Tag: Fuck You MAGA

The United States Continues To Drift Towards Autocracy (Or Civil War)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s clear to me that the United States continues its inevitable drift towards a MAGA themed autocracy. It was only because of a very specific set of historical circumstances that Trump did not win a second term. So, as I keep saying, we’re an autocracy without an autocrat.

The key thing to consider about all of this is the very Powers That Be enablers who should have known better during four years of Trump are doing exactly the same goddamn thing they did then. Rather than showing any backbone whatsoever, they fully embrace the MAGA movement which is pretty brazen fascism.

And it’s happening right out in the open. There’s virtually no push back and what pushback that exits is usually moot, or doesn’t really do anything or is simply gesture politics that doesn’t address the issue at hand: MAGA is fascism and is going to turn the United States into a fascist state the moment it can. Or, if you really want to get all nitty-gritty about it — Trump has done his job. He’s paved the way for someone younger and more focused to purge the media and weaponize the existing ICE infrastructure.

Trump, himself, is simply too lazy, stupid and weak-willed to knock the heads necessary to make transition the United States into cold blooded fascism. But about a dozen other people are more than willing to do what he can’t — or won’t — do.

Now there is a huge but in this dark, dystopian talk — an even darker, more dystopian scenario: a civil war.

So, everything is exactly the same as I described but for one thing — when we actually begin to transition into autocracy, Trump (or whomever) lets the situation get out of hand and states start to leave the Union. This would happen in the vaguely 2024-2025 timeframe.

I just don’t see anything stopping this existential choice of autocracy or civil war. But I’m often wrong and I’m apparently supposed to “calm down” because neither one of these options is going to happen. We’ll see, I guess.

Second American Civil War Scenario 2: The Congressional Certification Crisis Of January 2025


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Of all the possible ways the United States may have a second civil war, one caused by MAGA Republicans in Congress balking at certifying a Democratic win in January 2025 seems the most logical.

The reason is, a number of things will come to a head. The entire Republican Party will be on the same page by that point — the Republican Party will exist, on every level, solely to serve the whims of Donald Trump. As such, if you are still a Republican — no matter where you may be in government — you will ignore any norm or break any law necessary to make Trump POTUS again.

This will happen with any Republican nominee, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that it’s orange ding-dong again. Really, given this cold hard fact, it’s very possible to imagine a situation where the United States grows extremely unstable the moment the polls close in November 2024. This will last until at least January 2025.

Every step of the process towards Congressional certification in January 2025 will be fraught with controversy, intrigue and uncertainty. If it begins to grow more and more apparent that Republicans simply will never allow a Biden win to be certified, one might begin to see Blue States make concrete moves towards some sort of secession.

The wild card on this issue is, of course, the U.S. Military.

The American military simply does not see itself as anything that could step in to keep the peace if America finally collapses at some point between November 2024 and January 2025. It thinks this way so absolutely as an institution that the case could be made it simply wouldn’t do anything at first if the country imploded because of a massive dispute over the certification of the vote in Congress.

Now, there is one way we could doge a civil war bullet and simply turn into an autocracy — Republicans throw the election into the House and Senate and because in the House each state delegation has one vote, Republicans win that way. This would give the media something to hang its hat on when it came it a need to explain to Blue States why they Need To Calm Down. The MSM argument would be that just like Gore lost in 2000 because of a Constitution fluke, Biden lost in 2024 because a rarely used part of the Constitution was invoked.

But it’s possible that Blue States will be so enraged by this point that even the best efforts of the MSM to calm everyone down won’t work. Trump — or some other MAGA autocrat — will be sworn in and the first thing he (or she) does is burn Blue States to the ground. We have a second, darker Reconstruction and thousands (millions) of Blue State people flee the country.

Before any MAGA person reading this spooges their pants at the idea that they will finally be rid of dem dar liberals and they will finally be “left alone,” I will note that if things have gotten this bad that WW3 will have happened, WMD will have been used and you — and everyone you love — could be dead.

But at least you wouldn’t have been canceled, right, cocksucker?

Anyway, “I need to calm down.” Orange man bad, yadda, yadda, yadda, fuck you, MAGA.

Second American Civil War Scenario 1: Cyber Ninjas Makes Us Do It


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This scenario is actually two scenarios. In the first scenario — the more logical scenario — Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won” the Arizona and this sets off a cascading series of events. Suddenly, the pressure on other MAGA state legislatures to have similar recounts grows exponentially. In this version of the scenario it’s not until around November 2022 that things come to a head and, as such, Republicans feel compelled to make Trump Speaker of the House when they inevitably flip the House.

Trump, being Trump, ignores all of his other duties in the job to push for the impeachment of Biden and Harris for Not Being Him. He gets that quickly enough and then once the impeachment process goes to the Senate, he goes transactional and there’s enough political violence in 2023 that Senate Democrats “do the right thing” and convict (or force the resignation of) Biden and Harris “for the good of the country.”

Trump becomes POTUS again and we’re right were we were. Trump picks someone like Mike Flynn to be his new Veep and we’re actually far worse than we were. In this version of the scenario the “civil war” happens either in 2022 or 2023 (should the Senate not convict.)

I will note that am notorious for giving Trump a lot more guile than he actually has. He’s actually so stupid, lazy — and unwilling to be directly responsible for knocking heads in pursuit of being an autocrat — that, lulz, he could very well become Speaker and still manage to fuck things up and simply be an asshole with no power other than an office title.

The OTHER scenario in this situation would be that Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won” and instead of waiting for other MAGA states to follow suit, just “winning” the single state of Arizona is enough to cause other MAGA state legislatures to demand the Biden Administration be “nullified” (somehow.) These Nullification Conventions quickly become Secession Conventions — at least in states like Texas and the lily white, small states of the Mountain and Plains areas.

A number of old CSA states would also (hope) to follow suit, but because of race these efforts either fail or start a race war of some sort.

The only reason why I think the latter version of this scenario might happen is Trump has become such a totem for white rage that if you combine this with the glorification of political violence found in the Right these days, you have a recipe for some major strategic miscalculations on the part of MAGA “thought leaders.”

If this latter Cyber Ninjas civil war option happened, all it would do is destroy the country for no damn reason. Or, hopefully, it would be a tragedy that would destroy MAGA for a very specific reason: they’re fucking cocksuckers.

Of the available potential Second American Civil War scenarios, a Cyber Ninjas induced one seems the most dubious because it relies upon MAGA being willing to actually risk their own destruction now, instead of a few years from now after they’ve marinated in their hate a bit longer.

But, who knows. I’m always wrong and no one listens to me, anyway.

The Real ‘Great Reset’ Would Be A Second American Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m vaguely aware that floating around in the bullshit world of MAGA is the idea of a “Great Reset.” It’s some sort of kooky idea that the Evil Deep State is working to establish the New World Order through some sort of Great Reset. Or some sort of bullshit. I’m not sufficiently interested in the idea to do a simple Google search to find how close I am to be right.

But it’s pretty clear that the real Great Reset would be a Second American Civil War. I’ve written a great deal about the historical determinism that is rushing us towards a civil war. The issue is — if the United States buckled for some reason, this would cause the entire post-WW2 Pax America to collapse as well. As such, talk about a Great Reset. World War 3 would break out and there really would be a Great Reset with no discernable endgame.

WMD of all sorts, shapes and sizes would start whizzing around the globe and as many as, say, 1 billion people could die. For what? Conservatives in the US are afraid a tone deaf racial comment they make may be recorded, go viral and they’re “canceled.”

And this doesn’t even begin to address how the DPRK could very well kick the United States while it’s down by nuking us because they can.

Anyway, I just don’t think MAGA realizes how their abstract need to “own the libs” via political violence is just a horrific idea.

So, Could The United States Really Have A Civil War?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The problem with gaming out the idea that the United States could have a civil war is there remain way too many variables that are unknown. It definitely feels like we’re on the cusp of either civil war or autocracy, but I just don’t know. No fate but what we make, as they say, so it’s at least possible that we’re just going to continue to drift into something akin to a “lite touch” autocracy.

Such an autocracy will happen gradually and so not change the life of the average person in the United States that a lot of people won’t even admit that we’ve stopped being a democracy, period. This denial would continue for a while until concrete autocratic things happened that would impossible to rationalize out of existence. By that point, of course, it would be way too late. A lot of good meaning conservatives would become Good Germans who would only care about the sudden restrictions in their personal freedoms when, well, it became personal. Otherwise, lulz and fuck you, lib.

But let’s go back to the idea of an actual civil war in the United States.

The thing that a lot of Blue Check Liberals are oblivious to is Trump is still a very viable political figure for the MAGA base. As such, Trump could literally be in prison and still win not just the Republican nomination, but the presidency. It is this surreal situation that causes me to think, again, that the United States is an autocracy without an autocrat. What’s more, even if you somehow magically took Trump out of the picture, there are literally a dozen would-be autocrats waiting in the shadows to finish the job Trump started.

For there to be an actual civil war, America’s otherwise inevitable transition to autocracy would have to be bungled somehow. This would have to happen to the point that states began to leave the Union. And, as of right now, this secession crisis could be provoked either sooner by Red States who want to form Trumplandia after Cyber Ninjas “prove” Trump “won” Arizona or later by Blue States in 2025 after a MAGA Congress nullifies Biden’s re-election.

The idea that there would be a popular revolt on the part of MAGA is an example of the movement sucking its own cock. For that to happen, a lot of MAGA people who are in it just to own the libs would have to be willing to risk their lives in the real world. And, as we have seen from those involved in the January 6th insurrection — they just ain’t up to that particular task.

The most dangerous thing about all this talk of some sort of modern American civil war is under the right conditions it could take on a life of its own and have an air of inevitability to it. When the historical moment comes, states — be they Blue or Red — may begin to leave the Union simply because everyone has come to expect that it’s going to happen.

But the two sides are definitely hardening in their political positions. Only time will tell if they make the cognitive leap to actual organized political violence.

Goddamn It, The United States Is A Fucking Liberal Democracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Just recently, I’ve encountered people who objected to calling the United States a “liberal democracy” for no other reason than they didn’t like the word “liberal.” It didn’t matter the context, it didn’t matter the meaning of the phrase, all that mattered was they hated liberals so fucking much that they could not distinguish between someone being a political liberal and the United States have a “liberal” form of government.

This is enraged me.

For most of my adult political life, I would casually mention in conversation that the United States was “liberal democracy” and it didn’t even register to anyone that it was something to object to. But, just in the last few years, not only are their people who hate the term “liberal” so much that they are stopped cold by any use of it, there are people who object to the idea that the United States is a democracy at all.

Neither one of these developments is a good sign for our, well, liberal democracy. The people who object to calling the United States a “democracy” are people who are tired of anti-MAGA people (like me) ranting about what a threat to our democracy Trump and his MAGA movement are. As such, by objecting to calling the United States a democracy in the first place, they hope to smugly nullify the argument.

“We’re not even a democracy!” they want to say, so they can move on to enjoying their huge plutocrat tax cut or young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench. They also use this “we’re not a democracy” line of thought to rationalize out of existence the severe crisis the United State is in currently when it comes to MAGA’s efforts to limit voting as much as possible.

Now, the last time this type of “the United States is a republic not a democracy” bullshit was used was right before WW2. America First people who wanted to keep the United States out of a war that people hoped would make the world “safe for democracy” said, “Lulz, the United States isn’t a democracy.”

I take all this bullshit over the United States being — or not being — a “liberal democracy” as yet another sign that we’re careening towards an existential choice of autocracy or civil war. There’s going to come a point where when people like me are ranting about how we’re an autocracy and fucking cocksucker MAGA people will sip their Bud Light and say, “Boy, we never were a democracy. And I’d advise you to be quiet, ICE might hear you.”

The other option is, of course, that the only way to clear the air on this issue is to, well, fight a civil war over it. And if the Good Guys (that means, people like me) win that dumb war, then we can go back to everyone taking it for granted that the United States is, in fact, a “liberal democracy.”

MAGA & The Rise Of ‘Lite Touch’ Autocracy In The United States


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about my interaction with my conservative relatives is, they grade Trump and MAGA on such a massive curve that during the Trump Era it was only when something autocratic in a concrete happened that they noticed or cared. And, even then, some of them got so upset by having to admit that Trump did Something Wrong that they negated my ability to pin them down on the matter. The other conservative relatives in my life, meanwhile, simply lulzed the “cruelty is the point” nature of MAGA and saw it as a means to an end.

This gets me thinking about what happens should we peacefully drifted into an autocracy. This will probably happen when it simply becomes conventional political wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if Democrats also control Congress. This will never happen for the Democratic Party, of course, because of Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Now, the thing I’ve noticed about talking to my conservative relatives is there is a finite window where you can make them squirm about some excess on the part of MAGA. It’s the time between when some horrible thing has been exposed about MAGA and when the Right wing echo chamber has pulled talking points out of their ass. Once the talking points exist, the whole thing is a lulz. The goal posts are moved and we move on to the next crisis.

The question for me is, what happens when we are an autocracy and some of the darker things I worry about — like the media being purged and the existing ICE infracture being weaponized by President Pompeo or President Cotton (etc, etc?)

There are two major answers to this question. One is, for a long time, these dark fears won’t be realized. Once MAGA has established their autocracy, there will be a “lite touch” autocracy where for the average person, nothing will have changed other than everyone will stop voting because they know Republicans have an absolute lock on the political system. So, when I get really angry about how we’re an autocracy with my conservative relatives, they will fall back to their existing position of, “But did you die?” In other words — this is the New Normal and, I like it, fuck you, lib.

The other option is, after a few years of “lite touch” autocracy, President Pompeo (or whomever) will grow power hungry and do the very things I’m worried about. Probably how this will happen is MAGA will finally get the Constitutional Convention it craves so bad. That will be the final gasp of American liberty and then we will finally be a white Christian ethno state.

Then we reach the Good German Era. When I start worrying about the very real possibility of being snatched off the street by ICE for refusing to shut up about what a fucking cocksucker President Pompeo is, they’ll pull me aside and say, “Look, for the sake of the family you need to be quiet.”

I’ve already said very explicitly that I’d rather be turned in than be quiet.

I have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. But I do know we had all better enjoy this twilight of political calm we’re currently living through.

The Anglophone Crisis Of The 21 Century


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The Roman Empire had its Crisis of The Third Century and it appears as though the Anglophone world has it’s own political crisis in the 21 Century. Three of the five major English speaking democracies currently have very fucked up political systems. Two out of the five — the United States and Great Britain — definitely seem to be careening towards some sot of potential breakup.

If I was smarter — and, maybe, wrote for Vox or Foreign Affairs — I could give you a lengthy explanation of why this is the case. But I’m just some hayseed rube in the rural part of a flyover state, so lulz, I don’t know. I have no idea what is wrong with Australia, but I do have some sense of what’s wrong with the UK and especially the US.

The UK’s problem seems just as existential as the problems the United States faces. The UK is pretty much the lone multi-ethnic state in Europe and it current has a very late Austro-Hungarian Empire vibe to it. It’s very easy to imagine the country breaking up into its constituent states and that will be that.

The US, meanwhile, is a bit more complicated. The US has the choice of autocracy or civil war before it and we just haven’t gotten to the point in that particular process where I can game out which one is going to happen. I have the general sense that the US is going to drift peacefully into some sort of “lite touch” autocracy until we elect an autocrat who is a bit too power hungry for their own good and then we either have a popular revolt or things get really, really dark.

Anyway, the point is — outside of New Zealand and Canada, the entire Anglophone world is in far more turmoil than one might think. The English speaking world is in a simmering, long-term political crisis with no ready solution.

The US and the UK, specifically, are in serious trouble. All I can say is the next few years may be far, far more dramatic on a geopolitical level than we could possibly imagine.

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.