Tag: House Trump

Don’t Panic


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I do think that Trump has been asymptomatic far longer than anyone has told us, I think, in real terms, he’s fine. He’s got the best medical care in the world.

Even if he should hand over control to Pence, he won’t. So, for the next 48 hours or so, we’ll going to be a nation without a leader. This is a a very bad situation for Pax Americana, but lulz. Everything is very stupid.

We should be able to muddle through things like we always do. I just am not prepared to entertain the idea that this is not simply a speed bump on our way to either autocracy or implosion.

And I continue to have a lot of concern about the possibility that MAGA-Qanon, which is already a racist, misogynistic conspiracy theory wrapped around a lie, may freak out and start blowing shit up if they think this is all a Deep State attempt to hurt Trump and the movement.

This whole situation makes me queasy because of that aspect of it.

Trump seems immune to history or accountability. So there’s no reason to think he won’t be immune to this, too.

Why I think The Durham Investigation Is Going To Indict Obama (And Maybe Biden) Before Election Day


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, if you’re a MAGA-Qanon fuckhead who’s stumbled across this looking for Durham porn to stroke one off to, fuck you, you piece of shit. Just because my worst nightmare is your fucking dream, doesn’t mean I want you around. Please fuck off. I’m serious. FUCK OFF.

Anyway, Trump is never leaving office for any reason. He would rather destroy the whole country, burn it to the ground, then risk any type of personal criminal liability after he leaves office. Despite what Maria “Money Honey” Bartiromo has reported, Barr is going to pop out of his lair and either say some sort of criminal referral has been done for Obama (and / or Biden) or at least give out some sort of “preliminary summary” that highly suggests this. How prosecutors could actually get a jury to indict Obama given that the whole thing is bullshit is beyond me, but I guess it’s at least possible.

But the point of it all would be this — to hurt Biden fatally on a political level. If that didn’t work, then Trump would use the firestorm around frogwalking Obama as proof that you could never do it to HIM. He would get the racist satisfaction of seeing Obama indicted and protection against his own criminal problems after leaving office.

Of course, Barr might surprise us all and somehow really pull some shit out of his ass and indict Hillary Clinton as well. That would be interesting.

Anyway, I’m going to be shocked if this doesn’t happen very, very soon.

‘Something’s In The Air’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I feel an existential unease in the United States right now. I’m reading a new biography of President Grant right now, and it alludes to how in the late 1850s everyone saw some sort of conflict rushing towards them.

While I may openly mull some sort of armed conflict in the United States, be it civil war or revolution — or both — as of right now I have no actual reason to believe any of that is possible. The United States is to big and too stable for it to simply, well, collapse. If anything, it’s going to slip, with its eyes wide open, into some sort of autocratic managed democracy like what is found in modern day Russia.

That definitely seems to be our fate.

I say that because of Trump’s “Spaghetti Strategy” when it comes stealing the 2020 election. He’s simply throwing everything he can at it in an attempt to see what sticks. And, really, from his point of view, you could say that he knows that post-election, all he has to do is control the media narrative and he is going to win. People will grow too frustrated with the process. Or too nervous about armed conflict. Or to confused. Or what have you.

Again, as of right now, I have to agree with him.

But I do like a good thought experiment, so I guess you could speculate he and Barr might be setting themselves up for a historic miscalculation? Maybe? And the source of that miscalculation would they would not appricate that no matter how much they control the media narrative there’s a chance that the whole thing would smash up against American self-perception. Americans believe they live in a free country and the “soft power” attempt to steal the election Trump and Barr are hoping for might not work.

If it doesn’t then — since autocrats never lose — they might be a bit more ham-handed in their attempts to steal the election, which would only make matters a quantum leap worse. But I’m making a huge strategic bet on something that, to date, simply hasn’t been there — the average person who is not on Twitter being willing to risk things that are important to them in real life in an effort to protect the sanctity of the Republic.

For the last five years, Trump has faced no real accountability. He’s had his worst impulses blunted, but in general, he’s gotten everything he wanted because of the Vichy, callow nature of Senate Republicans, among others. And there’s no reason to believe that if Trump took “total control” as Roger Stone would suggest that the entire edifice of the Republican Party wouldn’t go along with it.

And, as such, the final arbiter of this particular situation would be the American people, the volk, themselves. If nothing happens, then the First Republic fails and we enter the Trumplandia Era of the United States. After about 40 years, when the last of the Baby Boomers finally croke, then we can think about maybe founding a Second Republic from the ashes of the old.

Something pretty astonishing would have to happen, at this point, for us to not to slip into autocracy. Something I simply can’t predict. We have our fate in our own hands, but nothing to date has indicated we really care all that much.

Prove me wrong.

Second American Revolution: A Possible Historic Trump Self-Own


“…Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness”
The Declaration of Independence


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For about five years now, the laws of politics have been suspended. Trump has experienced little or no accountability for his autocratic inclinations. And, in a sense, what we face now was always going to happen — the only thing standing in the way of his dream of being an American Putin is the 2020 Election.

Bill Barr and Donald Trump.

That’s it.

Once he gets past that obstacle, he will finally achieve wealth and power beyond his wildest imagination.

And, really, if we see Trump as sort of an inverse of Gorbachev, then even if there was some sort of “counter-coup” on the part of Nancy Pelosi, Trump still wins. Or, put another way, the dead hand of history is now so powerful that some truly astonishing would have to happen for America’s slip into autocracy being rather prosaic.

So, in a sense, I think we need to start thinking about either leaving the country (if you can) or begin making arrangements for how to placate Big Brother win the time comes. I honestly think that’s our fate. We just don’t have it in us to do what is necessary to push back against the rush towards autocracy we find ourselves in on a macro level.

But, for no other reason than to make myself feel better, let’s imagine a scenario where Trump’s natural inclination to self-own gets in the way of his final consolidation of power. The only way I could possibly see this happening is if Trump and Barr’s attempt to secure the presidency through owning the media narrative somehow falls apart.

Something no one — especially me — can’t predict happens that suddenly changes the state of play on the ground.

A key issue is while Barr is The Brain to Trump’s Pinky, Trump is still fucking screw up. If things got tricky in an American obviously near revolution, I just don’t see Trump handling that situation very well. The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman can sell her soul for access all she wants — Trump is not a political genius.


Donald J. Trump, 45 President of the United States.
He is nothing more than a deranged version of Chauncey Gardner from Being There. That’s all he ever has been — he’s just a vessel, an avatar for some pretty fucked up existential problems in the American political system.

Before I go any further, let’s be clear — in my mind, all my running scenarios about how we might manage to have some sort of “Renewed American Covenant” is nothing more than me having way too much mental energy and maybe nerves about living in an autocracy. Trump was never going to get convicted in the Senate and as of right now, it seems that Trump is never leaving office for any reason, even if it means burning it to the ground. So, this is a serious flight of fancy. It’s meaningless. But it is fun, I guess, to daydream.

So, for Trump to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory, he would have to ring the Liberty Bell, if you will, in the hearts of the average American. He would have to do something — or be personally blamed for something — that went against the American sense of what it means to be, well, American.

That I have to essentially bet that something I can’t predict is how the nation I love is saved is not really all that great a situation. And, even then, I’m working on the assumption that that would just be the BEGINING of something that might lead to some sort of national renewal. And to get that Renewed American Covenant we would have to go through an unprecedented tragedy that I really, really don’t want it to happen.

This is just me trying to console myself by turning the abstract fear of what might happen into a more manageable concrete scenario I can roll around in my mind.

Or, put another way, I love to run scenarios and this just happens to be one that I can use to figure out how to get America back on track (if only after a significant shake up.)

But I guess it is possible that at some point between Election Night and Trump’s final consolidation of power in January, he screws up. Whatever he does is so bad that a lot of conservative-but-not-MAGA people abandon him. So much so that there is something of an Apocalyptic Rock Fight between MAGA-Qanon and everyone else.

So that would be the setup for a Second American Revolution. Trump, through Barr, gets a thin veneer of legality to his second term and yet somehow he screws the plan up and there’s some sort of “revolt” (probably starting somewhere like New York City).

He tries to put it down using the Insurrection Act, Something Bad happens as a result and finally, finally, FINALLY a few conservative-but-not-MAGA people begin to at least tacitly accept some sort of organize resistance-in-real-life-where-you-might-get-hurt-or-lose-your-well-paying-job happens.

This is all very serious, folks. This is not a video game. This is not an angry Twitter thread.

This would be real life.

The Coming Second American Civil War – The Taking Of Trump Tower


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not advocating any of this. I’m just making an observation about when you should start making serious contingency plans about what you are going to do should the country actually fucking implode.

First of all, there are a lot — a lot — of conditions I simply can’t game out. I have no idea if the average American can overcome their general political apathy to take matters into their own hands if it becomes absolutely clear that House Trump is, in fact, going to take “total control” as Roger Stones suggest they do.

It’s very easy to assume some sort of muddle punt of Trump’s plans that leave him in power, but in such a way that we continue to gradually drift towards a Russian-style managed democracy rather peacefully. The reason why I say this is, the harder it is for Trump to stay in power, the more radical he is likely to grow.

As such, if it really gets all that brazen post-election, there’s one place I could see serving as the fire shot of any sort of civil war or revolution — Trump Tower in NYC. I say this because of what it is — Trump’s Rosebud. What better way to get the point across than for an angry mob of New Yorkers to storm Trump Tower and gut it — maybe setting it on fire. This would not be a value free event — if things had gotten that bad by that point, then, well, grab your bugout bag and head for safety.

Given how completely out of character such behavior would be for Americans, I would suggest that any “Taking of Trump Tower” might be looked upon in hindsight as something akin to the Storming of The Bastille. Nothing good would come of it in the short term because it’s just the type of thing that would cause a rapid consolidation of Blue and Red States in the sense that massive number of political refugees might begin to go from one side to the other before the country finally imploded.

One thing I continue to struggle with is how any of this is possible. How is it that an otherwise stable nation like the United States may very well, fucking implode because of one shitty president. What the fuck is wrong with us? What am I missing?

Anyway, I’m not advocating this. Please don’t do this. Peaceful protests are very powerful with enough numbers. I hate violence. I’m a man of peace. A man of ideas. But I’m also not brain dead.

My Current 2020 Election Scenarios Ranked


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing you have to keep in mind is the United States is already an autocratic managed democracy like Russia, with only our self-perception standing it in the way of us realizing it. As such, liberal democracy is dead in here. In all honesty, the dead hand of history has made its decision — America, sooner or later, is going to be a nation where you can get snatched off the street for your political views.

So, if Biden somehow miraculously actually gets sworn in, what we all think is a Restoration is little more than a House Trump Interregnum. We might have about two years before MAGA comes roaring back by taking over the House. They will impeach Biden, then leverage that political gut punch to take back the White House in 2024. Unless something simply astonishing happens — that is our absolute future if Biden wins in 2020.

It may not be Trump who finally strangles the life out of Lady Liberty but human ostrich Tom Cotton. But let’s go down the list of election 2020 scenarios ranked from most to least likely.

The Durham Factor
In this scenario, Barr’s “preliminary summary” of the Durham Investigation works like a charm. Biden’s lead is reduced down to nothing. Trump wins without even having to fuck with anything. A lot of people are upset, but by the time the actual conclusions of the investigation come out — totally clearing Biden — it’s too late. Our liberal democracy has slipped through our fingers because we lost the media narrative.

A Mysterious Replay of 2016
Close behind the first scenario is the exact same thing as 2016 happens — Trump loses the popular vote, but wins the Electoral College. A lot of people will be angry, but the media narrative will be that Biden should accept defeat “for the good of nation.” Trump quickly consolidates power and that’s that. Only after about 40 years will we learn that the Russians hacked directly into our election systems in exchange for Trump removing 1/3 of our troops from Germany. Lulz!

A Trump Election Night “Victory”
This is all about the media narrative. Without really doing all that much — other than using Barr to pull legal justifications out of his butt — Trump wins for no other reason than the opposition is too weak and divided. This scenario is based on the available conditions and assumes the dead hand of history’s decision as to our fate is final.

Coup….and Counter Coup
This scenario is really wild and, in real terms, extremely unlikely because I just don’t see the opposition to Trump being able to use any mass anger against Trump effectively. But the idea that Nancy Pelosi might FINALLY fight dirty makes it a little easier to sleep at night.

The Coup
The key thing you have to remember is Interior Minister Bill Bar is going to fuck with the election in a very “Who, me?” kind of way. He did it with the Mueller Investigation and he’s going to do it with the election. In fact, I would go so far as to say his success in blunting the blow of Mueller Investigation has given him a very good understanding of what to do.

As long as House Trump controls the post-election narrative, they win. As things grow more and more unhinged, the pressure will be on Biden to accept “defeat” for the “sake of the country.” So, it’s easy to see a situation whereby somehow even though a coup takes place, The New York Times and others play right into Barr’s hands by not even recognizing that a coup has taken place.

And, really, Barr has every reason to believe he will win. So, it’s very possible that even if MAGA state legislatures simply seat Trump Electors out of spite, a wide swath of the mainstream press will go full Vichy on us. I could see this being the setup to not a civil war, but a fucking revolution.

In other words, House Trump and Barr pretty brazenly steal the election post-Election night by fucking with the selection of Electors. The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman in a ever-so-droll way, signs away the Republic. She poo-poos the notion that anyone has the right to object to this theft and goes back to telling randos like me that I don’t know anything about (access) journalism.

So, this would be a moment of truth. I honestly can’t tell you which way the public would go. There might be some protestings here and there, but Barr controls the media narrative so completely that The New York Times focuses only on the violences associated with these otherwise peaceful protests and that’s it. We turn into an autocracy without even putting up a fight. Remember, the Women’s March has some pretty huge peaceful protests every year and the national press lulzes them because it’s just a bunch of angry broads, amiright?

The Counter-Coup
This is very iffy because of what I describe above. But let’s say Trump, despite “winning” so absolutely brazen in his theft of the election that he enrages enough of the population that Nancy Pelosi finally, finally, finally, finally, FINALLY really begins to play white knuckled power politics with Trump. She begins a game of chicken with him.

Now, the thing to remember is, there are a lot of different things that would have to go wrong for Trump for this to happen. A lot. He’s going to bank on a hard 5-4 vote in his favor at SCOTUS if it comes to that. And he’ll be right. But it’s at least possible that out of sheer desperation, Pelosi drops an H-bomb on Trump’s plans to steal the election.

She announces soon after the last 5-4 SCOTUS vote a two pronged attack against Trump’s coup. First, the House will immediately impeach Trump the moment it comes into session in January. But it won’t be a “skinny” impeachment, it will be a 10 article political MOAB. Everything Trump — and Pence have done over the last four years, from Stormy Daniels to general abuse of power will be thrown into the expansive articles of impeachment. Now, if the Senate hasn’t flipped, then lulz, this is all smoke and mirrors.

MoscowMich does exactly what he did with the first Trump impeachment. But, let’s suppose the Senate does flip. If the country is obviously beginning to fall apart at this point — which would be the only way Pelosi would actually have the guts to do any of this — then there might be a real shot that both Trump AND Pence would be convicted.

This is where things get tricky.

In an effort to placate some very angry Biden voters, Pelosi says she’s going to step aside and have the Democratic House name Biden as speaker of the House, thus putting him in line of succession. The argument that Pelosi could make is that desperate times call for desperate measures and one coup deserves another.

Remember, this would NOT happen in a vacuum. The entire country would likely be on the cusp of implosion at this point. And Trump could very well send in the D.C. national guard (or whatever) to Capitol Hill and try to disperse any impeachment proceedings. But let’s suppose that doesn’t work for some reason, maybe a massive human shield of voters or something.

So both Trump and Pence are convicted — in no large part because Senate Republicans realize the country is probably going to descend into civil war / revolution anyway — and Biden becomes POTUS in a very roundabout manner. He proceeds to name Harris as his veep, and the Senate approves her at a record speed.

If things have gotten THIS BAD, then obviously Trump — who is probably barely hanging on to his sanity — will hold up in the White House. But it’s reasonable to believe that rather than play Hitler-in-the-Berlin-Bunker, he steals Marine One and races to, say, the very CSA-friendly Mobile, Alabama.


Trump’s Very American Coup


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about The Atlantic article published today that makes me feel a lot better — even though the subject is rather dystopian — is it gives me some sense of how we might ultimately remove Trump in some sort of peaceful fashion.

But, first, let’s look at two quotes from the story in that is extremely unsettling.

Ok, here’s the deal — this is exactly the type of post-election shenanigans I have long assumed Trump would pull. In fact, it’s kind of eerie to see something you’ve thought about for years actually really fucking happening — Trump’s going to stage a coup.

But another thing I’ve said is, a lot would have to go wrong for Trump for this to happen. Bill Barr’s “preliminary summary” of the Durham Investigation would have to somehow not throw the election for Trump. The fucking with the postal service that Trump allies have done recently would have to somehow not throw the election for Trump. The Russians hacking directly into our election systems as part of a quid pro quo for Trump removing 1/3 of our troops from Germany would somehow no work, either.

As I have long said, the harder it is for Trump to “win” on election night, the more ham-handed and radical he will become post-election. He is literally going to destroy the country to save himself.

Now, here’s something interesting — Trump might be so focused so absolutely on stealing the presidential election, that he doesn’t spend all that much time (if any) worrying about keeping the Senate. He may still keep the Senate, but remember, if he actively steals the presidential election, then the dynamic that would otherwise happen — of him losing and the Senate flipping — would still happen with the Senate.

As such, if Trump were to pull A Very American Coup, then there would be, at least, some political recourse — impeachment. And, this time, the dynamic would be significantly different in that there would actually be political due process once the Articles of Impeachment arrived at the Senate.

It’s easy to see a situation where it wouldn’t just be Trump’s coup that he was tried for, but all the bullshit he’s done over the last four years. So instead of a shame trial in the Senate, Trump gets a very long, very thorough and very excruciating trial.

None of this would happen in a vacuum, of course. The same dynamic that happened with Trump’s first impeachment would happen with this one. Rudy would pop out of his crypt to rant about how it was the impeachment that was the coup and not the coup that Trump actually did. There might be violence. And, fuck, Trump might even press the issue if he got nervous enough by going full tyrant and using a nationalized National Guard to prevent the impeachment trial from taking place at all.

But the argument could be made that our one possible peaceful solution to the Trump “problem” is he’s convicted in the Senate. Then of course, we would have the problem of MAGA-Qanon surrounding the White House and Pence being president illegally, but at least, once we physically removed Trump from the White House, have removed him as an existential threat to the Republic.

For some reason, I find the idea of there at least being SOME possible peaceful solution to tyrant Trump re-assuring.

MAGA-Qanon’s Strategic Error


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have long said that Republicans no longer see democracy as legitimate. It’s nothing more than a means to an end — power. If it doesn’t help them either obtain or maintain power, then it’s an obstacle.

The interesting thing about MAGA-Qanon is they are really setting themselves up for a historic, strategic miscalculation. They are now so consumed by their own ideology, that they are totally conflating the gains they’ve gotten by abusing the politics of liberal democracy with what they think they can get by running around murdering people in cold blood.

Now, of course, they don’t say it that way. They project. They say it’s people like ME who want to hurt people like THEM. They wrap this bullshit in attacks on BLM or Antifa or whatever the latest fucking boogeyman is of the moment. But their obsession with political violence is telling — it’s obviously on THEIR minds.

But why?

Well, it seems as though the basis for their bloodlust is the assumption that the people they hate — namely, people like me — are so degenerate, immoral and debauched that they have something of a moral duty to eliminate them. To solve that particular “problem,” if you will. The latest version of this bullshit is Qanon, which is demonstrably just the age-old blood libel against the Jews repurposed to attack the more general “liberals.”

But the endgame is the same — the implication is that Republicans and their MAGA-Qanon base are itching for a “final solution” to the liberal “problem” in the United States. What started with Reagan Revolution has reached its logical extreme — liberals have, in the eyes of many right wing nutjobs been dehumanized to the point that rounding them up and putting them in the existing ICE camp infrastructure will be seen as morally justified.

And, yet, as with any such whacked out idology, they are completely missing some pretty basic elements of human nature. While obviously MAGA-Qanon would have something of a “first mover advantage” should they get what they want, it’s not going to happen in a vacuum. There will be consequences.

It’s at least possible that after the initial shock of massive, brazen power grab on the part of Trump that the very people that MAGA-Qanon dismiss might have a lot more gumption in them than imagined.

I’m not saying there won’t be a lot of loss of life if MAGA-Qanon begins the “Final Solution,” but I am saying Americans don’t generally brook extremism of that type. When the dust settles, America may be transformed. But not into some sort of real-world  Gilead, but rather a new nation based on a Renewed American Covenant.

Or, put another way — it would be a tragedy. It would be a clusterfuck and I don’t want it. I don’t think people appreciate not only how good we have it America but how much it would fucking suck if Trump steals our birthright out from right in front of our eyes. But it will also suck massively if the country implodes and we have to go through The Stand to get the country back together again.

I don’t have any easy answers for you — we’re going to have to suffer one way or another I’m afraid. The one thing we all want — a peaceful transfer of power — is never going to happen.

Either we slip into autocracy or we implode as a nation.

I honestly don’t know which one is going to happen. Good luck.

Comparative Collapse: Soviet Union 1991 Vs. United States 2021


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me be absolutely clear — the only reason why I keep writing about the possibility of some sort of “collapse” of the United States into civil war / revolution is we have a 50 / 50 chance it is going to happen between now and, say, January 2021.

Either Trump “wins” outright and we slip into a Russian style autocratic managed democracy peacefully, or there’s a significant implosion of the United States that takes months, if not years, to sort out. There is never going to be what we otherwise would assume would happen — a peaceful transfer of power. Those days are gone. We are now in the age of white-knuckled power politics.

If the United States does “collapse,” the closest approximation in modern times to this event would be the a similar collapse by the Soviet Union. But the similarities between these two events extremely superficial — it simply involves a major geopolitical power imploding. That’s it. Otherwise, the two situations appear to be completely different.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a unique event because everyone pretty much just stop believing in its central tenet all at once after years of decline. The whole thing was peaceful because the major political force in the Soviet Union — Russia — essentially had something akin to a political revolution in the months leading up to the Soviet Union’s demise in the guise of Boris Yeltsin declaring that Russia’s laws held precedence over those of the Soviet Union.

And, remember, the Soviet Union was, in a sense, a 19th Century dream that outlived its welcome after existing for just about the length of one lifetime. Communism simply could not adapt to the vigor of American Capitalism. At its heart, Communism was a lie and little more than Russian imperialism under a different name.

So when Russia stopped believing in Communism, the whole thing became moot. The coup of August 1991 was, in hindsight, nothing more than a final deathrattle.

Now, let’s look at the United States in late 2020, early 2021.

Any collapse of the United States will happen because a lot — a LOT — of things go wrong for Donald Trump. He’s well on his way to consolidating power by stealing the election in a rather brazen fashion and that will be that. Americans are too content, too politically apathetic and too generally indifferent to the rise of tyranny in the country to do the things necessary to stop it in its tracks at this late date.

There are two ways Trump could screw this otherwise foregone conclusion up — one, be himself. He’s a self-own artist. He’s just an idiot. So, that’s one major known unknown. Connected to that is if things move to fast the average person not on Twitter might get woke in a rather abrupt fashion. So abrupt that we careen towards something closer to a revolution than a civil war.

So, in a sense, any collapse of the United States would be a political collapse. The two sides simply would have no middle ground and, as such, would try to solve their differences through “other means.” A lot of gnashing of teeth is being done about what California might do if there were, say, dualing presidents. The lazy answer is that California will leave the Union. I find that stupid because that’s just the type of the Trump would want so he could really consolidate power. There’s a chance, however, that not even Trump could pull that office because, well, he’s just a fucking idiot.

The liberal fever dream is, of course, that Blue States will simply leave the Union, establish a liberal utopia (maybe in conjunction with Canada) and we will, at last, have a taco truck on every corner and drive through free abortions. But I just don’t see that happening.

Yes, there will be a lot of talk about Blue States leaving the Union if things get bad enough, but it seems as though it would be more a matter of Blue States not recognizing Trump as president and coordinating a reponse to that rather than they leave the Union and do some sort of New Coke USA.

Or, put it another way – once the collapse is actually upon us, it won’t be a matter of everyone no longer believing in our shared ideals, but that those ideals are interpreted in radically different fashions by Blue and Red States. There will likely be a lot of debate about Blue States simply leaving the Union, but in the end, that choice may be made for them — they may realize they can get a lot more support from center-Right-but-not-MAGA people if they market their struggle as a fight for the soul of a shared nation, not the creation of a new one — a New American Covenant, if you will. You might go with “Renewed American Covenant” if you wanted to sound a tick less radical, but lulz, no one listens to me.

And, remember, the United States is a voluntary union of states, at least since April, 1865. The Soviet Union actively did everything in its power to prevent some of its more restless Republics — like those in the Baltics — from leaving. So, the United States starts with a vast reservoir of legitimacy that the Soviet Union didn’t have when it really began to collapse all of a sudden.

The Soviet Union was RUSSIA and 14 other Republics. The United States is California, Texas, Florida and 47 other States. The Federal — especially the U.S. Military — has the “mandate of heaven” for millions of people who simply want to raise their kids, pay their mortgage and go see a nice movie every once in a while.

As such, those people will be completely sucker punched if the bolts finally pop off the Republic and Blue and Red States actively begin to plot against each other on the battlefield.

I still don’t think this is going to happen. Something pretty big would have to happen for me not to simply try to tune out after Trump “wins” election night and we become, at last, the Fourth Reich.

Watch Me Play ‘Trotsky’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The only reason I find Trotsky noteworthy relative to me is we’re both screw ups who sometimes manage to succeed despite ourselves. With Trotsky it was founding and organizing the Red Army so it reached the Gates of Warsaw, with me, it was a doomed magazine for ex-pats in Seoul called ROKon Magazine.

Our future?

Anyway, I am good at abstract thought and strategy. So, just for fun, let’s go through what I would do if 99.9% of everyone who should be doing this kind of thing weren’t interested and it was up to me save the Union.

  1. New Model Army
    I would enact unisex conscription immediately. In a sense, many of the women conscripted would be doing National Service as opposed to actually fighting, but they would be a critical supply of additional forces if things came down to a real crisis.
  2. Destroying The Republican Party
    This would be a war aim for me. Any territory the New Model Army took over, the first thing we would do is seize and destroy any Republican Party property we had control over. The Republican Party is little more than the American Nazi Party at this point and needs to be treated as such.
  3. A Promise Of Reparations In Exchange For Rebellion
    I would tell African American leaders in the South that if their community actively — and successfully — revolted against the white power structure there, when all was said and done, the Second Republic would codify significant reparations for slavery.
  4. Reach Out To Our Traditional Allies
    This is kind of a duh when you think about it, but American pride might get in the way at first — we would have to ask the EU and NATO to come to our aid. We saved Europe from tyranny twice in one century, the least they could do is return the favor. I fully expect Trumplandia would have Russians on American soil before it was all over with.
  5. A New Covenant
    I would pitch saving the Union this way — MAGA-Qanon begged for a civil war (why, I still don’t know) — and we’re going to finish it. We’re going to base the Second Republic on the ideals of, say, California. In a sense, I would do everything in my power to placate California so it stayed in the Union. Any idea of “Cascadia” leaving the Union is a very dumb idea in my opinion.

    Let me be clear — I am well aware of how delusional and bonkers the above sounds given that I’m an absolute nobody in the rural part of flyover state. But, as I mentioned, I am good at abstract thought and, lulz, no one listens to me anyway.