are just so many different investigations into him that it’s almost inevitable that one of them is going to hit pay dirt and really bring Trump closer to justice. Of course, in that instance, Trump can just laugh at all of us by announcing his 2024 bid and scream at the top of his lungs that he’s a poor, poor martyr for the cause. (This, of course, is very much something that Hitler would do in this situation.)
The other is — we still don’t know how bad the Mar-a-Lago situation is. As Stephen Colbert frequently says, with Trump things are always, always far, far worse than you fear. As such, if Trump really was up to something Very Bad with all those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago we really are going to risk maybe not a civil war, but some of that rolling political violence that people like Barbara F. Walter keeps talking about.
The reason is — two absolutes would smash into each other.
The absolute need for the government to protect national security would smash into the absolute need on the part of MAGA to protect the Fuhrer. And if Trump poured gas on this particular situation by going transactional, then we really, really are in a lot of trouble not in late 2024, early 2025, but RIGHT NOW.
The United States, the wealthiest, most powerful nation the globe has ever seen is teetering. There’s a good chance that there may be major political violence in the near term. I say this only because you can’t have the Right’s echo chamber spewing violent, vitriolic rhetoric this much without someone, somewhere taking them up on it to prove a point.
And that doesn’t even begin to address the other pink MAGA elephant in the room — the exact reasons why there was a raid in the first place.
So, the first issue — the rhetoric. It definitely seems as though we’ve cross the Rubicon to some extent when it comes to the Right and violence. They definitely seem to be doing everything in their power to get one of their followers to come out of the woodwork and blow something up or hurt someone prominent. Or, put another way — things are really beginning to overheat politically in the United States.
There is going to be some sort of sacrifice or tragedy that will either escalate things or calm things down. I suspect that if my nightmare becomes a reality and there is a major, organized political terrorists attack that, given America’s national personality that it will clear the decks and we’ll all calm down. It could be for a little while, depending on how big the event is.
Or, of course, things only get worse.
It just seems as though the raid may be looked back upon as something the sparked political violence as bad, if not worse than the January 6th Insurrection. And what makes all of this even worse is there is some historical determinism to it — what else was the FBI going to do? Trump, personally, is the reason all of this bullshit is happening because the longer he’s not charged with anything the more the rule of law is collectively eroded in the public’s mind.
Ok, now for the other issue that of what is may have been that the FBI found. Because Trump — yet again — has demanded absolute fidelity from MAGA before they know the full truth, there’s a real chance that we’re going to find out something Really, Really Bad about why the FBI was at Mar-a-Lago and all the MAGA “thought leaders” who have been screaming about the need for Civil War because of the raid are going to look pretty dumb.
Of course, the fact that they keep trying to drum up support for the idea that evidence was “planted” is a tell — there’s a good chance that whatever it is, is so bad that it could really hurt Trump.
Now there’s one last thing to think about — to date, Trump hasn’t gone transactional. He hasn’t told his followers to be violent. He kind of did around January 6th, but what if he, feeling like a caged rat as the hand of justice finally begins to get close goes transactional and tells his supporters to be violent? How likely is it that they would? And what if they did?
Anyway, we’re in a crisis. There’s no obvious endgame. Buckle up.
A common theme within my center-Left echo chamber is how “dumb” MAGA Republicans are. And, yet, this totally misses the point of what’s really going on. MAGA isn’t dumb — it’s craven. There’s a big, big difference. Now, I’m not saying all the obviously very dumb things that MAGA Republicans say online and elsewhere aren’t dumb — a big chunk of it is — but there’s also a lot of cravenness to it as well.
Usually, this cravenness comes from intentionally conflating ideas in such a way that they either muddle what is trying to be said or they mislead people into thinking things that aren’t true.
MAGA knows what they’re doing when they say dumb things, or conflate ideas to be misleading. And, in some cases, it’s all just a big troll. They know that if they come across as dumb and provocative that their ideas will be amplified by clueless center-Left people on Twitter.
Or, put another way, I think we’re underestimating MAGA. We’re careening towards a very, very dark fate. What exactly that fate is, I don’t know. But we need to sit up and take notice that things are going to come to a head pretty soon and what that will look like is anyone’s guess.
But to dismiss MAGA as “dumb” is doing the anti-fascist movement no help.
You must be logged in to post a comment.