Tag: Glorious American Revolution of 2021

What Is The MAGA Endgame?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A lot of macro political trends are careening towards coming to a head around January 2025 when Congress is set to certify the vote of the next presidential election. That I have to worry this much about what happen at that point is pretty deep because it indicates that we’ve reached the point where each Federal election is existential.

Our future.

If Republicans gain power again, that’s all she wrote — we’re well on our way to becoming an autocratic managed democracy like Russia.

But I struggle to understand what, in concrete terms, MAGA wants. Whenever I talk to my conservative relatives, they give me a lot of abstract fears and that’s it. They want to end Cancel Culture. They want a secure border. They don’t want children to experience the horrors of Critical Race Theory. But what does any of that actually mean?

Republicans are such fucking fascists now that we have to stop hoping this or that thing is going to save us. No one is going to save us. We have to save ourselves. Republicans, on an existential, institutional basis no longer believe in democracy and want the very thing I fear — autocracy.

They want minority political rule and an end to the natural ebb and flow of a liberal democracy. They want a one party state where THEY are “just left alone” but dem dar libtards are sent to Trump branded ICE re-education camps or push out a window.

I also still struggle to understand what, exactly, is fucking with our politics. Is it just race? Is that it? Or is it also the sense among bed rock conservatives that since about 2012 America’s society has been changing at an alarming rate and their poor little conservative brains can’t process it? Whatever it is, the disconnect between the center-Left echo chamber and the center-Right echo chamber is pushing us to the brink.

The United States is now two nations — Red, rural America and Blue urban America — who hate and misunderstand each other. The Republican Party is now an anti-democratic fascists party that will stop at nothing to transform the country into a white Christian ethno state.

And so, again, it seems as though at some point between now and January 2025 we’re going to face the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. If we choose autocracy, what will happen is people like me will scream at the top of our lungs that we’re no longer a democracy, while Republicans will snicker that we’re “a constitutional republic.”

The conservatives in my family will either freak out whenever I mention that we’re now an autocracy or they’ll simply shrug and say so what, what does that even mean. They will say this, of course, until ICE comes after ME and then they will want me to shut up.

Which I will not do.

So, lulz, who knows.

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.

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.

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.

Historical Determinism Suggests The United States Is Fucked One Way Or Another


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The United States is fucked. In the future, the events that led to Biden winning the presidency may be seen as having huge significance on the broad sweep of political history. The reason is — but for Biden winning in 2020, the United States was well on its way to becoming an autocracy. What would have likely happened is Trump wouldn’t have made it through his second term — he is old as fuck, you know — and after a caretaker Pence administration a real American autocrat would have taken power.

Or, put another way, at some point in his second term, Trump would have demanded a Constitutional Convention and would have been allowed to run for a third term. It would actually be his THIRD term that he wouldn’t make it through and Trump’s new veep Mike Flynn (or whomever) would be the one to seize “total control” and turn the United States into Trumplandia.

But none of that happened.

So, as I keep saying, the United States right now is an autocracy without an autocrat. All the conditions are there for an autocracy, but Biden is a pretty modern, norm-following president so he doesn’t flip a switch and get ICE to push me out of a window.

But this idyllic political situation isn’t going to last forever. There’s going to come a point where we face an existential choice of civil war or autocracy. When Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley inevitably becomes president and we have one last gasp of traditional democracy in America do we “bow before lord Zod” or do we have a civil war?

For the moment, I think we’re just going to drift peacefully into autocracy. When it happens, a lot of thought leaders on the Left are going to scream bloody murder, but the average person won’t even notice any change in their every day life. Then, in fits an starts, it will become conventional wisdom that you have to be careful what you say or you’ll get snatched by ICE. Or whatever.

Within a generation, the United States will be a nation of “blood and soil” and Good Americans will keep their heads down and enjoy the tax cuts and really fucking conservative Federal bench that ensures that they will never, ever be “canceled.”

I think this because any kind of civil war in the United States would be so scary and horrific that the Powers That Be have every reason to just tell everyone to accept the New Normal of living in an autocracy. It would require MAGA somehow bungling the transition to autocracy for any civil war to happen.

I could see, maybe, this transition bungle happening sooner rather than later if Trump flips out should Cyber Ninjas “prove” he “won” Arizona. That might cause a mini-civil war that is quickly ended because, lulz, MAGA will have struck too soon.

Anyway. What do I know.

America’s Politics: A Status Check


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Some rando on Twitter told me to “calm down” today after I said my usual thing about how America faces the choice of autocracy or civil war in the near, near term.

Let’s do a back of the envelope status check on American politics. I’m not getting paid to do this and the people of VOX think I’m a crank, so lulz, you get what you pay for.

What makes doing this so difficult is, while in general terms I know we’re fucked, those fears a pretty much abstract. Going forward, it’s difficult to figure out what is important and what isn’t. But let’s have a go.

The first thing that comes to the forefront of my mind is the Republican Party is now fascist. It has been completely consumed by the rancid populism of MAGA. The Republican Party is dead and now is the Trump Party in everything but name. It has no ideology other than what whatever Trump wants at any particular moment.

As such, the question is, will it be Trump or one of his would-be successors who push us to the breaking point where we face the existential choice of autocracy or civil war. For the time being, Trump is in complete control of the Republican Party and any success or failure the party has in its objectives will be the direct result of Trump’s personal ability to achieve those goals. So, it’s easy to imagine a situation where Trump being lazy and stupid is handed power AGAIN through some sort of nullification crisis in January 2025 and he’s just too stupid to shepherd the country peacefully through what would otherwise be an inevitable transition to autocracy.

So, we have a civil war and bomb each other into oblivion because MAGA can’t bear to even think of the word “liberal.” Who wins in that situation, I have no idea.

If it’s not Trump, but someone like Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo or Josh Hawley, then I doubt we’ll have a civil war because they’re politically adept enough to avoid one. The media will be purged, ICE’s camp infrastructure weaponized and I get pushed out a window because I refuse to fucking shut up about how much I fucking hate MAGA.

There are other things floating around our undead political system that are unnerving. The glorification of political violence by MAGA along with the rise of paramilitary groups is not exactly the sign of a healthy political system. The interesting thing about this is Trump — to date — hasn’t had the guts to go transactional. So, in that regard, Trump is definitely no Hitler. What Trump loves to do is dog whistle violent acts that he would like, but he simply has never been direct about it.

But if, say, Cyber Ninjas gets his hopes up by “proving” he “won” Arizona, that might change. He might go transactional and tell MAGA’s paramilitary arm to start doing specific things to facilitate his “reinstatement.” Or not. It’s possible he’ll continue to be a big old wussy (on a political basis.)

Yet, the issue is, what does this mean going forward? Do I need to “calm down” or am I right that we face an existential choice of autocracy or civil war at some point between now and January 2025.

Nothing is set in stone, however. It’s possible that we’ll drift into some sort of “lite touch” autocracy where it’s just Conventional Wisdom that the only way a Democrat can become POTUS is if Democrats also control Congress. Liberals will vent in the media while MAGA welds hard power and that will be that for a few cycles until someone like President Mike Pompeo finally has had enough and goes full autocrat because there’s no one to stop him anymore.