Tag: Second American Revolution

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not suggesting you should not vote. Please do! But going forward, you have to put your political actions in context. The United States is an autocracy without an autocrat. What does this mean? It means that, but for the want of a nail, the United States would be transitioning to a full-fledged Russian-style autocratic managed democracy at this very moment.

And, really, if you want to be clear eyed about it, this has really been the case since January 20th, 2017. Trump stress tested every element of our political system and, surprise! he gave half a dozen would-be autocrats the means to turn us into an autocracy once they get into power.

What pains me the most about all of this is that the people who should know better, the people who could single handedly save the Republic — conservative Traditionalists — are aligning with fascism. They are doing so because they are nervous about cancel culture, critical race theory and transgendered children. At the heart of all of this is the macro situation of an Republic slowly transitioning to an autocratic Empire in real time. And at its heart, the fact that Traditionalists would support fascism is more about race and shifting dynamics in gender roles than anything else.

The United States is growing very, very unstable. We’re a powder keg. And anything from Trump being indicted to a major domestic terrorist attack might be enough to cause states to begin the process of leaving the Union, which would prompt a civil war. Which side — Red or Blue — would start to leave the Union at some point in the near future (if we don’t become an autocracy) is still very much up in the air.

Let’s get back to the point of all of this — Republicans are strangling voting as a means of influencing the government. They only think elections that they win are legitimate. They literally only see democracy as a means to and end. If they win, democracy works. If they don’t then they have to “stop the steal.” It’s because of shit like this that I’m reading a huge tome on the rise of Hitler at the moment.

One person at the forefront of this slow-moving transition to autocracy is Steve K. Bannon. He is doing the hard work in the real world of making sure that on a local level GQP partisans administrate voting. The irony of all of this is, of course, that autocracy is so popular that if he would just cool it, he could very well get his autocratic rule without having to cheat.

But, lulz, fascists will be fascists.

As I keep saying — I have no idea if we’re going to have a civil war or slip peacefully into autocracy. The conditions are there for either eventuality. There is also a small chance that we may be temporarily governed by some sort of military junta as we struggle to avoid either one of the other two options.

So, again, please continue to vote and to be politically active. Please. But also be realistic. See things in context. Figure out what you believe in and are willing to suffer for in the real world. What are you willing to risk your life — and the lives of your family — and scared honor for? When things grow existential, are you going to flee the country or are you going to stand and fight to defend the Republic?

Things are dark and getting darker.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

American politics is dead. The two sides’ positions have hardened to the point that if you try to talk to politics to with someone you disagree with — you just start screaming at each other.

The two sides no longer believe the same facts or live in the same political reality. There is absolutely nothing — NOTHING — that can get the people who are needed, Traditionalists, to make common cause with libtards like me. Nothing. They’ve made their decision and that decision is autocracy.

In other words, we’re fucked.

The last time this happened in America was the late 1850s. We’re careening towards autocracy or civil war. That’s it. The worrisome aspect to all of this is the MAGA New Right cocksuckers have a huge head start in the real world. Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast is a one-stop-shop of treason and hate. He’s telling his “shock troops” what to do in the real world so, when the time comes, he can flip a switch on an “administrative coup.”

What’s more, Trump is so popular and has such an absolute vise grip on the fascist Republican Party that he probably won’t even have to cheat to win in 2024. And he could even become Speaker of the House in 2023.

As such, we need something to counter Bannon. MAGA has the War Room, we need, I don’t know, The Radical Moderate podcast. Something like that. Something catchy devoted to helping people figure out what they’re going to with these last twilight years before we either peacefully transition into autocracy or we have a civil war.

Someone needs to do this. I would do it but I have no friends and no one likes me. And I’m poor. But I’m also very frustrated that we’re allowing Bannon and his hateful cocksuckers to steal a march on us in the real world while we’re wrapped up in writing Twitter threads with “booms” that don’t effect change in the real world where it matters.

One thing we have to accept is the January 6th Commission could lay out exactly what happened — to the point that Trump is found criminally culpable — and Republicans will STILL win the 2022 midterms, one way or another. So, lulz.

Anyway. What do I know.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I’ve repeatedly said — I got Trump wrong. But I was not alone. In fact, the people who voted for Trump in 2016 got him wrong too. And that’s the thing people like me going into the 2020 election totally misjudged — we thought Trump was an autocrat when he was just a fucking idiot.

The biggest mistake that Trump made was he did not strike when any other would be autocrat would have struck — in the summer of 2020. This is where Trump’s innate stupidity and laziness comes in. This is where him being nothing more than a vessel for white rage, rather than him being a Great Man comes in.

The moment that Trump let the election be called for Biden, was the moment he not only lost in the traditional political sense, but also when he started to panic. So, from that point in November to January 6th, Trump and his goons thrashed around, looking for some way to stage a self-coup, or autogolpe. The plan was something along the lines of, Trump would incite the insurrection and either that would be enough to browbeat Pence into not doing his job, or somehow something would go wrong in a big enough manner that Trump could literally stage the first autogolpe in American history. (In a very ham-handed manner.)

But everything — thankfully — went wrong for them on the day of. Pence, weirdly enough, did the right thing. And there were no counter-protesters to at the Capitol to give Trump a cause belli when it came to overthrowing the government via calling a “National Security Emergency.”

The key issue is what are we going to going forward?

When Trump’s autogolpe failed, the United States entered a very strange era where we’re an autocracy without an autocrat. We’re living in Weimar America. The failure of the January 6th autogolpe radicalized the Republican Party and set the stage for us to either slip peacefully into autocracy in four years or to have a civil war.

And, at the moment, it really could go either way. For the time being, I think we’re going to become an autocracy. But there is a small chance that things will get out of control and one side or the other will begin to leave the Union and we’re going to bomb ourselves into the Stone Age.

I wish there was something I could do on a personal basis to help prevent either one of those outcomes, but there isn’t. There’s no democracy defending organization to counter The Patriot Front. We need one, but it doesn’t exist. And, at the moment, our best bet is there’s something akin to a WW3 that so jiggles our domestic dynamic that Democrats can survive in power long enough for some severe structural problems in the United States to be fixed.