I’m going to call it now: if Trump runs again, we’re probably going to have a civil war.
I say this because Trump is notorious for screwing up situations where he should get what he wants without any problems. Just look at the 2020 election. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING was cued up for him to steal that election — even with a pandemic — and he screwed it up.
Any other would-be autocrat would be enjoying their second term right now and Trump is such a lazy, idiotic ding-dong that he couldn’t pull it off. IDIOT. As such, it’s easy to imagine a situation where between Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025, Trump single-handedly sparks a civil war because he’s a fucking moron.
He will have the entire edifice of the Republican Party at his disposal, so when even though everything is aligned for us to peacefully transition into an autocracy Trump, unto himself, will fuck things up. He has repeatedly done this in the past and he will do it in the future.
If someone like DeSantis is the 2024 Republican nominee our transition to autocracy will be swift and peaceful. We’ll just wake up at some point in 2025 to learn the media has been purged and, lulz, sucks to be you, lib. Then the existing ICE infrastructure will be weaponized and Hollywood will flee, en masse to, say, Perth.
So, if Trump announces, have a passport handy. Or be willing to defend — or suffer for — what you believe in. Things are going to get lit in the real world. No more of this “Twitter Resistance” bullshit.
Though the American political system is very, very fragile at the moment, there would need to be some sort of outside pressure for anything close to a “civil war” to happen. One possible origin of such a pressure is some combination of The Durham Report and / or the Arizona Audit “proving” Trump was right / really won the 2020 election.
I troll the Arizona Audit echo chamber a lot these days. The prospect of the Arizona Audit has fused with the prospect of The Durham Report coming out so your typical MAGA New Right person assumed Durham has the Arizona Audit on his desk, ready to release it with his report.
The whole thing makes me ashamed to be an American.
But that’s what the MAGA New Right base is fixated on even at this late date. It’s both pathetic and comical how they have all their hopes of Trump being “re-instated” on some mixture of The Report and the Arizona Audit. They won’t come out and say it, of course, but what they want is a violent overthrow the American government if either — or both — of these reports give them the results they want, need and expect.
So, it is possible that THIS is how we’ll endup having a civil war. Sooner or later Cyber Ninjas “proves” Trump “won’t the election and there’s a sudden push to nullify the 2020 election. Then, lulz, there a secessionist conventions and we have a civil war.
Or something like this.
I’m king of growing tired of ranting about all of this. We’re kind of treading water at the moment. We’re drifting towards a January 2025 existential choice of autocracy or civil war — but for the time being it seems we’re ok. Things aren’t getting better, but they’re really not getting worse on a tactical level. On a macro level — we’re fucked.
I can’t predict the future. In the end, this could all mean nothing because instead of civil war, we just slip peacefully into autocracy. And, yet, with their decision tonight to effectively end Roe V. Wade, SCOTUS has pushed us closer to a Second American Civil War.
I have no idea what it would look like, or if it would be Blue States or Red States that started it, but I do know that the American political system is so fragile right now that this little push on it could ultimately have huge consequences. This is another bolt popping off or liberal democracy.
There will come a point when there are no bolts left to lose and we have to make a historical, existential choice about what we’re going to do about the divisions America faces — are we going to become a Russian-style autocratic managed democracy, or are we going to bomb ourselves into the stone age in our struggle to figure out which vision of America will win out.
Or, put another way — we face a spectrum, with civil war at one end and autocracy at the other end. After generations of stability and muddling through, the United States has again reached a moment in its history where everyone has to take a side — even if they don’t want to. And there will be no clear narrative as to which side is the right side until after the shooting has not just begun, but ended.
I mean, if Red States try to make up for their small populations and economies by using WMD on Blue States during any putative civil war, then, lulz, they could very well win. Or it could be that the United States simply crashes into a number of smaller nation-states that are always at war with each other. We could join the Soviet Union in the dustbin of history — instead of the United States there will be five or six (or 10?) smaller states that exist where the United States once existed.
The case could be made that all China has to do is be patient — they will have every opportunity to take Taiwan around 2025 because either President DeSantis brings the boys home or we’re so busy having a civil war that we don’t have time to worry about saving Taiwan (or anyone else, for that matter.)
I really have no idea which existential choice we’re going to take. For the moment, however, I think our transition into autocratic managed democracy will be peaceful. There may be huge protests AFTER we’re an autocracy, but, just like with Russia…they will be a lulz.
A funny thing happened on the way to American autocracy: the man history shone on to be the agent of destruction for American democracy turned out to be a big old goober. All the macro historical forces were aligned for 240 years of liberal democracy to be smothered.
And then it didn’t happen.
Pretty much Donald Trump, by being a huge ding-dong gave us some insight into the interaction between Great Men and macro trends of history. Trump was not a Great Man, he was simply an avatar for macro trends. America just barely dodged a historical bullet because Trump, personally, could not do the one thing history had assigned him to do: kill American democracy.
I keep trying to think up ways to grade Trump on an autocratic curve and I keep failing to think of anything. Would you believe that idiot Mussolini was more of a Great Man than Trump ever was. Trump, in the end, was all talk. What’s more he gave the Establishment two things it wanted from him: young hack MAGA judges and a huge plutocrat tax cut…and then he failed everyone else who supported him using any other metric.
While Trump continues to have enormous sway over the Republican Party and the MAGA New Right base, Establishment Republicans are growing really tired of his shock and jibe. They got what they wanted from him, now they want Ron DeSantis to finish the job.
But what job do they want DeSantis to do?
Ron DeSantis
In general, Republicans now simply want to use the quirks of the Constitution to establish permanent white Christian minority rule. I don’t think they’ve thought beyond that — they just want to “control” the growing power of women and minorities. They want power and as much money as they can get through continued smash-and-grab tax “reform.”
And, yet, there’s a problem.
Such things don’t happen in a vacuum. Once it’s conventional wisdom that Republicans have, using the quirks of our creaking Constitution, form follows function and they’re going to start abusing the fuck out of the complete lack of oversight.
And that’s where things get tricky. Will we peacefully transition into an autocratic managed democracy or will we descend into civil war?
At the moment, I think it will all happen peacefully, because the Establishment has a vest interest in the sheeple being complacent. Gradually, however, as we grow more and more fascist in our governance, even the Establishment may live to regret how easily they gave up.
It’s pretty bad when I start thinking that the one thing I don’t want — a civil war — is the better of two bad options because at least there’s a chance the “good guys” will win.
My Captain, My Captain
But back to what’s going on with our undead liberal democracy. Because Trump could not do even the most basic of autocratic power plays in 2020, we are now an autocracy without an autocrat. If you know what you’re looking at, it’s all very surreal. There are a huge number of Americans who want an autocracy so much that they think Fox News is “too liberal.” They are so frightened in the abstract about “Cancel Culture” and “Critical Race Theory,” that they embrace the idea of a fascist state coming to America.
Marinate on that for a second.
We have to admit to ourselves that we’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked. Soon enough, voting won’t matter and we either accept that or we have a civil war to make voting matter again. Ugh. I hate even having to think about that. But that’s what we face.
The United States is careening towards a huge historical clusterfuck because Trump, chosen by the Fates to transition us into an autocracy, wasn’t a Great Man, he was just a lazy idiot.
Enjoy these few years — months? — of living in a liberal democracy. Soon enough, that may seem rather quaint.
Norm Ornstein is starting to become my hero. Whenever I hear him on Deep State Radio, he says exactly what I think about the potential fate of our liberal democracy.
Norm Ornstein
And, really, in the end, our best case scenario could be that people like he and I will scream bloody murder when the autocracy finally arrives…but the final transition will be peaceful and largely unnoticed by the average person. It will simply be taken for granted by the typical American that Republicans are always in control and always will be in control no matter what.
And then they stop voting.
Then, gradually, the darker sides of autocracy will begin to pop out simply because form follows function. The media will be purged. The disconnect between the will of the people and the actions of the government will grow very, very severe. People will be — no joke — pushed out of windows for not shutting up. People like me and Mr. Ornstein.
But plutocrats will still be able to get abortions for their mistresses. They won’t pay taxes at all — that will be only for The Poors. In fits and starts, over a generation or so the Untied States and Russia will, on a political level, become indentical.
And people like myself and Mr. Ornstein will either get pushed out a window, get exiled or we’ll be allowed to continue to rant in a rage about how the America that we all once knew and loved is no more.
Or we have a civil war.
At the moment, however, I think the dark fears I share with Mr. Ornstein will happen peacefully because Americans generally are a pretty copasetic bunch –we’re not French, after all — and the Establishment will be so co-opted by our new autocratic overloads that they will have every reason to tell the masses not to freak out when the inevitable MAGA New Right Constitutional Convention is called.
We’ve got a good, solid 20 years before the whole push people out of windows for political reasons thing will happen (I hope.) Enjoy these remaining years of freedom while they last.
There are a lot of ways the United States might have something akin to a civil war — or at least severe, rolling political violence on a national scale — and so I’m going to write a post for each of the different scenarios I can think up. In this scenario, Republicans freak out because one of their important political figures simply shuffles peacefully off this mortal coil.
People just don’t appreciate how on edge the United States is a politically right now. All we would need for significant political violence is some unexpected additional pressure.
So, in this scenario, that added pressure comes from someone like Trump — or Justice Thomas (to a far lesser extent) — gently, and peacefully leaving the land of the living.
The only reason why Thomas might be enough is, well, the country is primed and ready for a national freak out and the MAGA New Right is such a fucking bunch of crybabies that even being down one on SCOTUS might be enough to get them to run around murdering people for political reasons.
But it’s Trump we have to worry about.
If you look at the batshit insane rantings of the MAGA New Right on Twitter, they’re pretty much on a knife’s edge when it comes to political reasons to murder people. And, yet, other than the dramatic exception of January 6th, to date, they’ve been all talk. They, in an abstract, manner, want to murder people like me, but, lulz.
And, yet, since there is absolutely no way the MAGA New Right would ever, for any reason accept that The Dear Leader is mortal and just dropped dead of natural causes, there’s every reason to believe that significant, rolling political violence would occur if Trump proved he wasn’t really the Son Of Man after all.
It’s this scenario that would be closest to the “revolution” that MAGA people keep searching for when the endup at this site. (Sidenote: FUCK YOU, MAGA, YOU BUNCH OF COCKSUCKERS.)
Anyway, the point is — America’s political system is so fragile, so on edge that any additional pressure on it might push it over the edge into the realm of violence on a national scale.
Long Answer: How long do you have? If you look at the chatter among the MAGA people interested in the subject of the Cyber Ninjas audit, you will see that they can’t bear to bring themselves to say what they believe: if Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won” Arizona, they want a violent overthrow of the government.
They have come to combine the Cyber Ninjas bullshit with The Durham Report which is sort of the last vestiges of Trump’s attempt to get back at all the people connected to the Mueller Report.
So, if the Cyber Ninjas report ever is released and they uphold their end of the bargain and “prove” that Trump “won” Arizona then this would greatly destabilize the United States to the point that there might be decertification conventions, which become nullification conventions which become secession conventions.
Or, put another way, the conditions are there, yes, for a civil war because of the Cyber Ninjas bullshit audit. But at the moment, it seems as though they’re choking big time. They’re blowing it, which is good for the sake of the long-term stability of the country.
And, yet, we have to accept that under the surface the United States is so politically unstable and the MAGA New Right glorifies political violence so much that all we need is a unexpected pressure on the system and the whole thing could come falling down in a rather dramatic fashion.
All the conditions are there.
But, I’m beginning to think it’s not going to happen anytime soon. We’re just going to drift through things until about January 2025. Then all hell will break loose.
As it stands, for a lot of MAGA New Right cocksuckers, the idea of a “civil war” is simply the worst possible thing they can think of. They talk about how liberals are “forcing” them to radicalize and to want a civil war, but all that’s going on is they’re snowflakes and a civil war is just the worst possible thing they can think of that might happen.
They’re politically pouting, in other words.
And, yet, as January 6th showed, there comes a point where overwrought rhetoric causes something to actually happen in the real world. In other words, things continue to be pretty frothy within the MAGA New Right. Even though the majority of establishment Republicans have moved on to Ron DeSantis, Trump continues to have an absolute lock on his personality death cult. They can’t wrap their minds around the very liberal democracy concept of if you don’t get enough votes, you don’t get to have power, so they suck their own cock thinking up ways that Trump “really” won.
Where things get dangerous is when things in the real world begin to have a momentum out of the control of the establishment that just wants to sit back enjoy that plutocrat tax cut and young hack MAGA judges and think about how they’re going to finally strangle American democracy and rule as a minority.
So, in a sense, Trump is now a lingering, festering political problem that Republicans would rather just use an ointment on. He just won’t go away. And if he runs again in 2024, he’s going to win the nomination either by co-opting DeSantis or destroying him.
If Trump can just get out of the way, America is going to peacefully transition into an “lite touch” autocracy that is at first is an autocracy because the disconnect between the will of the people and who actually runs the country will be so enormous that all this talk about “don’t boo, vote” will be looked back upon as quaint. Voting will be meaningless and Republicans will so rig the system that they always win, no matter what.
People will stop voting and we become an autocracy.
Of course, as I keep “hysterically” saying, there are two things to consider with my “doom shit.” One is, this process could be bungled — probably because Trump tries to be the one to finish the transition into autocracy — or form follows function like it always does and the fascists of the MAGA New Right will become…fascists. They’ll realize they now have absolutely no checks on their power and they’ll start to knock heads –specifically, probably mine.
(Thankfully, I have a passport again, but, lulz.)
Anyway, let’s pause for a moment to ruminate on how “hysterical” I’m being. The type of person who calls me “hysterical,” probably is a traditional conservative who is so worried about “woke corporations” that they simply want to nullify any political argument they don’t like. They can’t comphrend my “doom shit” happening in the United States, so, by definition, it can’t happen.
Lulz!
And, in a sense, they know they won’t have anything to worry about if a MAGA New Right autocracy is established — they always follow the rules — so it’s all an abstract. They have a job and kids and a mortgage to worry about. For me, however, since I won’t fucking shut up about what a fucking cocksuckers our new autocratic overlords are, I have some very concrete things I have to worry about.
And, in general, given what I keep seeing actually happening, people who claim my belief that we have the existential choice of autocracy or civil war ahead of us is “doom shit” are living a delusion. Soon enough, either we accept that Republicans have established white Christian minority rule, or we don’t. Either the transition into autocracy is peaceful and long-lasting, or it’s not.
I hate violence, but we definitely need to start thinking about what happens if the MAGA New Right either bungles what should be a peaceful transition into autocracy or they start to believe their own press about how great and wonderful a civil war would be. (Ugh.)
Anyway, every day I see evidence I’m not being “hysterical” and my “doom shit” is just reality. Now what.
Let’s look at what — apparently — the two sides fear when it comes to our political future.
Red (MAGA New Right) From what I can tell, when the autocracy comes most of the MAGA New Right will either be oblivious or not give a shit. After all, an autocracy ensures they get what they want for the foreseeable future. Reds are, however, touchy about the idea that people like me will be able to point to the autocracy and say, “I was right. We have an autocracy.” So, in a sense, they want it both ways — they want to destroy America and establish permanent white minority rule, but they don’t want anyone to talk about it. (Which, I guess, is natural for an autocracy run by a minority.)
Also, Reds have a severe abstract fear of being canceled. They think, by definition, that being conservative risks having their lives destroyed by not following the evil Blue-Liberal-Progressive Media Narrative.
I’m a fact-based person and there is some validity to this fear. But to believe that we have more to fear from woke corporations than from a future MAGA New Right autocratic government is a huge stretch.
It all boils down to traditional conservatives on a basic level hate anything and I mean ANYTHING that doesn’t fit THEIR media narrative generated, at its heart, by News Corp’s bullshit. They usually won’t admit that their talking points come from FOX News or the WSJ Editorial Page – they can get really worked up about that, in fact — but those talking points are just that, talking points. Regardless of where they came from.
Or, put another way, traditional not-MAGA conservatives feel, becuase of negative polarization, that they don’t have anywhere to turn other than the fascist MAGA New Right and so, in the end, they’ll just be Good Germans while people like me who won’t shut up will get a bullet to the head by an ICE agent.
Whenever I mention this, I’m called hysterical. Conservatives are just not willing to give any credence to my very concrete fears that because I won’t fucking shut up no matter WHO tells me to do so “for the sake of the family” that in the end they’re going to weigh their personal blood connection to me with the demands of a MAGA autocratic state.
By the time they get around to figuring out which thing is more important, I’m dead in a ditch somewhere not being “hysterical” anymore because I’m fucking dead.
And, yet, because those are Blue abstract fears, the Reds I know lulz them all.
Blue Now, the issue is, I’m not all that liberal-progressive. But I am extremely anti-MAGA New Right. Even though I burn with a white hot rage against the MAGA New Right, on a practical level, I see conservatism as a perfectly legitimate political force in the United States.
What I can’t stand, however, is the MAGA New Right’s coy embrace of fascism that they sell to conservatives by telling them their lives are going to be destroyed by Cancel Culture or that their children will hate them because they were taught Critical Race Theory.
The MAGA New Right is based on a lie that, at its heart, is inspired by conservative white people on a macro basis being afraid of losing power as America grows more and more brown. (Oh my God, have I discovered Critical Race Theory?)
The interesting thing about the attack on Critical Race Theory on the part of the MAGA New Right is they want to make ANY discussion of the influence of race on American politics soooooo fucking loaded and touchy that you can’t even have a conversation about it with someone who doesn’t politically agree with you. Remember, the more traditional “tolerant democracy” politics locks up, the more power the MAGA New Right gets.
So while conservatives are freaking the fuck out about “woke corporations” the MAGA New Right is destroying the very basic fabric of the democracy we’ve enjoyed for 240 years and, by the way, America is a republic not a democracy so fuck you, lib.
I have repeatedly admitted that I was wrong about Trump — not that that has mattered any. Libs are always wrong and they’re going to hell, to, so lulz. I was wrong about Trump because he talked like an autocrat but in the end could not follow through.
But, on an systemic level, the Republican Party is now autocratic so, lulz, the moment they have power again — no matter how they get it — they will make it so they never fucking ever leave power again. When every election you have is existential, that’s not a great sign for your republic — or democracy.
In the end, what I think is going to happen is a lot of anti-MAGA thinkers (both liberal-progressives and #NeverTrumpers) are going to grow hysterical as we slip peacefully into autocracy. And that will be that. The media will be purged, I will be “right” but in the end because the personal lives of the conservaives I know won’t change — in fact, they’ll be happier — then, well, that’s it.
They might grow alarmed when I get “disappeared ” buy they tried to tell me near the end that things had changed and…I just wouldn’t shut up about how President DeSantis is a fucking cocksucker. What else did I expect was going to happen?
Compromise Is Weakness This is a very corrosive development that has caused the effective death of American politics, full stop. When you realize that any effort at political comity is a waste of time, then, lulz, what’s the point of talking about politics in the first place. When you realize that any political debate will turn in a screaming match, what’s the point?
Conservatives Have Permission Structure To Be MAGA Even bedrock conservatives who claim to not like the excesses of MAGA vote for MAGA now on a regular basis. They have an extensive permission structure to vote for MAGA — and, soon, Trump without Trump — and so the rise of fascism in the United States is now an immutable law of American political history –we’re fucked.
Systemic Republican Radicalization On a basic, systemic basis, the Republican Party is growing ever-more radical to the point that by 2024 white nationalism and political violence will be seen as a lulz. They will do whatever necessary to take and keep power forever. Prove me wrong, people who think I’m “hysterical” with my “doom shit.” What do I get if I’m right? A prize? Or a bullet in the back of the head from a ICE agent. If you “play by the rules” and are a Good German, you have nothing to worry about. But I’m a loudmouth who will never shut up about what a fucking cocksucker the autocratic of the moment is, so….I might have a little bit more to worry about then the “personal responsibility” rule followers who everyone seems to love?
Negative Polarization is All-Powerful As part of the aforementioned permission structure, negative polarization is so all powerful now that it’s impossible to make common cause with conservatives who claim they aren’t MAGA. What they don’t like is Trump — they love MAGA to the point that they totally embrace the “cruelty is the point” nature of the movement in general. I think this is the main difference between MAGA and the New Right.
Personal Political Interactions Have Broken Down I’ve completely stopped talking about politics with my far more conservative relatives because the risk that either they’re freak out on me or we’ll start screaming at each other is too high. This. Is. Not. Good. This is how the “bad guys” win. You’re just a brief jaunt away from a civil war if your individual, personal politics have locked up that much.
You must be logged in to post a comment.