Tag: Autocrats Never Lose

My Hot Take On The (Very Boring) ‘New Right’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about the New Right is it’s full of overwrought, over exited rhetoric that if you take at face value definitely seems an embrace of cold, hard fascism. But usually, it’s done in a rather coy, conflated manner. At least from what I can tell from Jesse Kelly’s Twitter feed, apparently “it’s a New Right thing, you wouldn’t understand, lib” in the sense apparently they want both to embrace fascism and say that they’re being “driven to it” by evil Cancel Culture libs.

The issue is, there comes a point where the dicking around about if they’re fascist or not is both dumb and boring. I would respect the New Right a lot more — and find them more interesting — if they tore off their human face and reveled their real American Fascist beliefs beneath.

If we were all the same page on what the New Right really is — modern American fascism — then, at least, we would all know the dynamics of American politics going forward.

But, at the moment, the New Right is going all Waiting For Fascist Gadot. They say, “Well, we’re not fascist yet, but those damn liberals are going to force us to become fascist!”

So that’s why the New Right is boring. They’re not only intellectually dishonest, but they’re coy, too. I know what’s going on. A lot of MAGA people are tired of getting owned by libs by giving any logic, fact-based argument any validation. As such, the New Right has decided to nullify any that a liberal articulates in the first place.

If a liberal — or anti-MAGA person– states it, they won’t listen to it.

Throw in the growing number of paramilitary groups in the the United States and a general glorification by the New Right itself and, well, I’m reminded that we’re careening towards the existential choice of civil war or autocracy that I constantly harp on.

Trump’s Curious Political Status


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Our Orange Ding-Dong fascist former president currently inhabits a strange political space. To the average member of the electorate, he’s a washed up former POTUS. The average person is now busy thinking about what they were thinking about before — their kids growing up, etc.

Then there is the MAGA New Right base.

For them, the coup attempt of January 6th is still on going. An entire Lost Cause mythos is being developed around the “stab the back” they experienced with SCOTUS wouldn’t throw the election to Trump. For this small, but passionate subset of the electorate, Trump is either shadow Speaker or shadow POTUS, depending on their talking point of the moment. They are willing to defy any form of logic for the greater good of making it clear that they think “#TrumpWon.”

So, where does that leave us?

Well, a lot depends on how things break politically.

It could be that Cyber Ninjas will do their job and “prove” that Trump “won” Arizona. Either that, in itself, causes a secession crisis this year or it simply causes a longer-term series of events that causes the Right to demand Trump be named Speaker when Republicans inevitably win control of the House. Or the same thing essentially happens, only in January 2025 when a MAGA Congress refuses to certify any election result that doesn’t have Trump on top.

There is, of course, the possibility that Trumpist candidates belly flop in 2022. Then, we get to see the dozen or so would-be autocrats who are scheming around Trump fully embrace the New Right movement and we get either, again, autocracy or civil war.

I guess the point is — either Trump is the one who causes our existential choice of civil war or autocracy, or some other would be autocrat does it.

The Aristocrats!

This Haunts Me: Did Trump Know Marie Yovanovitch’s Life Was In Danger?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Of all the shitty things Trump did while in office, the thing I still find myself thinking about now and again is the whole Marie Yovanovitch situation. She was standing in the way of Rudy’s nefarious plans with her anti-corruption drive and someone who was pretty close to Trump — Lev Parnas — was in contact with a shadowy group of people who were out to get her.

That’s why she left Ukraine so abruptly in the dead of night — the embassy thought she was going to get murdered if she stayed.

So, you have a situation where a bunch of idiot thugs in Ukraine are stalking Marie Yovanovitch with a direct link to the White House. Is it possible that Trup knew — and was directing — this planned attack? It’s very easy to imagine a situation where Trump was Trump and he said something about getting rid of her and the thugs on the ground in Ukraine were like, “Ok, boss! Sure thing!” It was only because of the quick work of the American embassy that Trump wasn’t involved in a conspiracy that resulted in the death of an American ambassador.

But, given what we know now about the absolute devotion of the MAGA New Right to Trump — I suspect even that would be a lulz.

The point is — we’re pretty fucked. A violent personality cult is one election away from returning to power and pushing us into the existential choice of autocracy or civil war.

Now what.

Fuck The New Right


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Apparently, there are people who feel MAGA is just a bunch of RINOs. I discovered this when I stumbled across the Twitter account of New Right thought leader Jesse Kelly. What is notable about his excited tweets is how cogent they are. They at least follow some sort of logic — however fucked up it may be.

Fuck the New Right.

What was even more interesting to me is, in a sense, he is a ying to my yang. His arguments and my arguments about how fucked up the United States is right now are two sides of the same coin.

But, in all honest, I have to say to the New Right: fuck you.

The reason is, they are the vanguard of our lurch towards the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. Mr. Kelly is pretty upfront about how he essentially thinks American fascism is ascendant — and that that is a good thing.

Now, the thing about the New Right is it sets the agenda for the center-Right in that it comes to believe some totally bonkers, fucked up fascist thing and this eventually is filtered through OAN, NewsMax and FOX News (and the Wall Street Journal editorial page). The next thing you know, your kindly elderly relative is giving you a watered down Kelly talking point over Thanksgiving dinner.

What we have to accept is the dead hand of history is now doing its thing. There’s no stopping the momentum that is going to push us to the brink — either we become a MAGA New Right autocracy or there’s a civil war.

That’s it. We just can’t punt this particular shit show down the road anymore.

I honestly can’t tell you which one is going to happen at this point.

But the fact remains: fuck the cocksuckers of the New Right.

The MAGA New Right Is Extremely Volatile


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. The conditions are there, if nothing else, for some sort of fucked up and coordinated terrorist strike against liberal and anti-MAGA targets on the part of MAGA or the New Right or whatever the fuck they call themselves now.

If it happened, here’s what I think would be the reaction upon the Right’s “thought leaders.” First, there would be a whole lot of silence as they figured out what their talking points were. It would be radio silence for about 24 hours. This would leave the faithful out to dry as people like me flipped out and pined the conservatives in their lives down on how they could possibly support a movement that incited such an atrocity — whatever it it ends up being.

Then, once the talking points are straighten out, these MAGA New Right “thinkers” would do two things — one, they would say “thoughts and prayers” and then they would do a whole lot of distancing. They would say the individual or individuals who did the Fucked Up Thing were obviously unstable and they can’t be held responsible for their actions. Or, they’ll say they weren’t REALLY MAGA New Right cocksuckers, even if there was a manifesto written that said, “We did this bad thing because of MAGA New Right thought leaders.”

Then, depending on what idiot Trump said on the matter, there would be a gradual drift towards embracing these MAGA New Right terrorists as a regular fucking vanguard of the proletariat.

The point is — our politics is so fucking warped because of macro issues that we have to stop laughing at how dumb the MAGA New Right is and sit up and take notice — these fucking cocksuckers are a clear and present danger and they’re going to start hurting people (like me) soon enough.

The New Right Is Driving Me To Drink


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Apparently, the Confederate statue controversy is near and dear to MAGA thought leader Jesse Kelly’s heart. So, let’s look at his hot take on this lovely issue.

Mr. Kelly gets off on the monument thing because it’s his “in” to a huge swath of Southern white America who barely keeps up with the news. Once he gets their attention by ranting about taking down “history” then he can give them a permission structure for voting for the fascists that he obviously hopes will one day run the United States.

The only way I can spend this much brain power on something so stupid is to be drunk.

But let’s take Mr. Kelly’s bad faith arguments at face value. Apparently, he loves American history so much that he thinks anyone who wants to tear down monuments to traitors are “terrorists.” While I’m glad Mr. Kelly loves American history as much as I do, maybe he would notice that the long arc of (American) history bends towards justice.

It’s very curious that Mr. Kelly takes such pains to defend statues of people who took up arms against the Federal government in an effort to protect human bondage. What gives, bruh?

Anyway. The point is — it’s people like Mr. Kelly who set the boundaries of rhetoric within the Right wing echo chamber. He stakes out a really bonkers, extremist hot take, then it filters down, and is watered down via OAN, NewsMax and FOX News to normal people who should know better but don’t because of negative polarization.

We’re all very fucked. And I’m drunk.

‘This Is The New Right’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let’s crack open the rye and take a little journey into the Upside Down of the Right wing Twitter echo chamber. I’ve found a feed that is gist for a lot of posts and I’m going to cherry pick the best tweets and write a response to them at length.

Here’s our first one.

There’s a lot to unpack here. The interesting thing about Jesse Kelly is at least he’s cogent in his status as a fascist thought leader. I have to give him that. And, from my personal experience, a lot of bedrock conservatives with a permission structure to vote MAGA use watered down versions of his talking points without even realizing it.

But let’s focus on the, “…You cannot use my values against me….Nothing you say holds any meaning to me.”

What does that even mean? It appears as though the Mr. Kelly is going the nullification route. He’s saying that by definition, if because you’re not a fascist like him, he won’t listen to you, no matter what you say. No point you make which shows him to be a big old hypocrite matters because you’re saying it. This is a great way to pretty much make pin his entire argument on recursive thinking.

If, as a member of the “New Right” he can never be proven to be a hypocrite because he’s not going to listen to anything you say in the first place because he doesn’t agree with you then, lulz, that’s pretty fucking scary. It’s a very dehumanizing stance to take and would be at home in Nazi Germany. I mean, wouldn’t a Nazi say the same thing to a Jewish intellectual? Yep!

In fact, that’s why addressing people like Mr. Kelly in a calm, logical fashion only leads to heart break –you can’t mention Nazis, you can’t mention racism, you can’t mention systemic racism, you can’t mention Hitler and you can’t mention their jaw dropping hypocrisy. If you do, THEY get mad and either yell at you, or smugly say “this is the New Right.”

So why am I doing all this writing about all this bullshit? I don’t know, Mr. Kelly is actually cogent, as I mentioned, and I can’t get all I want to say off my chest in a tweet.

The MAGA Pink Elephant In The Room


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the most aggravating things about Twitter these days is how fucking oblivious Blue Check Liberals are to how dire things are politically in the United States.

They still, to this day, spend way too much energy trying to parse out the non-existent logic of MAGA. Instead of saying, “Oh my God, the United States may buckle soon because of the rise of fascism,” they chuckle and giggle at this or that ostensibly stupid thing that a MAGA “thought leader” has tweeted.

All of this is, of course, a complete waste of time. Instead of writing snarky tweets about how bonkers MAGA is, they need to start coming up with ways for the average person to prepare for either autocracy or civil war. It would make me feel a lot better if there was a practical guide to surviving America’s coming political apocalypse that I could read.

As it stands, all I got is, I dunno…get a passport? Be sure to live in a part of the country that fits your politics? Otherwise, I got nothing. Because it’s clear to me that we’ve zoomed past the point of no return: by 2025, the United States is either going to be an autocracy or we’re going to have a civil war. No other options.

Or, if you press me, I will tell you I can’t predict the future and something REALLY BIG would have to divert us from that particular existential choice. Even then, it might just punt the problem down the road. It would have to be HUGE, like First Contact or something, for us to avoid our existential fate altogether.

What I want is a reboot of how we frame MAGA. Instead of seeing it as something to laugh at, we need to see it as the existential threat that it is. Those fuckers are out for blood as the January 6th insurrection proves. And, what’s worse, they’re creating this entire Lost Cause mythology around the event for their echo chamber to pivot to whenever they talk to people like me.

What’s worse, the echo chambers of the center-Left and center-Right no longer overlap at all. It used to be, in, say, 2016 that you might find yourself in a heated discussion on Twitter with some MAGA cocksucker. Now, I rant all I want to on Twitter and very, very rarely hear a peep from a MAGA person. This is not good because apparently both sides have completely give up trying to debate people who disagree with them. And if they do, they do it exclusively in the context of trolling.

We’re just not taking MAGA’s intentions seriously enough. Instead of ridiculing them, or foolishly trying to change their minds, we need to gird our loins for the very serious transformation in the United States that MAGA is going to force — be it autocracy or civil war.

Why I Think Mini-Trump Glenn Youngkin Could Win In Virginia


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The gubernatorial race in Virginia is a prime example of something that is now an alarming political fact of life: we can’t stave off electing fascists forever. Even our barely functioning democracy still has the traditional ebb and flow of one — inevitably, Republicans are going to win major offices again.

It just so happens that it’s Virginia’s turn.

Here’s my back-of-the-envelope reasoning for thinking Glenn Youngkin will probably win the upcoming Virginia gubernatorial race. The first reason is Virginia has had a lot of Democratic governors one right after the other and, just in general, people are probably itching for a change. Advantage, Youngkin.

Meanwhile, he’s really slick. He wants to square the circle by both being a MAGA cocksucker while also having a thin veneer of being a “traditional conservatives Republican” who “gets things done.” This thrills rural voters in Virginia who are as fascist as they come. Virginia is a hotbed of anti-democratic, autocratic sentiment.

As such, he’s probably going to win.

Now, being a fucking MAGA shithead cocksucker, all he cares about is winning and power. That’s it. Once he gets it, he’ll toe the extremist line of any other MAGA cocksucker. He’s repeatedly said as much, and, yet, to date, these statements haven’t gotten any traction outside of the MAGA echo chamber.

As such, the moment he shows his true colors, the majority of Virginians — who are extremely moderate — are going to freak the fuck out. By the time he leaves office, the damage will have been done. The state will be just another polarized state that lies smoldering in its wreckage.

The curve ball in all of this is if Virginia has a MAGA governor when the civil war comes around 2025, well, my predictions that the state would implode if there was a such a war will be pretty prescient.

The Bolts Are Popping Off The United States At An Alarming Rate


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There seems to be two types of people at the moment — those who see that the United States is careening towards a dark and unknown future, and those who don’t. The thing about the modern Republican Party is the most surreal, extreme position of the ultra Far Right is now their baseline position.

And all of this happening in the broad daylight.

Ultimately, what may happen is we’ll become an autocracy and most of the country won’t notice or care. They won’t care until, of course, it becomes personal and then they’ll care A LOT. But for the most part, America will become a nation of Good Germans who know to keep their heads down, “play by the rules” and just be happy they don’t risk being “canceled” in any way ever again.

It’s loudmouth people like me who have had the luxury of being able to be very vocal kooks because I live in a free country who will suffer. The autocracy is not an abstract for me — in very real, concrete terms, I know I may die at the hand of a ICE agent if the United States becomes a traditional autocracy. That sucks. At least for me.

Another thing is, all the policies that MAGA Republicans so desperately want to enact to “make America great again” are almost universally politically destabilizing. They want an America where only the poors pay taxes. The States already suffer from severe income inequality — just wait until we turn into a first world version of Brazil.

This is where we have to be honest with ourselves. If we are, then we will realize that there’s a decent chance that there will, in fact, be a civil war of some sort in the United States at some point in the next, say, decade. WMD will be used and we’re going to bomb the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world into the stone age by our own fucking hands.

If this does happen — it may not, we may just peacefully become an autocracy — then WW3 will happen too and billions will die around the globe. Our only hope is after the dust clears the “good guys” will have won and a new international system will be established. Hopefully, it won’t be too late for us to do something about global climate change and humanity will, at last, start to the think collectively on a global scale.

Who am I kidding. That will never happen. We’re doomed.