Tag: Autocrats Never Lose

Why Does Everyone Think America’s Going To Have A Civil War Soon?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Almost all this blog’s traffic comes from people who think the United States is on the cusp of a modern civil war. The question is, of course, why is this? Why do a growing number of people think that American are going to start killing each other for political reasons?

There’s a lot going on with this subject. Some of it is the established glorification of violence found in the Far Right is becoming more and more mainstream. It’s drifting mainstream because MAGA is now a violent personality cult and they no longer see our traditional democracy as legitimate unless they win. Even though there are a lot of conservatives who don’t see themselves as either MAGA or fascist, they definitely know watered down versions of the talking points found within MAGA fascist circles. These conservatives can be so oblivious to this to the point that they get very offended if you reference the obvious source of this bullshit: Fox News.

Another thing going on is the abstract fears that a lot of conservatives have about what’s going on in the United States right now is so potent, so all powerful that a lot of them start to game out the endgame of Cancel Culture or Critical Race Theory or whatever bullshit of the month MAGA thought leaders have come up with.

This leads them to think, in abstract terms: civil war.

It’s the worst possible thing they can think of, but they don’t even know what it would mean in real terms. Now, obviously, there are some actual violent people within the MAGA movement who know damn well what a civil war would be like. But, for the average conservative in fear of going viral for some casual racially tone deaf statement, the idea of a “civil war” is something they think of when pressed by their buddies about what will happen if Cancel Culture isn’t outlawed. “Well, we’ll have a civil war.”

But all this civil war on the brain is definitely a bad sign in general because it gives a sense of the general direction of American politics. For a lot of people, even in abstract terms, to think of political violence as a viable option for solving the country’s problems Is Not A Good Sign.

Our fate in most of the scenarios I run in my mind about a civil war rests on MAGA state legislatures. If they take Trump both seriously and literally about being “reinstated” after Cyber Ninjas “prove” that he “won” the state, then, well, we’re pretty fucked. That would be the conditions for some sort of secession crisis between Trumplandia and the United States.

And, yet, I dunno.

For the moment, all of this civil war talk is just that — talk. It’s all very nebulous and I still don’t know which direction it will go.

Cyber Ninjas’ ‘Recount’ Of The Arizona Vote Is Extremely Unnerving


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something smells in the state of Arizona. It definitely seems as though Cyber Ninjas is doing everything in its power to get to the result it wants with its “audit:” Trump really won the state.

Now, there’s a lot to unpack with this.

One one hand, the whole endeavor is obviously bullshit. It’s meaningless “gesture politics” meant to give the faithful a talking point on Twitter. That’s it. And, yet, there is a risk that one of two things will happen — either Trump demands other states that he lost fair and square do the same thing or he really goes nuts and doesn’t even wait for that to happen. Trump seizes upon his dubious Arizona “win” and demands he be “reinstated” ASAP.

Then we have the same dynamic as January 6th, but on a national scale. If the first option happens, then just around election day 2022, half of the country will think there is “proof” that Trump is really POTUS. He becomes Speaker when the House flips and Speaker Trump has one goal — impeaching of Biden and Harris. He goes transactional, there’s massive political violence in 2023 and, Democrats in the Senate buckle because they don’t want a civil war. Trump is back in office in 2023 and we become an autocracy.

The other option goes like this — Trump gets his “win” in Arizona and freaks the fuck out just because of that one state. He demands that MAGA state legislatures “nullify” the Biden Administration. This quickly turns into a secession crisis and we have a civil war at some point between about now and, say, January 2022.

And, yet, both of those options, on the face of it, sound rather fantastical even to me. There is a lot I just can’t game out. I have no idea if anyone would actually listen to Trump if he went transactional about being “reinstated.” At the moment, Trump definitely seems politically dead in the water outside of the entire Republican bullshit echo chamber. But given the fact that the Republican Party is now a violent personality cult and, well, lulz. Who knows.

I don’t have any answers on this front. Just unease.

America’s Politics: A Status Check


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Some rando on Twitter told me to “calm down” today after I said my usual thing about how America faces the choice of autocracy or civil war in the near, near term.

Let’s do a back of the envelope status check on American politics. I’m not getting paid to do this and the people of VOX think I’m a crank, so lulz, you get what you pay for.

What makes doing this so difficult is, while in general terms I know we’re fucked, those fears a pretty much abstract. Going forward, it’s difficult to figure out what is important and what isn’t. But let’s have a go.

The first thing that comes to the forefront of my mind is the Republican Party is now fascist. It has been completely consumed by the rancid populism of MAGA. The Republican Party is dead and now is the Trump Party in everything but name. It has no ideology other than what whatever Trump wants at any particular moment.

As such, the question is, will it be Trump or one of his would-be successors who push us to the breaking point where we face the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. For the time being, Trump is in complete control of the Republican Party and any success or failure the party has in its objectives will be the direct result of Trump’s personal ability to achieve those goals. So, it’s easy to imagine a situation where Trump being lazy and stupid is handed power AGAIN through some sort of nullification crisis in January 2025 and he’s just too stupid to shepherd the country peacefully through what would otherwise be an inevitable transition to autocracy.

So, we have a civil war and bomb each other into oblivion because MAGA can’t bear to even think of the word “liberal.” Who wins in that situation, I have no idea.

If it’s not Trump, but someone like Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo or Josh Hawley, then I doubt we’ll have a civil war because they’re politically adept enough to avoid one. The media will be purged, ICE’s camp infrastructure weaponized and I get pushed out a window because I refuse to fucking shut up about how much I fucking hate MAGA.

There are other things floating around our undead political system that are unnerving. The glorification of political violence by MAGA along with the rise of paramilitary groups is not exactly the sign of a healthy political system. The interesting thing about this is Trump — to date — hasn’t had the guts to go transactional. So, in that regard, Trump is definitely no Hitler. What Trump loves to do is dog whistle violent acts that he would like, but he simply has never been direct about it.

But if, say, Cyber Ninjas gets his hopes up by “proving” he “won” Arizona, that might change. He might go transactional and tell MAGA’s paramilitary arm to start doing specific things to facilitate his “reinstatement.” Or not. It’s possible he’ll continue to be a big old wussy (on a political basis.)

Yet, the issue is, what does this mean going forward? Do I need to “calm down” or am I right that we face an existential choice of autocracy or civil war at some point between now and January 2025.

Nothing is set in stone, however. It’s possible that we’ll drift into some sort of “lite touch” autocracy where it’s just Conventional Wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if Democrats also control Congress. Liberals will vent in the media while MAGA welds hard power and that will be that for a few cycles until someone like President Mike Pompeo finally has had enough and goes full autocrat because there’s no one to stop him anymore.

2012: The Year Everything Changed


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It used to be that there were all these predictions about how the Mayan calendar predicted the End Of The World in 2012 for some reason. Well, that obviously didn’t happen, but something did happen – 2012 was the year that white people in America began to reach a tipping point with their abstract fears about the changing nature of the country.

So, let’s think about what, exactly, happened in 2012 that caused the political hellscape that we currently enjoy. The most obvious thing is, duh, Obama won a second term. And I think the reason why there was a cascading effect from that event was a lot of Republicans thought Obama was some sort of political fluke caused by the perfect timing of the Great Recession right before the 2008 election.

When it became clear that Obama was actually the first wave of what everyone knew was coming — the advent of America being a minority majority nation, a lot of white people freaked the fuck out. It was the 2012 election that was the last election where Republicans were willing to work within the democratic norms that we all have come to enjoy for the last 240 odd years.

Something about what happened in Obama’s second term facilitated the rise of Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party becoming fascist. It was the high speed social transformation of Obama’s second term that really caused the Republican Party to pretty much be accurately represented by Trump.

If I was, like, smart and stuff, I would be able to give you a itemized deep dive of the specific events that caused conservative white people to freak out and fall into the arms of ding-dong Trump. But, I’m not that smart — and, as such, will never write for VOX, natch.

But it is curious. I think what may have happened is at some point between 2012 and 2016 Republicans realized they had lost the culture wars and, as such, they had to strike back with someone who was a “fighter.” After that happened, the rest took care of itself. Trump was a deranged lunatic, but the Establishment eventually realized he was not only hugely popular with the base, but he could win the 2016 election. So they lulzed everything for young hack MAGA judges and a plutocrat tax cut.

I love alternative history, so I often struggle to think up a way whereby we could have avoided the rise of MAGA and Trump. All I can think up is Al Gore winning the 2000 election. Even then, Obama is such a singular figure in our nation’s political history that it’s easy to imagine him winning anyway and causing MAGA to arise in response.

If you read the book The Fourth Turning, you would say that Someone Like Trump was going to pop up at some point between 2016 and, say, 2024. The demographic trends were going to cause someone like Obama to get elected and then, in turn, someone like Trump would get elected in reaction.

One last thing I think we don’t really appricate is how the introduction of the iPhone may have also sealed our fate. Once social media was no longer tied to our PCs, then things like “cancel culture” and the mainlining of things once seen as freaky was going to happen one way or another.

Anyway, the ultimate end game of this clusterfuck is a complete mystery to me. I have no idea what happens. I do know, however, that we’re going to face a choice of either MAGA autocracy or a civil war. Which one we will pick, I don’t know for the time being.

America’s Path To Autocracy Goes Through Texas


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If you want to understand the political, historical and demographic forces at work in the United States right look no further than Texas. The Lone Star State is the place where we see America’s overall decent into autocracy in the micro. For a generation, people have been talking about how Texas is “shifting Blue” and there will, at some point, come a moment when it’s no longer reliably Red. Such an event would be huge — Democrats with the failsafe of Texas on the electoral board would be in a very good position going forward.

There’s a huge problem with this, however — Texas Republicans know this, too.

As such, Texas is thus one of a number of states around the Union where the Republican Party has grown hysterical and autocratic. They will do anything to keep power, to the point where they don’t blink an eye at running roughshod over democratic norms.

So, when you talk about the political future of the United States, you have to take into account that the Republican Party is, well, fascist. They are laying the groundwork for forcing the issue: we will either become an autocratic managed democracy or we’re going to have a civil war.

And Texas is a prime example of how the Republican Party, on a systemic level, would rather destroy democracy than do any soul searching so they could continue to win elections fair and square. They would rather destroy the whole system than risk such forced existential introspection. We have get woke to the very real possibility that at some point between now and January 2025, the United States will become, on a political level, Texas.

The anti-democratic moves that the Texas Republican Party is doing on a systemic level will be applied to the United States by the national Republican Party for the very same reasons — Republicans know they have unpopular policies and the only way they can stay in power is to cheat via turning the country into an fascist autocracy.

There are no easy answers. Either the autocratic forces at work within the Texas Republican Party — and beyond — win the day, or we have a civil war. That’s it. That is our choice.

The Problem With ‘Red Pill’ Culture


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I understand it, there’s a whole on-boarding system that exists for disenchanted young men to “red pill” themselves. When this happens, they start to rant about how women and minorities control everything. But this usually doesn’t happen overnight. They start by watching videos on YouTube about how much Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy sucks. Then they start to get into Joe Rogan.

Before you know it, they turn into incels who are MAGA friendly.

There is so much wrong with this. The key issue for me is we, as a society, are not doing enough to educate young men about the New Normal we live in. Nothing’s right or wrong but thinking makes it so, as the Bard would say. So, in a sense, it doesn’t have to be this way.

I’m of the general opinion that a number of things have led to “Red Pill” culture. One is, the lack of a draft to force young men to do Man Stuff with other men from all over the country. Having some sort of unisex National Service would do a whole lot to helping the United States avoid the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. But, sadly, it’s too late now.

Another problem is young blue collar men find it difficult to find high pay jobs that would allow them to fit into the traditional norm of breadwinner. In other words, they find it difficult to get laid, get married and have kids the way their parents did.

Throw in a rather abrupt shift in women’s self perception associated with the #MeToo movement and you have a recipe for a lot of young (white) men to “Red Pill” themselves and radicalize.

There are no simple answers to any of this. I understand things like media narratives and so forth and even I get really irritated with some modern changes, like how Victoria Secret is just about done for.

But, at the same time, I’m educated and refuse to go down the Red Pill rabbit hole so I come out the other side a deranged lunatic. I do think, however, that everything is going to sort itself out between now and, say, January 2025.

We may not like what we have to go through to solve Red Pill culture. It’s going to suck.

Twitter Chatter: Something ‘Big’ Is About To Happen (Lulz?)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here and there these days, you see cryptic Tweets from major “resistance” people on Twitter saying something about how something “big” is about to happen. I’ve grown extremely jaded about such things — Trump is politically above the law — so I pretty much think any such talk is either bullshit, delusional or something that should evoke a lulz.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend something “big” is about to happen. What could it be?

First, I don’t know. Second, there’s only one thing that I would consider “big” at this point — concrete evidence that some big names in MAGA, including Trump, actively worked with the January 6th insurrectionists with the specific goal of a successful violent coup.

But even absolute, rock hard evidence of this would only last one Twitter news cycle at this point. Historical determinism — the dead hand of history — has kicked in. There simply is now no escaping the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. Something’s gotta give.

I say this because even if you knock out Mad King Trump as a viable political force, a dozen other would-be autocrats are lurking in the shadows to finish the job he started. And all it takes in one of them winning one presidential election and that’s it, that’s all she wrote — we become a white Christian ethno state. The center-Left has been proven to be completely ineffectual in protecting liberal democratic norms and a President Pompeo or President Cotton (etc, etc, etc) will flip a switch and turn us into an autocracy.

The media will be purged, one way or another, the ICE infrastructure will then be weaponized and people like me will mysteriously begin to fall out of windows. At this point, it’s just an issue of how long things stay “normal” before we wake up in a dystopian autocracy hellscape. Though, given how MAGA dark money craves a Constitutional Convention, it may that which is our absolute last gasp of freedom.

Having said all that, the other option is MAGA will bungle our inevitable transition into an autocracy and we have a civil war. A very nasty, very bloody mess of a civil war that will involve WMD domestically and WW3 abroad. It will be so horrific that everyone — even, hopefully the “good guys” who win — will regret it happen and in desperation will give it some sort of narrative and value after the fact. (Like what happened after the end of the First American Civil War.)

The key takeaway from all of this is nothing is going to save us. Even if we knock Trump out politically, the same rot that caused him in the first place is still there and someone else will use what they learned from Trump and finish the job. Or we have a civil war.

Revisiting Ezra Klein’s ‘Why We’re Polerized’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States definitely has a late-stage Republic vibe to it these days. Something is warping our politics in surreal ways to the point that on an individual basis one can find oneself having some pretty bonkers conversations. At the core of this, of course, is America’s third historical rail: race.

I read Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized and it was very illumining, but for one thing — he went into all this detail as to why we’re polarized, but could not figure out what to do about it. He offered no solutions, probably because there are none at the moment.

It would be like someone writing a similar book in the late 1850s — there just was no solution to the division America faced within the construct of traditional American democracy. Something was going to give.

Just within my own family, I’m the political red headed step child. Everyone in my immediate family is bed rock, old school conservative. If the issues behind the rise of MAGA were not fucking with our politics, they would be pretty much just your regular very conservative people — they only flirt with MAGA because of negative polarization. They simply feel they have no other choice but to go wherever MAGA takes the Republican Party.

The macro bending of our political system warps individual political conversations in some pretty bonkers ways. I have a very conservative relative who is upset about the Virginia police official who lost his job after an online leak showed he gave about $20 to the Kyle Rittenhouse defense fund. This relative was upset that the officer got in trouble both because of a leak and because of the small size of the donation. To my relative, this is just another example of “cancel culture run amuck.”

Meanwhile, to me, I’m flabbergasted that my relative wouldn’t see what I see — you deserve to lose your job (especially if your in law enforcement) if you support a political murderer. It doesn’t matter how much you donated or how we found out. No one with such fascist political views should be in law enforcement, period.

It’s small things like that that trouble me a great deal. Fascism is ascendant in the United States in a rather conspicuous manner and one day we’re either going to slip into an autocratic managed democracy or we’re going to have a civil war.

At the moment, I think there is a historical determinism to the United States becoming a white Christian ethno state of “blood and soil.” The Establishment Powers That Be have a vested interest in keeping everyone calm and so when we’re absolutely forced to make a decision, they’re going to tell everyone that living in a fascist state is just The New Normal.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that on a macro historical level, America’s fate rests more on how likely it is that Trump or any number of his potential successors is deft at shepherding us into autocracy or if they bungle it. Only if things get out of their control will we go the other high risk, high reward route: civil war.

I don’t want a civil war, but I also don’t really want to live in a MAGA-themed autocratic state where I have to worry about ICE pushing me out a window. In a strictly rhetorical manner, I would rather risk dying on my feet a free man than living a slave in an autocratic state.

But that’s just me doing my usual “doom shit.” It’s possible that things will endup being far more subtle than I keep sketching out. We’ll drift into autocracy, but it will be a “light touch” autocracy for a long time until someone realizes that they can get away with anything they want on a political level and they overreach. Americans get woke to living in an autocracy…..and I don’t know.

Anyway, I would advise you to get a passport or make sure you live in a part of the country that aligns with your political views. Good luck.

Why Does MAGA Want A Second American Civil War So Bad?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Much like the lead up to WW1, MAGA has glorified political violence to the point where they think all their fucking problems will be solved if we just have a civil war and settle the “liberal problem” once and for all.

Besides the obvious — war is hell, is never pretty and never goes the way you plan it — there’s the issue of MAGA not being nearly in the pole position to win any civil war once they finally get what they’re lusting after so badly right now. They would be much better off just being patient and letting the existing drift of macro political history forces give them the autocracy they want peacefully.

But they’re idiots who can’t understand that — so they want a civil war.

And, yet, why?

I struggle with this a lot these days. One idea is MAGA sees “civil war” as a kind of short hand, much like the “Insurrection Act” was around January 6th. They’re sitting on the back porch of the cabin with their buddies smoking pot and drinking Miller Lite and they start talking about how dem dar lib’rals “won’t leave them alone.” Then get all riled up and start taking their anger to its logical extreme — a civil war.

But the vast majority of these fucking cocksuckers haven’t gamed this idea out in any practical fashion. All they know is the hate liberals and in some sort of vague manner think if only the United States was more like modern Russia that they wouldn’t have to worry about “cancel culture” or their children being forced to learn Critical Race Theory. There’s no logic to any of what they believe. They just have a general sense that “things ain’t right” and, as such, Something Bad should happen to liberals. But I doubt they really have any concrete ideas about a civil war other than that’s the worst thing they can think of.

So, in a sense, MAGA’s political stance is completely recursive — they believe what they believe because they believe it, and fuck you lib. But this is a very dangerous dynamic because it gives a general historical determinism to a general drift towards SOMETHING bad, be it a civil war, or something else.

I have no idea what is going to happen, but I am growing aggravated with how wrapped up in the idea of a civil war MAGA has become. If nothing else, it means the United States is growing far more politically unstable than one might otherwise think.

But as I keep saying, it wouldn’t just magically happen. Just as MAGA thought Trump invoking the Insurrection Act was magic pixie dust that would solve all their liberal problems, so, too, has “civil war” become some sort of abstract cure-all.

What any of this means in practical terms, I still don’t know. Only time will tell, I guess.

Second American Civil War Flashpoints


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let’s get some things out of the way. One is, while the MAGA far Right has crossed the abstract Rubicon when it comes to a Second American Civil War, it wouldn’t just magically happen.

You would have to have some sort of secession crisis caused by something like Cyber Ninjas “proving” Trump “won” Arizona or a some sort of nullification crisis in the 2024-2025 time frame. Even then, there is plenty of reason to believe that instead of a civil war, America will chose the other option: autocracy.

Someone like Ron DeSantis will become president — potentially fair and square — then purge the media and weaponize the ICE infrastructure so loudmouths like me either get pushed out a window or end up in a camp somewhere.

But let’s say, just like in 1861, we aren’t able to take any of the peaceful off ramps and we actually have a Second American Civil War, where can we expect the most bloodshed?

The first area that comes to mind is somewhere like Ohio and Indiana. These are smaller states with high population concentrations that would likely be the center of significant fighting between Red and Blue. Red, on a political level, controls both of the states, but they have big Blue neighbors and there are enough Blue people in the states that there could be some very heavy fighting. It would be a lot like the type of fighting we saw in Europe during WW2.

Another place I would imagine there would be a lot of fighting would be Texas. This state has a huge, diverse population and once we no longer see things in terms of politics but rather the dynamic of war, then the state is likely to implode and have an intra-state civil war. So much so, that its ability to help Trumplandia in any broader war would be significantly hampered.

The rest of the South west of the Texas would also pretty much just go tits up the moment Americans took up arms against each other. The old CSA South would be were the most atrocities would likely take place because of race, race, race. It’s easy to imagine historic race-war-like crimes against humanity taking place there — the type of stuff people would eventually get hung for if the “Good Guys” (at least in my view) won.

It just seems like the rest of the country would stabilize a lot quicker for various reasons. If California could get its act together, it would control a huge swath of the country east and north of it, while the Northeast would be firmly in the Blue camp. But it’s places where Blue and Red states neighbor each other — or there are sizable minority populations — where the highest number of deaths would occur.

Hopefully, I’m wrong one way or another. I hate violence. Though, as I have mentioned before, in an abstract way, the idea of civil war at least would give us the possibility that we could end the MAGA threat once and for all. But, lulz, who knows what is going to happen. I hope we just keep punting this problem down the road for the foreseeable future.