Tag: Autocrats Never Lose

Norm Ornstein On Deep State Radio Is Right: The Republican Party Is A Violent Cult


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All the political metrics in the United States are pointing towards a very dark future between now and January 2025. In fact, it’s not so much a question of if, but when, we face a very stark choice: autocracy or civil war.

So when I heard Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute lay out the same arguments that I have been ranting about on this blog for months now, it took me aback a little bit — I’m not the only one to thinks we better enjoy this quiet before the storm.

The only thing that continues to frustrate me is not enough Blue Check liberals on Twitter are taking these cold hard metrics and then asking what the implications of them are. I mean, what does it mean, as Ornstein says, that the Republican Party is now a “violent cult.” How do we prepare for that going forward.

Rather than just noting this ominous development in the public Twitter lyceum why don’t the nattering nabobs of negativism start to figure out what we are supposed to do about it.

This is when I wish I was smart enough to write for VOX, or New York Magazine or even The New Yorker. It would be nice if liberal-progressive thought leaders could come up with some sort of plan of action like they did before the 2020 election. The 2024 election has the potential to be far worse than the 2020 election because the likelihood of violence is significantly greater.

Tragically, just thinking off the top of my head, the only thing I can think of as to how to respond to the Republican “violent cult” is to be prepared to fight dirty just like they do. Or, put another way, we have to recalibrate our views of the Republican Party. They are no longer one of the two major parties in the United States, they are a violent cult hellbent on destroying our liberal democracy one way or another. We have to be prepared to call their bluff in a way we haven’t since 1861.

I hate even having to entertain such a drastic idea, but the only reason I am is, well, the Republican Party is a violent cult. We can’t pretend that they’re a normal political organization anymore. They’re equal to American Slave Power of the 19th Century.

God help us all.

The Curious Political State Of Trump


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The interesting thing about Trump is on one hand his power has receded among the general populace, while within the Republican Party is personality cult is only getting stronger. As such, a lot of Twitter liberals see this and scoff at the notion that Trump might be able to win the presidency again.

And here’s the rub: he doesn’t have to — all MAGA has to do is nullify the election of Biden in 2024 and throw the election to their ding-dong Dear Leader, no matter what the actual vote count may be.

Or, put another way, we continue to careen towards the stark choice of either autocracy or civil war. If we do go the autocratic route, the big question for me is does our new autocrat at least attempt to work within Americans’ self-perception of us being the “land of the free” or does he say fuck it and bring the whole thing down, damn the consequences?

I was way too quick to assume Trump would do the latter when it turned out he was such a lazy idiot he couldn’t pull it off — in short, he was just a lot of talk. But, then again, if our autocrat was someone younger and more focused then it’s very easy to imagine a situation where people like me really do begin to get pushed out of windows by ICE.

But history has surprised me before. It could be we just muddle through this like we have in the past and while we’ll inevitably get a MAGA autocrat they won’t be nearly as bad as I fear. Though, as I keep saying, form follows function, so it seems pretty easy to imagine a scenario where things get pretty dark in the United States pretty quick.

I hope I’m wrong, I really do.

America’s Liberal Democracy Is In A Tailspin



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

American liberal democracy is dead, but for one thing — our national self-perception. It was only because of a very specific set of events that Trump did not win a second term and have four years to demand a Constitutional Convention that would turn the United States, at last, into nothing more than Trumplandia.

But the anti-democratic problems in American politics that brought us Trump continue to push us towards an autocratic managed democracy future. And this is when I find myself struggling to figure out what happens next. History would suggest that we’re going to quietly slip into autocracy and that will be that. It will just be conventional wisdom that for a Democrat to become president, Democrats will also have to control Congress. This won’t happen very often because of voter suppression and gerrymandering.

That will be it.

We will turn into an Americanized version of Putin’s Russia. And, honestly, it’s easy to imagine that as long as MAGA autocrats don’t go after freedom of speech head-on that there will be something of a truce in our politics — MAGA autocrats will weld hard power for generations to come while liberals will vent on TV and Twitter, accomplishing nothing.

And, yet, form follows function. It’s very easy to imagine President Pompeo, or President Cotton or President Hawley (the list goes on) growing greedy and demanding a Constitutional Convention that would do away with some pretty basic freedoms that Americans simply assume will always be there. And that’s when — if we haven’t had one already — we may very well have something akin to a civil war.

This is not to say that we might not have a civil war as part of MAGA’s bungling of our transition from liberal democracy to autocracy. That’s a very real possibility between now and January 2025.

But I don’t know. I just don’t know. All I do know is everyone is going to have to pick a side soon enough. It will be existential and unavoidable.

MAGA Has Gone Septic Within The Republican Party


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because of a quirk of personal history, I’m a lone center-Left person in my family. So, up until recently, I would often have fairly in depth conversations with my conservative relatives. I say “up until recently” because now things are just too heated whenever we attempt to have a political discussion, so we just don’t talk about politics anymore.

Which, in itself, is ominous . If we can’t have any civil discussion about politics, then our politics is beginning to fail us on a micro level, which will inevitably lead to some pretty scary things on a macro level.

Anyway, the point is — other than me, my family is made up of bedrock conservatives. It definitely seems as though we’ve passed the event horizon when it comes to MAGA finally consuming the entire mainstream conservative movement. For instance, I brought up how the Trump Administration at one point had a meeting where they weighed being a cruel as possible to people trying to get into the country. My conservative relative — who does not consider himself MAGA — was totally cool with this pre-meditated cruelty. And he’s a Christian, headed to heaven, while I’m on a highway to hell.

This is anecdotal evidence that indicates that Twitter liberals, who go back and forth between bemoaning MAGA and laughing at it, need to get woke. It is a pretty dumb misconception on the part of non-MAGA people that it’s a movement made up of ignorant, stupid people who are part of a personality cult.

A more accurate description of MAGA at this point would be traditional conservatives who are dismayed at how rapidly America’s views on race, gender, religion, abortion — you named it — have changed in just a few years. Or, if you really want to get simplistic about it — the election of Obama in 2008 scared the shit out of them. They suddenly realized that America is browning and white people will be in the minority — everything else is just rationalization.

As such, the dead hand of history is pushing us towards a massive crisis between now and January 2025. Everyone is going to have to pick a side. Everyone is going to an existential gut check about what they’re willing to risk in the real world because of what they believe in.

And remember, if the United States buckles, then so does the entire post WW2 framework that has kept the peace for the last 70s or so years. WW3 will likely happen and there will be something akin to a Great Reset that will determine the fate of mankind for centuries to come.

I know that sounds dark and hysterical, but I’m just looking at reality right now and making an educated guess as to where things are headed. I could be wrong. I often am.

The United States Is Careening Towards A Dark Decision: Second Civil War Or Autocracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I keep vacillating wildly between thinking it’s obvious that we’re simply going to give up on democracy and thinking we’re obviously — when forced into a corner — going to have a civil war.

To this day, I still can figure out which course of action we’re most likely to pick.

I say this because the last 30 or so years have been a steady progression towards autocracy. At each opportunity to avoid taking the next subtle step towards a manage democracy, we’ve zoomed past any possible speed bumps without blinking an eye. So, with that in mind, it seems logical that when MAGA Republicans make their last power grab and nullify in Congress the election of any Democrat that we’ll just shrug and that will be that. Autocracy will be established in the United States and the dynamic of form follows function will kick and and I get pushed out a window by ICE.

And, yet, there’s a big difference between lulzing the slow decline of our democracy and having to confront that we’ve officially crossed into autocracy and Republicans have finally consolidated power for generations to come. So, it also makes a lot of sense that once fey Millennial hipsters realize that MAGA is officially their new overloads that they will freak out on an existential level and we’ll have a civil war.

But one thing is clear — there are a lot of red lights flashing on modern America. I ponder almost every day why MAGA has such hatred within it and I still can’t figure it out. Or, put another way, I can’t figure out why otherwise sane, educated people support MAGA, even it’s “cruelty is the point” mantra of governance style.

If you look back at what happend in 2020, it’s kind of astonishing how close we came to losing our democracy for good. The combination of Trump being extremely lazy and stupid, Biden being very centrist and Trump’s bungled handling of the pandemic was something I could not have easily predicted in late 2019.

I kept thinking around election time 2020 how epically lazy and stupid Trump was for not pulling some pretty basic autocratic plays. But he was all talk. The frightening thing about Trump is, of course, that that “talk” is what his followers voted for. That’s what they wanted in 2016 and 2020: the “you’re fired” guy from The Apprentice.

As such, I wouldn’t get too excited if somehow we magically found the sliver bullet necessary to end Trump’s malignant political career. Trump was simply a vessel for our democracy’s destruction — he had no leadership skills. Once he’s out of the way, there are a dozen young would-be MAGA Republican autocrats waiting in the wings to finish the job Trump started.

Call The Cyber Ninjas Recount Of Arizona What It Is: Sedition


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It has occurred to me that we’re so wrapped up in the MAGA-Trump Big Lie about the 2020 election that we’re missing something far more basic about what’s going on in Arizona: it’s sedition.

Arizona Republicans are actively working to “prove” that Trump “won” the 2020 election even though this has been proven to be complete bullshit over and over and over and over and over again. There comes a point when any such recount is, by definition, done with a bad faith agenda.

You can’t keep demanding a recount simply because you don’t like the result of the election. If you keep doing so, it becomes clear that your goal isn’t to find out the “truth,” it’s to give ding-dong Trump and his raving racist MAGA followers an excuse to destabilize the government.

Now, let me pause for a moment to say I’m often wrong. Like, all the time. So, maybe I’m just being hysterical again. After all, Trump is very lazy and, by some metrics, while his power over the Republican continues to be absolute, his influence elsewhere is waning.

So, I dunno. A lot depends on things that I can’t predict and Trump can’t control. It’s easy to imagine that my dystopian scenario of a nullification crisis leading to a secession crisis is just more of my usual “Trump derangement disorder.”

It’s just I can’t help the nagging feeling that the United States is careening towards a rather dramatic and stark choice. Either we have something akin to a secession crisis now, or we have it in 2024-2025. Either our democracy dies with the whimper of a transition to MAGA autocratic managed democracy or we have a civil war and some sort of opportunity to maybe revive our democracy. (But that is really assuming the absolute best possible endgame.)

I guess, in general, the issue is there is an existential rot at the core of our political system and the question for me is do we somehow magically continue to muddle our way through this or does the obvious happen.

Only time will tell.

The Dead Hand Of History & 2021’s Possible Secession Crisis


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing we saw after election night 2020 is, once history begins to have a certain momentum, someone, somewhere is going to pop up to take advantage of it. As such, the talk of recounts popping up here and there across the country is very, very dangerous because all we need is one (1) fraudulent “victory” on the part of Trump and the dead hand of history may take to some pretty dark places — like a secession crisis.

It’s very easy to imagine that initially we have some sort of “nullification” crisis in which Trump runs around the country having rallies where he demands the results of the 2020 election be nullified because he “won.” Because that’s a very dumb, batshit idea that is impossible to do, MAGA state legislatures will YOLO it and start to have secession conventions.

And, yet, it could be this is all a bunch of nothing. Trump talks a good game, but he’s way too lazy to actually do the hard work necessary to start a civil war in 2021. Really, that’s kind of the rub — it wouldn’t be Trump who did it. It would be us. We would do it to ourselves.

The issue is, does this crisis happen this year because of fucking Cyber Ninjas (and others) or does it happen in 2024-2025 because a MAGA controlled Congress tells us all to fuck off and nullifies any Electoral College result it doesn’t approve of. That, no matter what, would be the real moment of truth. Either it becomes conventional wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become president is if Democrats control Congress, or we have a civil war and answer the question of what America is supposed to be, that way.

I honestly don’t what which will happen right now. It’s one of those things where a lot of metrics are flashing red…and it could be that we manage to drift through this particular crisis and nothing really bad happens. Or, if Republicans do again take power — which the ebb and flow of history says they inevitable will — that instead of freaking out and turning us into Trumplandia, we come to some sort of an agreement whereby hard power for generations will be in Republican minority white hands, while soft power will remain in liberal hands via the infotainment industrial complex.

That, I’m afraid, is a very, very sanguine take on our prospects.

More likely we’re pretty much just going to face autocracy or civil war. That’s it — no middle ground any more. But, we’ll see. I’m often wrong.

The Jan. 6 Capitol Insurrection Was Our ‘Beerhall Putsch’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

About ten years before Hitler was elected to power in a general election, he staged the notorious “beerhall putsch” in Bavaria. It was a comical failure and only managed to get in him thrown in jail for a while, where he wrote the book Mein Kampf.

The meta aspect of the Republican lulzing of the January 6th Capitol insurrection is they are making it clear that they wanted the comical coup attempt to succeed and next time something similar happens, they are prepared to nullify any Electoral College win by a Democrat. In fact, they know they’re very close to making it convention wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if that party controls Congress, too.

Then, either people give up on voting altogether and we become an autocratic managed democracy like they have in Russia or we have a civil war.

I still can’t game out which one of those horrible options is most likely to happen. It could really go either way. On one hand, MAGA Republicans are so craven, so hysterical about white people becoming a minority in the United States that they’re probably going to be able to sucker punch us and get away with their plot to turn us into Russia.

And, yet, the argument could be made that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry and it’s possible that MAGA Republicans will bungle the transition to autocracy and the United States could balkanize as we slug it out to see which vision of America is going to take us forward. It’s very likely that things will grow very, very radical at this point and any number of atrocities will be committed by both sides — up to and including the use of seized WMD.

This doesn’t even begin to address the fact that World War 3 will likely happen because the United States is knocked out of commission for a few years — or for good.

Remember, if there’s a civil war, there are no assurances that either side will win. All that could happen is states like California, Texas and Florida become semi-independent, while Trumplandia and the United States simply bomb the shit out of each other with neither size being able to seize the entire territory of the former United States.

But the point of all of this is we have to take our two options seriously. We have to begin to prepare for not one, but two worst case scenarios. Yet again, I just don’t have a ready answer for you as to what to do about any of this. I guess that’s why I’m not good enough for New York Magazine or VOX.

We’re Doomed


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t think enough people — especially Twitter liberals — really appreciate how fragile America’s political system is right now. It would not take all that much extra pressure at this point to cause the whole system to come crashing down.

It’s easy to run any number of very plausible scenarios whereby things really escalate out of control. Anything from Trump being indicted, to Trump — or Biden — peacefully shuffling off this mortal coil or the Cyber Ninjas recount in Arizona could be enough to cause something akin to a secession crisis very, very soon.

And that’s just the near-term threats.

I just don’t see us being able to punt this lingering existential crisis down the historical road past 2024-2025. Republicans will do everything in their power to nullify any Biden win and that will be that — it will become conventional wisdom that for a Democrat to become POTUS, they have to control Congress as well. Then all the voter suppression, gerrymandering and packing of the Federal courts with young, MAGA hacks kicks in and soon enough people like me start to get pushed out of windows by ICE.

Unless MAGA Republicans bungle this transition and we have a civil war.

But the one thing that isn’t going to happen is what’s happening right now — things being peaceful and normal. Once MAGA Republicans control the government again, they’re just never going to let go. They’re going to do everything in their power to turn the United States into a Russia clone.

So, in a sense, if you wanted to get all dark about it, at least with a civil war we might have the possibility of renewing our liberal democracy. But it would suck so bad. It would be a tragedy. A horrible tragic event that would be so scary and shocking that all sides would regret that we went through it. We would give it value and a narrative after the fact, but at the time it would be very much a holy shit situation.

You’re a fool if you think we’re going to muddle our way out of this particular situation. MAGA Republicans have grown too hysterical at the prospect of white people being a minority so they’re more than willing to burn everything to the ground rather than risk losing control. We’re fucked. We’re totally fucked on a historical level.

Again, I don’t write for VOX so, I have no idea what to tell you as to what to do about this impending clusterfuck. Get a passport. Move to a state that fits your politics. Or maybe just pray.

Ugh. Twitter Liberals Are So Oblivious


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States faces an existential political crisis without any ready answer. That crisis is one of its two major political parties no longer believes in the very liberal democracy that it’s a part of. The Republican Party is now biding its time for the opportunity to win a presidential election and then, well, that’s it. They’re going to crush our democracy and turn us into a MAGA version of the autocratic managed democracy found in Putin’s Russia.

Or we have a civil war.

The aggravating thing about all of this Twitter liberals continue to either think all of this is a joke or don’t grasp that what they’re documenting is pointing to a pretty stark choice at some point in the next few years. We’re all going to have to pick a side one way or another and there won’t be going back. What that choice may be will come down to how deft MAGA is in transitioning the United States from barely functioning liberal democracy to straight autocratic managed democracy.

It’s difficult for Americans to process the concept of an actual modern civil war. Sure, we can in an abstract fashion, but the idea that Americans would begin to kill each other in an organized manner for political reasons is still something we find difficult to grasp in any real, concreate manner.

Meanwhile, people on the far Right have embraced this very thing on a theoretical level. And, as January 6th proved, they’ve decided to start doing to for real, though their application of it on that day was more akin to a farcical beerhall pustch than anything else.

Next time, however, we won’t be so lucky.

I’m not smart enough to tell you what to do about any of this. But don’t lull yourself into any false sense of security about what’s going on in the United States right now. The next few years will be a fucking bumpy ride one way or another.