If you want any indication of how fucked we are, look no further than how Republicans have officially reached the point where they catch the political car over and over again…and nothing happens. As such, this only emboldens fascist Republicans to keep going.
I think of it as the political slack that exists in the system when it comes to what how far Republicans can go before anyone on the other side does anything about it in the real world. As such, we’re an anocracy and it definitely seems as though we’re going to peacefully slide into a hard autocracy over the course of the next 20 years.
It’s still possible that we’re just going to have a civil war of some sort. But my “hopes” of this happening are fading. Sure, there will be lots of talk on Twitter of states leaving the Union and there being a secession crisis around 2024 – 2025 but, in the end, lulz. No one will do anything in the real world. Or, put another way, the only thing that happens is about a million wealthy liberals will feel the country for places in Europe.
These new expats will do all the same meaningless shit that they did during the twilight of the republic, only in a different country.
So, in the end, I think there won’t be a civil war. Blue States because of a lack of leadership and grit, will bend a knee to the MAGA New Right. It’s not going to happen immediately, but it will happen.
This definitely seems like the Before Times. I don’t know what the future brings — no one does — but as I keep saying, either the United States implodes into autocracy or it explodes into a civil war. Call it the Great Reset or the Fourth Turning or whatever the fuck you like — but it’s coming.
A number of macro trends are all coming to a head in late 2024, early 2025. One way or another, we’re headed for a catastrophe in the United States. Either we simply lulz the end of our democratic republic or we bomb ourselves into the Stone Age in the process of figuring out who gets the USA “brand.”
But let me be clear — I can’t predict the future. Maybe we’ll just punt our problems down the road another presidential cycle. And, in fact, even if MAGA seizes control of the country in 2025 things aren’t going to change overnight. There will be a false sense of relief until, of course, it begins to dawn on us that things are beginning to change.
And, before you know it, one a political basis, the United States and Russia will be one and the same. Which, of course, is what the MAGA New Right screams at the top of their lungs right now that they want. It’s not like they’re hiding it. Republicans have a soft spot for autocrats and they desperately want white Christian minority rule.
So, either we have white Christian minority rule or we have a civil war. At the moment, it just doesn’t seem as though the center-Left has the grit to challenge the rise of autocracy in the United States long term. Twitter liberals are already talking about getting a second passport and fleeing the country rather than doing anything constructive in the real world to stop our slide into autocracy.
And, remember, once we’re an autocracy, that’s it. Republicans will be able to destroy the social safety net, cut taxes for the plutocrats and raise taxes on the poor. They will probably finally seize control permanently with a Constitutional Convention.
Then loud mouth cranks like me, who have had the luxury of living in a Western liberal democracy are just going to be fucked. We’ll die in a camp. Or be sentence to long prison terms. But our lives won’t be the same. And then all the Good Germans in our lives who have been waiting with baited breath for the arrival of white Christian minority rule will finally have reached their red line — ME.
Anyway, either you realize how dire things are at the moment or you don’t. Either you’re realistic and understand we’re careening towards a very dark choice of autocracy or civil war, or you think people like me are “terribly negative” for simply pointing out the truth.
Make no mistake, all the hatred that the MAGA New Right has for democracy is all a smoke screen for what they really mean — they are craven and want to establish a white Christian ethnostate based on minority rule. They don’t come out and say this for a number of reasons, specifically they don’t want any association with the term “white minority rule” because it’s racist as hell.
So they beat around the bush and hate on democracy in general. They usually hate on Abraham Lincoln at the same time, which if that isn’t a tell I don’t know what is.
Anyway, we have to accept that the endgame of the the clusterfuck we’re living through at the moment is minority rule. Starting around 2024 – 2025, the United States will be run by a very passionate, organized minority — white Christians.
And that will be that.
Republicans will finally get what they want — the ability to pass all their unpopular policies without having to worry about blowback from the 60% of the population that opposes them.
I honestly don’t see how this dark, dysoptian political hellscape doesn’t happen. The American center-Left is too divided and too busy sucking its own cock in the guise of long, overwrought Twitter threads to do the hard work in the real world that would prevent white Christian minority rule from happening. Or, put another way, we’re past the Event Horizon.
There is, of course, a small chance that rather than imploding into autocracy and minority rule, we’ll explode into a civil war. I still find this very unlikely, however. There probably will be a lot of talk of secession now and again between now and January 2025, but in the end, Blue States will just “bend a knee” to white Christian minority rule.
The question is not how bad it will get, but how long it will take to get as bad as our worst nightmares. I suspect that, initially, nothing will really change. So the first few years of President DeSantis’ administration won’t really feel any different.
But gradually, however, things are very much going to change. The MAGA New Right will grow accustomed to unchecked, unfettered control of the leavers of power and, well, sucks to be you non-MAGA person.
And, in the end, all those people’s who’s only red line was personal, well, they’re going to find out what that means in real terms.
And, yet, there is, like I said, a chance — however small — that things go the other way and we have a civil war. And it’s very unlikely there will be a nice pat ending.
But one thing is for sure, a shit ton of wealthy Blue Check liberals are going to flee the United States in the next few years, no matter what happens. They will only sheepishly come back to the States should there be a civil war and Blue States win.
Otherwise, they’re just going to smell their own farts at cocktail parties while drinking ironic White Russians.
Despite what the feel-good liberals of the “Mueller, She Wrote” Twitter account may think — we’re fucked. Trump and his coterie are above the law. The United States is a failed political state running on fumes of an established political order based on 250 years of Western democracy.
But this is coming to an end.
We’re in America’s twilight. We’re an anocracy, which is a fancy word for being between autocracy and democracy. When a nation is anocracy, it’s at its most vulnerable because it’s either transitioning to democracy or sliding into autocracy. It’s when a nation is an anocracy that the probability of it having a civil war is at its highest.
This is just basic political science so I’m not being a “terribly negative person” to point it out — it’s just what’s going on.
A key thing for us to remember is the American electoral system hides how bad things are because of the two party system. Right now, the United States has a Fascist Republican Party that runs against an array of liberal interest groups that call themselves the Democratic Party. As such, when push comes to shove, the Fascist Republicans are probably going to bowl over anti-fascist groups without breaking a sweat.
So, what does this mean?
It means that you have a few years to figure out what the fuck you believe. As I keep saying, the key to anyone’s success — or failure — in the coming years will be knowing what you believe in, what you believe in to the point that you’re willing to suffer for it.
I say this because things are going to grow existential starting far sooner than you might believe. Once Roe is officially overturned and Republicans take Congress….all bets are off. The United States is going to go through a very bumpy political moment in time that will stretch from 2022 to beyond 2025. Either we sink into the maw of autocracy, or we collapse into a civil war that will pit brother against brother and sister against sister.
And the only way to at least feel good about your fate is to know what you believe in the real world. No more angry Twitter threads. Now is the time to figure out what you’re willing to risk in the real world. What are you willing to risk your life and sacred honor for?
There is no middle ground anymore. Either you’re a Good German or you’re not. Either you’re with the autocrat, or your not. And there will be consequences to your decision one way or another.
And, what’s more, there is the other alternative of a civil war. Then things will really grow existential — your life could depend on making the right choice about what you believe at, say, a highway check on your way to a place in the county that better fits your political views.
I know that sounds “terribly negative” but I refuse to continue to participate in the Twitter liberal circle jerk that assume if we just get mad enough on Twitter and write a long enough, earnest enough Twitter thread that somehow magically the the thing that hasn’t happen — Trump being held accountable — will somehow magically happen.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) gestures toward a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory Jan. 6, 2021 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Some demonstrators later breached security and stormed the Capitol. (Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico via AP Images)
And, what’s more, it’s not even about Trump anymore.
Even if Trump somehow is taken out of the equation, there are a dozen — a dozen! — would be autocrats chomping at the bit to finish what Trump was too stupid and lazy to finish.
Or, put another way, we can not longer to make some of the basic assumptions about political life in the United States. Things are about to change in a big, dramatic fashion — all we don’t know is what exactly it will be. Either it will be autocracy or civil war.
And, for the moment, it could go either way.
So, figure out what you believe in the real world now. You’ll thank me later.
Jesus Christ, are we as a nation in trouble. These are the times that try men’s souls and all that. The key thing we have to understand is we’re an anocracy, not a democracy. We’re in between democracy and autocracy. This is when a country is most likely to have a civil war when it’s either transitioning into democracy or sliding into autocracy.
We, unfortunately, are sliding into autocracy.
Our form of autocracy will be white Christian minority rule. That’s the end game of what’s going on — white Christians will have a permanent strangle hold on national elections going forward and that will be that. We’ll become nothing more than a wealthy version of apartheid South Africa. White Christians will transform the United States into Trumplandia.
We will become identical to Russia in some form and lulz, sucks to be me since I’ve always been something of a loud mouth crank. I couldn’t shut up even if I wanted to, so…oh boy. A weaponized ICE — or whatever — is probably going to come after me at some point in the near-ish future.
Anyway, it’s eerie when your dark “terribly negative” fears about the nation you love so much begin to come true. Take, for instance, Michigan. It’s a crucial swing state each presidential cycle and recently Republicans replaced the people who certified Biden’s win in the state.
As such, it’s easy to imagine that MAGA Republicans are going to YOLO the 2024 election and steal it to the point whereby there is going to be serious, serious talk of some sort of secession among Blue States. Or, it could be that it’s even messier than that with there being coups and counter coups within state governments until the whole country collapses and we have a real knock down, drag out civil war that will leave us bombed into the Stone Age and take a generation to recover from, if we ever do.
Anyway, something’s gotta give. We can’t stay an anocracy forever.
Way back when, there was thing dingus in Great Britain named Oswald Mosley who was Hitler’s “Man in London.” As I understand it, Mosley was a useful idiot who was laying in wait to be Hitler’s stooge in Britain should Operation Sealion have been successful.
Oswald Mosley
Flashforward and growing numbers of elected Republicans are nothing more than useful idiots who will do whatever our Republican autocrat says whenever the time comes. Many, many Republicans — many of them Senators — are abjectly idiotic.
They got elected not only because they’re dumb, but they are willing to toe the MAGA New Right orthodox into the sun itself if need be. In other words, they’re willing to destroy the United States, burn it to the ground, turn it into Trumplandia in the name of their equally dumb god-king Trump.
But, really, this is just a setup for whenever an actual non-idiot MAGA autocrat becomes POTUS at some point. Of course, the other option is we have a fucking civil war and we bomb ourselves into the Stone Age. Yet, for the time being, I think it’s safe to say that we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy.
Something’s gotta give for me to think Blue States are going to put up any sort of fight when the time comes. In the end, America will be governed by a party full of Oswald Mosleys who step and fetch for the autocrat whenever he asks them to.
That’s the general trend at the moment, at least. There are macro trends at work in the United States that make me believe that this really is the twilight of America.
Around 2025, we’re going to be in a new era, one way or another.
Man, oh, man, oh man. I’m getting nervous — and I mean really nervous — about What Happens Next for the United States. A number of different things are converging at the same time and will ultimately crash into each other around late 2024, early 2025.
Right now, two things are making me feel kind of jumpy.
The first is, the rush to control women’s bodies on the part of the entire Republican Party. When it becomes clear that abortion rights will be ended not just for poor women in Red States but wealthy liberal women in Blue states…that could knock the United States on the backfoot. If Blue States feel that the entirety of the Federal government wants them to “bend a knee” to MAGA…oh boy.
And then there is another element of America’s instability that is not as cut and dried on an economic basis — the rise of a MAGA New Right orthodoxy that is based exclusively on “owning” Blue States to the point that they’re blinded to the consequences of their actions.
In other words, Republicans for a variety of reasons keep catching the political car without — to date — any consequences. But there’s a chance that because of the passions of the 2024 presidential election that just might change.
Or not. It could be that we really are slouching towards autocracy and the whole thing will be a lulz. There will be a lot of talk about secession or civil war…but nothing will happen, nothing will come of it.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) gestures toward a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory Jan. 6, 2021 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Some demonstrators later breached security and stormed the Capitol. (Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico via AP Images)
We’ll wake up 20 years from now and President DeSantis, or Hawley or Pompeo or whomever will be the only president that most Americans have ever known. They will be extremely powerful (probably because of a Constitutional Convention) and extremely wealthy because of graft. Form follows function, after all.
For the time being, I think it’s a safe bet that we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy. In the end, no later than 2042, we’re going to be politically identical to Russia.
I’m a CIS white male, so please, if you’re a woman reading this please aggressively ignore me. But generally no one listens to me anyway, so here goes.
We need a Women’s General Strike.
French Revolution: March of the Women on Versailles, from Paris, 5th October 1789. Engraving. Paris musee Carnavalet (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)
The issue is — when women are wiling to risk real things in the real world history is made. It happened during the French Revolution, it happened during the Suffragette Era and it happened during the Women’s Movement of the late 1970s.
So, I grow very very frustrated as I watch on Twitter all these Blue Check liberals grow overwrought about the end of Roe. There comes a point when you have to put up or shut up.
Either Blue State women “bend a knee” and accept the end of Roe and we careen into a very dark Handmaid’s Tale future or we don’t. As of right now, it definitely seem a forgone conclusion that when it comes down to the whole house divided upon itself problem that we’re going to take the autocratic white Christian ethnostate route.
It’s going to happen if women simply accept it and just get mad on Twitter when any form of birth control is made illegal in all 50 states. And, if you want to get all intersectional feminist about it — if you can’t get wealthy white liberal women in Blue States to care about poor POC women in Red States, well, man are we fucked.
Fight the power.
Desperate times call for desperate measures — we need a Women’s General Strike. And for it to be success, it would need to be national and and it would need to be intersectional. Everyone from a white stock broker in NYC to a African American house cleaner in Mississippi.
I would propose we use the existing organization infrastructure associated with the Women’s March to do it. And you would really need the entire liberal infrastructure in the media to educate people as to the risks associated with doing such a thing.
A lot of women could lose their jobs — especially in “Right To Work” states in the South. But that’s the whole point. If women are willing to risk their lives and sacred honor in the real fucking world to make a point about their right to reproductive control, then, there you go. Problem solved.
I hate violence. I hate conflict. This is just me wondering out loud if one of my idle “terribly negative” daydreams have any basis in fact. You see, as I’ve written before, there are two places where a Second American Civil War could start. One is California (by simply leaving the Union) and the other is New York City.
Will New Yorkers Do It Again, This Time Against Trump?
As you may know, in the early days of the First American Civil War, New York City dallied with the notion of becoming a Free City as the United States was beginning to tear itself apart. Nothing came of it, but it is enough to make you wonder if something similar might be in the air should a Second American Civil War begin because we don’t know who the fuck POTUS is around late 2024, early 2025.
I’ve already mentioned the scenario I have in mind — at some point after Election Day 2024 and Certification Day 2025, it becomes clear that Steve K. Bannon’s “administrative coup” has worked and even though Trump would otherwise win fair and square, the whole process is so fucking corrupt that we can’t agree on who won the election.
As such, the passions of the day become so much that New Yorkers grow enraged and storm Trump Tower, Fox News, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. It would all be very dramatic and historic and would likely cause our incoming ding-dong tyrant Trump to do something complete insane that would cause a number of Blue States to bounce out of the Union in unison.
And, yet, is this really possible?
I don’t think so. I just can’t imagine it would be spontaneous. You would need some sort of leadership and even in New York City — as far as I can tell — there really isn’t much leadership in the anti-MAGA movement.
For the time being, I think my prediction that we’ll just slip peacefully into autocracy is the right one. American democracy is in its twilight and, really, there is so much slack available to the forces of tyranny in the United States that we will all wake up in twenty years and wonder why a huge statue to Trump is being constructed on the Washington Mall.
It definitely seems as though gradually after 2025 the United States is going to become a fascist autocracy and that will be that. Things won’t change all that much at first, but soon enough, just like with the end of Animal Farm, we’ll look back and forth between ourselves and Russia and realize we’re the same animal.
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