Tag: Autocrats Never Lose

We Have Got To Recalibrate Our Perception of MAGA

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is very easy for us all to fall into the trite trap that, by definition, MAGA is made up of “ignorant” people sucked into a cult. At this late date, that assessment just makes no fucking sense.

The vast majority of the crazier things that MAGA does is a combination of political performance art done in order to “own the libs” and fascist virtue signaling. The key issue is that MAGA is symptom of a number of structural problems in the American political system.

What’s so interesting is MAGA is a movement of imperial retrenchment, not expansion. As such, I would compare Trump not to Hitler, but to Pol Pot. That’s the real nightmare scenario — that as the two sides grow radicalized, that Trump will decide to empty the Blue cities and we’ll endup with something akin to American Killing Fields.

MAGA is mostly made up of angry white (male) Christians who are so alarmed by the browning of America and the rise of women having political and economy agency that they going into the idea of autocracy with their eyes wide open.

In fact, that’s what they want — their dream is my nightmare. And some of them don’t even realize the implications of catching the car. They’re so busy hating on brown people and some ideal of how “every life is precious” while at the same time hating on COVID protocols done in a good faith effort to save lives in a crisis that you can grow rather frustrated with them.

Most of the people who make up MAGA aren’t ignorant at all. They are just really resentful of the modernization of America and they see Trump as their avatar. As such, Trump is NOT a Great Man of history. He’s just too lazy and dumb for that to be the case.

If he was a Great Man, he would never have lost the 2020 election and he would now be well on his way to becoming something akin to a Red King (at least over the Blue portions of the country.) But, here we are, with Trump fighting his way back to see if he can actually live up to all the autocratic rhetoric he spouted the first go round.

Which brings up an interesting point — if Trump really does try to deport 20,000 (or more) undocumented people in the United States, many with American children — is there any point when the Traditionalist who aren’t MAGA will throw up their hands and say, “I’ve had enough?”

That, dear reader, will determine the fate of the United States for generations to come because if Tyrant Trump loses the Traditionalists and they, for a brief movement, become Radical Moderates…we’re going to the show. We’re going to have a battle royale between Blue and Reds with no endgame and no narrative. It really could go either way.

And as all of that is going on, the globe will collapse into WW3 with a number of regional conflicts going nuclear. So one could propose that at least 1 billion people may die directly because of the actions of malignant ding-dong Trump. If my worst fears about the future come true, then Trump will replace Hitler as everyone’s go-to Worst Person in History.

But I can’t predict the future. And there is still plenty of time for us to punt all these structural problems down the road.

Wargaming The Unthinkable On A Personal Basis

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My tendency to be really paranoid served me quite well as an expat in South Korea. In the ROK as an expat, you’re pretty much one sentence away from scrambling to stay in the country. Living in America, though, this can make me come across as kind of bonkers.

But, having said all that, let’s think the issue what the fuck I’m going to do if the absolute worst happens and I am forced out of my Deep Red part of my state when the country implodes because of “vibes.”

At lot depends on how bad things get and how quickly. If things get really bad in the sense that I don’t feel safe being a Blue in a Red part of a Purple State, then, I suppose I’ll flee to the home of family in a Blue part of the state. But if things got REALLY BAD, REALLY QUICK, things are more complicated.

If there was some sort of infrastructure for Blue domestic political refugees to use, then I probably would grab my passport and stuff some essentials in a backpack and head North. With a general destination of NYC, if I could somehow finagle it.

But that’s very speculative and maybe a bit — or a lot — delusional. The key thing for me is I have to be prepared to bounce the moment it’s obvious that my political orientation is suddenly An Issue to the people around me. They say you go bankrupt gradually, then all at once, and that’s my fear — that I’ll wake up one day at some point after the 2024 Election and a bunch of good olde boys with guns will make it clear that I need to leave town — or else.

And, yet, I’m probably being hysterical. I am prone to think up the absolute worst case scenario. I won’t have to worry about any of this. Right? Right?

If You’re A Free Speech Absolutist Because Online Filtering Software Thinks You’re A Nazi, You Got A Problem

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a few relatives — who I love dearly — who honestly believe that evil liberals are trying to turn everyone gay, ban The Bible and are on the cusp of destroying the lives of conservatives at any moment because they don’t follow the “media narrative.”

This, of course, contributes to the whole “let’s destroy the greatest country in the world because of vibes” problem that we all currently face. What’s interesting is my far more conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — are now free speech absolutists because they think if Nazis can burn everything to the ground, then they will have a better chance of being able to, I dunno, say the N word because black people can?

I don’t have a problem with conservatives. Any strong, healthy democracy has a solid conservative movement. What I *DO* have a problem with is fucking MAGA and fucking Nazis. It is telling that even my Traditionalist relatives, whom I love dearly, have bought into to current Gay Scare.

All I can say is, if your political speech gets in trouble because it’s a little too close to Nazi propaganda…oh boy. You got a problem. Maybe tone it down a little bit. And whatever happened to the market place of ideas?

I find it amusing that conservatives think the “free market” can solve everything until that very same free market decides that saving the planet is a good idea. Then it’s “whoa, not THAT free.”

I fucking hate MAGA Nazis.

Facts Don’t Care About Your Vibes

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have some very conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — who continue to be enraged by the policies associated with COVID. They tell me they looked at the data and they will *NEVER* trust the CDC again.

Ok, I get it.

And, yet, these very same people lulz the very real economic data that suggests the American economy is humming along quite well. As such, if “doing their own research” and “looking at the data” helps their overall hatred of evil libs who want to turn everyone gay, then they embrace it. But if it DOESN’T help feed into the conservative media agenda being fed them by all the conservative podcasts they listen to…it is to be waved away and or ignored altogether.

They just *FEEL* that the economy is horrible and that the U.S. Military is now so woke that it’s weak compared to China and or Russia. This really aggravates me because the fact are this: the economy is doing well and the U.S. Military continues to be the most powerful fighting force in the world.

But for my Traditionalist relatives, whom I love dearly, they are very open to America turning into a white Christian ethnostate because of…vibes. They have an extremely simplistic take on politics to the point that what they believe is little more than a grunt. They just know: “Liberal bad.”

The only reason why I even bring this up is it’s so annoying that they make SUCH A BIG DEAL about how the “data” proves that the CDC should be arrested en mass and taken to Gitmo…but they simply don’t care that America’s economy is doing quite well at the moment and we can kick anyone’s ass in the world.

And it gets worse.

At the forefront of the minds of my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — is the “crisis at the border.” Again, I get it. There is a crisis at the border and more should be done to fix that problem. I will even acknowledge that someone should get impeached to at least focus their minds on the subject.

What alarms me about my conservative relatives anger about the “border crisis” is how blasé they are the implications of deporting over 20 million people — many of them have American children. You press them on the issue and they just do a lot of shuck and jive combined with hand waving. They don’t know the specifics of how things would work out, but they know something needs to be done.

And they are absolutely against the cornerstone of how to fix the problem — amnesty. Which, I think, tells you what’s really going on — they’re upset about the browning of America more than anything else. But they just can’t bring themselves to admit it, so they get all upset about the “border crisis” then refuse to even address what a fucked up situation we would find ourselves in if we actually tried to deport 20 million people.

But it definitely seems as though if Trump is re-elected in 2024 that the issue of “show your papers” will be the central issue of the day. Birthright Citizenship will be eliminated or ignored and millions of families will be torn apart and a lot of American citizens will be put in camps. AND, the ICE infrastructure that will have to be built out to deport all those people will be ripe for abuse.

And that’s freaky weirdoes like me might find myself in a Trump branded ICE camp at some point after 2025. Good times! But my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — think I’m a crank for even suggesting such a possibility. They’re too busy getting upset by any perceived slight against Christianity to realize that they have people in their immediate family who will cross Tyrant Trump because they refuse to shut the fuck up.

But I understand why this just sounds like my usual hysterical doom shit. I get it. I understand. All my fears are very speculative at the moment. But the fact remains — the economy is strong, America is strong and the idea of Trump having 500,000 armed ICE agents at his tyrannical deposal is a horrible idea.

A Moment Of Truth

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something I find myself thinking about a lot these days is what will happen on a personal basis to different people if any of my political dystopian hellscape nightmares come true.

I would suggest you keep an eye on some of the more bonkers MAGA people in Congress if it seems as though we’re going to have some sort of Secession Crisis. If Ted Cruz leaves the Senate to help organize a Trumplandia government then, welp, we’re going to the show. But if he doesn’t leave….then maybe things will kind of fizzle out.

Meanwhile, there are a number of notable Blues that I think could see their lives turned upside down if we have something akin to a civil war. Jon Stewart, in particular, seems like just the sort of guy who would stand and fight, rather than flee the country to have a circle jerk podcast that he did in the South of France. In fact, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and even Jimmy Fallen might shock us all with how they might be forced into some sort of political leadership position.

They may become political prisoners under the watchful eye of MAGA goons, if things get bad enough.

If things get as bad as I fear, everything and I mean EVERYTHING is going to be scrambled in a rather shocking, startling manner. The Woke Era will end because we’ll all be so busy trying to avoid artillery shells that we don’t have time to think about what pronouns we want people to use in reference to us.

And, I can’t predict the future and I hope — HOPE — I’m wrong. I just can’t help myself when it comes to trying to make my abstract fears concrete.

The Siege of Austin & Other Second American Civil War Nightmares

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me again say, I can’t predict the future. There is every reason to believe that in the end, the US will simply shrug and we either have four more years of Biden or we turn into a MAGA America First nightmare and it’s all a lulz.

But because I like to make my abstract fears concrete, let’s really think about the nuts and bolts of a possible Second American Civil War starting in late 2024, early 2025.

The state we should keep an eye on in this situation is Texas. The state is already an autocratic MAGA bastion, and so it makes a lot of sense that if Red States feel they need to bounce that Texas would be the first state to do it. Tradition would suggest that South Carolina might be the first out the door, but there are so many African Americans in the state….whoa buddy…that, in practical terms might not be as sure a thing.

But Texas has just the right demographic composition that if Trump lost in 2024, or if he won then went full tyrant in 2025 and was deposed, they seem to be the state that would call up a snap secessionist convention on the fly. Now, there are some obvious complications to this idea. On the ground, Texas — as I understand — is s l o w l y — shifting to Purple.

As such, even if Texas MAGA Nazis were able to sucker punch the populace by calling up a Secessionist Convention overnight, there would be some pretty dire consequences going forward. You could easily imagine a scenario where the state capital of Austin went full Paris Commune on the rest of the state and there was some sort of Siege of Austin.

Ok, let’s also think about how things might play out with other Red States. I think pretty much all the low population Red States of the Mountain area would flee the Union the moment Texas made it clear they were serious. Utah is one of those states that could go either way because it’s a hotbed of NeverTrump support…but one of its Senators is Mike Lee, so lulz?

Now we get to even MORE complication. States like Oregon and Virginia would likely implode because of how diverse they are. If we started to have a serious secessionist crisis, there would be A LOT of self-selection across the country as people bounced to states that better fit their own personal political views. And then, of course, there is the issue of places like Austin and other Blue dots in Red States that would either be razed by Red forces or see a huge amount of depopulation as their political difference became untenable.

And don’t even get me started about my fears of Trump going Pol Pot on us an emptying the “Godless cities” so American Killing Fields can be filled with the bodies of Blues.

And, remember, none of this will happen in a geopolitical vacuum. World War 3 would start the moment it became clear that the US was too pre-occupied blowing itself up to do anything about various regional conflicts around the globe. What’s more, if any sort of Second American Civil War dragged out long enough, then the outside world would begin to get involved, too.

I could totally see the DPRK dropping a few H-bombs on the US to kick us while we’re down.

Anyway, if things get so bad that we have states leaving the Union….yikes. May God have mercy on our souls.

The Moralistic State: Of Christians & The Secularization Of America

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I was raised in the church and have a lot of relatives who are still Christians, so I know all about how alienated many modern conservative Christians feel. They tend to think that all of America’s problems could be solved if everyone turned to Jesus.

While I suppose this is true, some of my relatives really, really wanted a white Christian ethnostate without thinking about the consequences of doing such a thing. They want whites and men on top and they want there to be only one gender and none of this “pronouns” business.

They don’t have a problem with people being gay, but they should be quiet about it. And if pressed, they probably wouldn’t have a problem with someone getting an abortion as long as it was a deep personal shame that the person never spoke of to anyone.

What the Christians I know seem to want is to replace the Administrative State with the Moralistic State. They think taxation is theft and they want a total ban on abortion, birth control in general and online porn. They want to gut the modern safety net, even as they require any human egg that is fertilized by sperm to be carried to term, damn whatever horrific life the child may have once they’re born.

With that it in mind, that is yet more indication that the U.S. is tearing itself apart and there is a better-than-zero-sum chance that there will be a civil war (Reds if Trump loses) or a revolution (Blues if Trump wins.)

And, yet, there is every reason to believe that just like in 2020, somehow we’ll find an off ramp, a “third way” that allows us to punt our problems down the road again. And, hell, who knows, maybe the fabric of the nation is strong enough that no matter what, we’ll muddle through in some way and all my political dystopian hellscapes will seem rather amusing.

I really, really want that to happen.

If some of the things I fear will happen, happen, it will s u c k.

America’s Fate Starting in Late 2024, Early 2025 Rests On State Republican Parties

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Yeah, right.

The thing too many media popinjays miss about the looming threat of a civil war in the United States is that on a state level, the Republican Party has crossed the Rubicon on the issue — at least on a rhetorical basis. So, the question of the moment is, at at state level, is the Republican Party prepared to put its money where its mouth is on the issue of secession.

Just from my discussion of my mainstream conservative Traditionalists relatives — whom I love dearly — it definitely seems as though if there was a sudden lurch towards a secession crisis that they would be prepared to follow along.

Of course, any secession crisis would be a royal clusterfuck for a number of reasons. There are a lot of Blue dots in Red States. And there are states –like Virginia — which are actually two states, one Red, one Blue, fused together who fucking hate each others guts.

So, Virginia, in particular, would likely be the site where the first actual violence of a Second American Civil War might occur. I could see there be coups and counter coups as the two sides fight over if the commonwealth is going to stay in the Union or not.

What’s more, that particular situation is easy compared to areas of the Deep South where you would have the dominate white Republican Party pushing for secession and the large African American community balking. That is a very complicated situation that, if not handled properly, could possibly lead to a historic race war.

I know, that sounds like my usual “hysterical doom shit,” but that’s what we’re facing at the moment. Once you take the idea of secession seriously, you start to come up with a lot of very, very dark scenarios.

Win Or Lose, Trump May Spark A Second American Civil War Starting in Late 2024, Early 2025

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The Republican Party is now, on a structural basis, primed and ready to start a civil war by calling up Secessionist Conventions. Now, I fear this could happen both if Trump loses or wins. It will happen if he wins if he is promptly deposed in some way — either by impeachment and conviction or by the U.S. Military — or it MAY happen if he loses.

The issue of Trump sparking a civil war by losing is really difficult to game out at this point because it is, on the face of it, very, very silly to think any such thing might happen. It just is staggering to imagine that the most powerful nation in the world might collapse into civil war because of “vibes.”

But, here we are.

And, yet, now, at the end of 2023, I still can’t tell you with any certainty that even if Trump screams bloody murder about the 2024 election being “stolen” from him that any state legislatures will listen to him.

It could be that there might be — some — politically inspired violence, but, on the whole, Trump just rants and ultimately fades into politically obscurity.

I just don’t know.

Let’s Address The Right Wing ‘Lawfare’ Talking Point

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It has become a matter of gospel within Right wing ranks that the evil liberal cabal that is out to get good (white) Christian men and women is using “lawfare” against Trump.

But, it gets worse.

Even people who don’t support Trump the person, have gotten into their noggins that this is the case. You can tell this nothing more than a fill-airtime-in-an-argument talking point when you press these people about the classified document case against Trump.

When you point out that Biden also had an investigation against him for classified documents they suddenly just wave their hand and move on to their next point. So, according to their logic, even though Trump is being investigated for something legitimate — stealing national secrets — it’s still lawfare because they think it’s neat to use the word “lawfare.”

It’s shit like this that makes me wonder if we, as a nation, will be able to survive past 2025. There is growing evidence that if Trump becomes POTUS again that we’re all in for a very, very bumpy ride. Either because about 1 million well educated wealthy liberals leave the country in a massive brain drain, or we depose Trump in some way and there’s a civil war.

Pick your poison.