Tag: Autocrats Never Lose

DeSantis: The Autocratic Next Time


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All macro political trends indicate that the United States is drifting — maybe careening — towards a transition into an autocratic managed democracy like is found in Russia. The man who could very well be the once to tip the balance is current Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.

He’s the political creature that we’ve long feared: Trumpism without Trump.

So, it’s easy to imagine he becomes POTUS and makes autocratic rule palatable enough that it won’t be until Tom Cotton, or Josh Hawley or Mike Pompeo inevitable become POTUS that the ICE infrastructure is weaponized and loudmouths like me start to get pushed out of windows. But for the duration of the DeSantis Administration we’ll see a dynamic whereby hard power is weld by MAGA and cultural soft power continues to exerted by liberals in the media.

We’ll just drift into a Russian-style government so by the time the media is purged and ICE pushed me out of a window we won’t even think about it. About 50% of the population won’t even notice or care that the United States is no longer a liberal democracy because they will, at last, “just be left alone.”

That, at least, is one option.

But there are two other scenarios to think about when feeling bad about how dark America’s future is right now.

One is, Trump is so stupid and craven that he completely fucks up what is otherwise a done deal. He either kneecaps DeSantis out of envy or he somehow bungles our transition into autocratic managed democracy by embracing the “24 or before” slogan and everything goes wrong. In a sense, this would simply delay the rise of fascism in the United States, not stop it.

Meanwhile, the other option is, well, a fucking civil war.

I hate violence and I don’t want a civil war. But if you look at the United States on a macro historical level, we’re very similar to the America of the late 1850s — there may come a point where we have to chose between continued domination by Slave Power (MAGA) or we are forced to slice this particular boil once and for all.

But there are no assurances that the “good guys” would win in such a situation. So, I don’t know what to tell you. We’re fucked.

Fucking With Texas: Leaving The Union Would Not End Well For You


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Texas is an interesting state because it has the same political dynamic as the United States as a whole — white Republicans are hysterical about demographic trends and given a choice between revamping their political views or turning into an autocratic American National Socialists party, they are rushing headlong into the latter option.

But, just like other states controlled on a political level by MAGA, the moment we’re no longer talking about politics but the existential threat of organized political violence…oh boy. It’s easy to imagine MAGA Republicans joining the states who want to leave the Union either now (when Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won” in Arizona) or later (Speaker of the House Trump impeaches Biden/Harris and incites national violence to get a convention in the Senate or because of some sort of Congressional nullification crisis in January 2025).

As such, while the fucking MAGA cocksuckers would get to yet again live in the Lone Star Republic…their joy would likely be extremely short lived. The very demographic trends that are making white conservatives in Texas hysterical are also an existential problem for them when all hell breaks loose.

I’m not from Texas and I’m not an expert on their internal state politics, but just a back of the envelope scenario would suggest the moment Texas joins Trumplandia, the whole state will implode to the point that it gets knocked out of the broader political birthing process of Trumplandia.

But the MAGA far right is SOOOOO FUCKING EXCITED at the prospect of either some sort of Glorious MAGA Revolution or a civil war to found Trumplandia that they are totally, completely ignoring the cold, hard facts on the ground. The very people that white MAGA Republican conservatives in Texas are moving mountains to disenfranchise — brown, black and progressive people — would be the very ones who would have a vested interest in making their lives hell should an actual fighting war start.

The point of this is, I wish there was some way to get the far Right in Texas to just fucking shut up about secession. It’s in everyone’s vested interest for cooler heads to prevail and we figure out some way, anyway, to live peacefully in this great, colorful Union of ours.

‘While I Breathe, I Hope:’ White People In South Carolina Would Live To Regret A Second American Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If you want to understand how fucked up any talk of a “second American civil war” is, look no farther than South Carolina. South Carolina was the first to leave the Union the first go round, and it’s easy to imagine a situation where on a political level, the MAGA National Socialists there get ahead of their skis and are the first to declare themselves a member of “real” America — Trumplandia.

But that would be the white Republican Party thinking strictly in terms of political power — they have it, and the “libs” don’t. What’s the ultimate “own the libs” play for South Carolina but to leave the Union AGAIN because they think Trump is really won the 2020 election.

So, South Carolina Republicans get all excited, bolt the Union…and then a race war starts. That’s because there’s a big difference between political power and the type of power necessary to found a new nation. The very reasons why South Carolina would want to be first to leave the Union — a historical connection to The Lost Cause, the browning of America and a historical-political fuck you to libs — would be the very reasons why black people in the Palmetto State would likely take up arms to stay IN the Union the moment secession was declared.

That, in turn, would cause the white establishment in South Carolina to grow radicalized and before you know it, we’re talking about Zyklon B being used in race-based concentration camps across South Carolina. I wish I was kidding or being hyperbolic — I’m not. If America really does have a second civil war, all bets are off. WMD will be used, there will be Qanon themed killing fields and race concentration camps. It will not be pretty. It will be a tragedy and everyone — even white people in South Carolina — will live to regret how excited they were at the prospect of taking up arms against their fellow Americans.

But it definitely seems as though we’re careening towards something along those lines pretty soon — or, at least, at some point between now and January 2025.

Good luck.

It Definitely Feels Like We’re Careening Towards A Second American Civil War Sooner Rather Than Later


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Almost all the Web traffic this site gets is what seems to be Southern “Lost Cause” types stroking one out to the idea that there will be a Second American Civil War sometime soon. Or, at least, the idea of a such a tragedy is so much in the forefront of some people’s minds that they search for the discussion of the possibility of a second civil war and stumble across my dystopian hellscape scenarios.

One reason why I’m growing ever more concerned about America’s political fate is even people like me find myself beginning to feel squeezed. My hatred of MAGA is center-of-the-sun-white-hot, and, yet, there are growing number of excesses on the part of the center-Left that have begun to really get on my nerves.

If someone like me is beginning to feel like a political orphan, that means the far Left and far Right are consuming what is left of the middle. To the point that you wake up one morning and realize all you have is negative polarization. And that’s all the other side has, too. That is not a recipe for a stable liberal democracy.

And I don’t have any ready answer for how we get out of this situation. Trump’s power with the MAGA base is still absolute to the point that should Cyber Ninjas “prove” he “won” in Arizona, there’s a serious possibility of severe political violence across the nation up to and including a secession crisis that starts a civil war.

Or not.

It could be this is a passing political phase for the United States. We’ll punt the structural problems we face constantly down the road and all my hysterical, dystopian hellscape predictions will looked back upon as just silly. But as the old saying goes, a person goes “bankrupt gradually then all at once.”

So it’s at least possible that we’re careening towards the biggest geopolitical shock since the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940 — the most powerful nation in the world could very well buckle and start to bomb itself into oblivion because…. Of scary brown people?

Who knows. I just continue to be uneasy.

America Is Careening Towards A Violent Political Crisis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can’t predict the future. There is no revealed truth. But the United States is on edge. I just don’t see us making it beyond January 2025 without some serious political violence. I say this because Republicans are so hysterical about the browning of America and various other perceived political and structure slights that they are finally at the point where they will do anything necessary to push us to the breaking point.

The question is now, of course — how exactly are things going to fall out. While plenty of MAGA people think their brethren will take up arms and have a Glorious MAGA Revolution, I find this idea dubious. MAGA people want to fuck their guns, not actually use them in anything beyond an abstract way. They’re really frustrated and want to “own the libs” at every turn, but actually having any kind of popular revolt against “cancel culture” seems extremely unlikely.

But there are two instances coming up where I could see us having an actual civil war. In the near term, of course, there is the Cyber Ninjas recount of the presidential vote in Arizona. The whole thing is a fucking fraud designed to give MAGA a talking point at best and an excuse to attempt to found Trumplandia at worst. It’s very easy to imagine a dynamic similar to January 6th, only on a national scale.

Republicans see a chance to win political points by saying Trump is “really” president then, even though Arizona is not enough to make Trump POTUS, this idea whips around the country. Before you know it, states are leaving the Union to found Trumplandia. We have a civil war and lulz, I have no idea what happens or who wins.

The other option is essentially the same thing happens, only in the 2024-2025 timeframe.

The issue remains that the United States’ political system is very unstable right now. It wouldn’t take much for the whole thing to come crashing down in some way, probably by states beginning to bounce in a rather abrupt fashion because they feel Trump is “really president.”

But I could be wrong. I often am.

Cyber Ninjas Recount Endgames


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here are some of the possible endgames to the sham Cyber Ninjas “recount” in Arizona.

  1. The Dud
    In this scenario, either Cyber Ninjas aren’t able to “prove” Trump won the state or they do manage to pull a Trump victory out of their butts…and nothing happens.
  2. The Talking Point
    With this endgame, everyone on Fox News, OAN and NewsMax rants and rant and rant about how Cyber Ninjas “proved” Trump “won” the state, but, again, nothing happens. It’s just a talking point.
  3. The Catalyst
    With this one, Cyber Ninjas gets hired to “prove” Trump “won” several other states — at least enough for him to claim that he really won. This greatly destabilizes the country more than it already is
  4. The Tipping Point
    In this endgame, Trump sees his “victory” in Arizona as a reason to demand being named Speaker of the House should MAGA flip the chamber. He rants and rants about this idea. He gets named Speaker in January 2023 and then leads an impeachment of both Biden and Harris so he can become POTUS again early.
  5. The Trumplandia Then Civil War Gambit
    With this one, the moment Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won” Arizona, all hell breaks loose and when it becomes clear that Trump isn’t going to be reinstated, MAGA state legislatures begin to hold secessionist conventions. Trumplandia is born and we have a civil war to sort things out.

MAGA’s Determination to Turn Ashli Babbitt Into A Martyr Is So Fucked Up


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Yet another sign that we may be careening towards an actual shooting civil war is how the MAGA Right jumps at any chance to turn one of their own into a martyr for the cause. Their latest effort is with Ashli Babbitt who was shot and killed when she attempted to crash through a door that stood between members of Congress and her angry mob.

I saw this event the day it happened and the guy who shot her did the right thing — it was either her or the potential murder of the political figures he was assigned to protect.

And, yet, that’s not how MAGA sees it. They see Ashli Babbitt as a brave member of the MAGA movement who was unjustly murdered. When they’re not conflating things they are focusing on very specific demands: they want the name of the officer who shot her so (I presume) they can sue the hell out of him and potentially hunt him down and hurt him in the name of MAGA. (Or something.)

But the broader significance of this the two sides now live in such different echo chambers — that don’t even overlap — that we’re lurching towards a situation where all this overheated rhetoric is finally going to cause even more political violence. I’m not so sure I would say some sort of MAGA-themed Second American Revolution (ugh) but it is possible that should Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won” Arizona that the conditions are there for some sort of “decertification” crisis that turns into a nullification crisis that turns into a secessionist crisis.

MAGA has come to glorify political violence to such an extent that the Republican Establishment may be shocked when the same dynamic that happened Jan. 6th happens on a national level and states begin to leave the Union. That sounds hyperbolic, but it’s a lot more possible than you might think.

The United States is far less politically stable than you might think. But it’s very possible that we’ll just peacefully slip into an autocratic managed democracy in the 2024-2025 timeframe and that will be that. And then people like me have to start worrying about getting pushed out of windows by ICE because we won’t fucking shut up about MAGA being American Nazism.

Will There Be A Second American Revolution In 2021?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, if you’re a MAGA cocksucker who has stumbled across this site because you think there’s going to be a “second American revolution” to reinstate Trump — fuck you, you piece of shit.

Having gotten that off my chest, let’s think about this seriously. Almost no one reads this blog, but those who do seem to be MAGA people interested in my fear porn about the United States becoming either an autocracy or having a civil war / revolution. Of course, they’re coming at this fear porn from the exact opposite direction — my fear is their hope.

Now, remember, a “revolution” is not a “civil war” although the exact definition of these two events is apparently hotly debated by political historians. I guess what MAGA people think is there will be some sort of popular uprising if ding-bat idiot Trump isn’t “reinstated” sooner rather than later. They’re frustrated and long for some way to bring back Trump — even if it means political violence.

While I can think of a number of civil war scenarios off the top of my head — most of them involving the Cyber Ninjas recount of Arizona — an actual MAGA “revolution” is a lot more difficult for me to imagine. It seem as though all these searches for “America revolution 2021” come more from abstract frustration on the part of MAGA cocksuckers more than anything else. They know it would be “cool” if they would pull the ultimate own the libs move and stage a MAGA-themed Second American Revolution…but they don’t really know how it might happen.

So they do a keyword search for that type of thing and endup at this site.

If it makes would-be MAGA “revolutionaries” feel any better, I do think we’re one major political death away from significant popular political violence in the United States. There are a lot of old — and popular — pols in the United States whose unexpected death would cause a lot people to freak the fuck out.

But, for the time being, if you’re part of the violent personality cult that is MAGA you’re just going to have to pin your hopes on things getting out of control should Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won” Arizona.

MAGA Craves An American Autocracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

What makes MAGA so dangerous is they voted for Trump in the first place because he was “the guy from The Apprentice.” That’s why people like me were so alarmed by Trump — on paper, he was an autocratic and if elected would turn us into a Russia clone. Of course, everyone got fooled when it turned out Trump was a very lazy idiot who talked a good autocratic game but was too much of an idiot to actually use some pretty basic autocratic political plays to get what he wanted.

But, in a sense, Trump has shown other — more focused — politicians that a large segment of the American electorate wants an autocracy. My nightmare is there dream. And one thing we have to remember is unlike the Nazis, MAGA Republicans aren’t expansionist. In fact, they will be content to pull American troops back to Fortress America and align with other autocratic states in an effort to have “peace in our time.”

As such, it’s easy to imagine a scenario where once MAGA inevitably controls the government again that they establish a Trumplandia autocracy that lasts for generations to come. America will be just like modern Russia — occasionally, there are large protests but nothing comes of it. And those protests that do happen are often broken up by the FSB — in autocratic America it will be ICE.

While I hate violence and definitely don’t want a civil war, on an abstract, rhetorical level, while on paper it is now a near-certainty that America is going to slip peacefully into a MAGA autocracy, there will be a moment — probably in the 2024-2025 timeframe — where we will be given the option of having a civil war to prevent that from happening.

That option is not something I can’t game out in any specific manner because it would happen because of specific set of circumstances. Any civil war in the United States about three years from now would happen because MAGA bungled what would otherwise be a political history gimmie.

And, of course, there are no assurances that even if there was a civil war that “the good guys” would win it. A lot of people could die — even get nuked! — and we endup put back together as an autocracy. So, I dunno.

But the thing we have to keep at the forefront of our mind is political form follows function and it is inevitable that once MAGA Republicans take power again that they’re going to turn us into an “illiberal democracy.” Things probably won’t change that much at first, but soon enough a MAGA Republican POTUS with a MAGA Republican Congress will purge the media, weaponize the existing ICE infrastructure and people like me start to get pushed out of windows.

The most alarming thing about this — besides me getting pushed out a window — is there will be millions of good natured, God-fearing normal educated people who will be quite content with this New Normal. Any excesses that this new Trumplandian government does will be rationalized away (until it gets personal and then they’ll get upset in private.)

As I keep saying, I wish I was smart enough to tell you what to do about all of this. If I was that smart, I could write for VOX and dance around on Tik-Tok talking about marginal tax rates.

Nothing Is Going To Save America From MAGA — We Have To Save Ourselves


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I see on Twitter a lot of froth about how this or that thing is some sort of magic bullet that will finally allow us to address the corrupt excesses of the Trump Era.

Sadly, this is pretty oblivious to what’s really going on. We had one shot at potentially bringing down Trump — the Mueller investigation — and we blew it. As such, Trump is now above the law on a political basis. MAGA’s political views have become exclusively based on recursive thinking and negative polarization. They believe what they believe because they believe it and fuck you, lib.

One can compare Trump to the plight of common sense gun control. Once it was established that not even the tragic murder of young children was enough to get past the “thoughts and prayers” phase of the debate on the subject, it was over. We now see gun violence as just a Modern Problem that comes with living in a free country — even though this is complete bullshit and pretty much exclusively an American problem.

The same thing with Trump after the January 6th Capitol Insurrection — if you still support Trump after that, there’s literally nothing the man can do to get you to stop supporting him. I have come to believe that video could surface of Trump having cannibalistic sex parties with Armie Hammer and it would be a lulz for MAGA. Or, more specifically, that might knock Trump out of the political equation, but MAGA as a vile, craven political movement would simply pick a new, younger and less addled leader to finish the autocratic job Trump began.

MAGA is hell bent on turning the United States into an autocratic white Christian ethno state. That’s the entire point of MAGA at this time. That’s why trying to argue with, or negotiate with or in any way deal with MAGA in a good faith political manner is a huge waste of time. They want to destroy our liberal democracy and the sooner we all get woke to this, the better.

No amount of stating the obvious about MAGA is going to change that. They have no shame and are so craven that they’re willing to look like fools uttering gibberish as long as they get to slip in the MAGA triggering concepts of “cancel culture,” “critical race theory,” “BLM,” and “Antifa.” They are going to push America to the edge. MAGA is well positioned to caused the United States to quietly and peacefully slip into autocracy when becomes conventional wisdom that the only way a Democrat can win the presidency is if that party also controls Congress.

But nothing is written in stone yet. The possibility exists that they will bungle this sure thing and, well, the United States has a civil war. We bomb ourselves into oblivion and we settle the issues of the day not in the halls of government but on the field of battle. I don’t want that, but it’s definitely becoming one of the two major options in front of us.

I do not know what you should do on a personal level going forward. I hate guns and I hate violence so….I don’t know. Get a passport? Move to a part of the country that fits your political views? But, in the end, I might suggest you just figure out what you believe in and what you’re willing to risk in the real world when the shit hits the fan.