Tag: Second American Revolution

A Deep Dive Into A Second American Civil War Scenario


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I only do this because, well, it is one of the two major existential choices America faces between now and January 2025, so I need to do it to help make my abstract civil war fears concrete.

Ugh. The MAGA New Right.

From what I’ve seen of other people’s ideas of a modern American Civil War, a lot of people have a poor grasp of how one would actually happen. I’m kind of obsessed with history and so I have a pretty good grasp as to how things would actually happen.

The first misconception — found a lot within the bullshit MAGA New Right echo chamber — is the idea that good old boys, fed up with Cancel Culture and Critical Race Theory will rise up and overthrow the Deep State in Washington. While anything is possible, I’ve not seen any indication that good old boys drinking Miller Lite on the back porch of their cabin have the organization and gumption to do such a thing.

It’s all abstract bullshit they say to their friends to make themselves feel better because the idea of a MAGA “revolution” is the worst thing they can think of.

What’s more likely to happen is elected Republicans across the country will make a serious fucking miscalculation about what they can get away with in the lead up to Congress certifying the 2024 election results. They will bungle what would otherwise be a political history gimme — America’s peaceful decent into autocratic white Christian minority rule — and the bolts will finally pop off the Union.

And by bolts, I mean states.

Sorry for how shoddy this looks.

So, it wouldn’t be good old boys taking things into their own hands, it would be establishment Republicans who, after weighing their options, decide to leave the Union on a State level (if they don’t get what they want.) Now, obviously, I think it would go down like THIS: it wouldn’t be Red States that left the union in 2025, it would be Blue States because the dead hand on history is very much moving in Red State favor.

As such, President Pompeo would “legally” be president, but the way he got that legality would be so dubious that Blue States would begin to leave the Union en masse and THAT would be the civil war. (The only way I see Red States leaving the Union would be something connected to the Cyber Ninjas “audit” in Arizona. That would be in the near term and would definitely benefit Team Blue for some very specific reasons.

But I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Republicans are craven and bloodthirsty — and so absolutely fear the abstracts of Cancel Culture and Critical Race Theory — that they will either nullify any Biden win or they’ll fuck with Electors in such a way that no one reaches 270 and the election is thrown into the House (President) and Senate (Veep.) This latter option would take the situation in 2000 to the next level and the same arguments would be made — we’re a republic, not a democracy, lib and what happened was constitutional so shut up.

But it’s possible that they’ll bungle this and Blue States will leave the Union.

Then what?

How Blue States Could Win.

It all comes down to California. If California joins the Blue States then they have a fighting chance of defeating the forces of Trumplandia USA. If the state simply sees the crisis as an opportunity to gain its independence, things get pretty dark pretty quick.

Not that any modern civil war wouldn’t be dark. I don’t think the fucking idiots who want to experience the glory of a Second American Civil War appreciate how bad the whole thing would suck.

First and foremost, it’s inevitable that WMD would be used by both sides. And the two sides would radicalize as the forces of war began to do their thing. Also, there is a good chance that no matter which side leaves the Union there would be a race war in the South.

You can stroke one out all you want to the idea of having the opportunity to, at last, show dem dar libtards what you really think about them, but the Southern African American community simply is NOT going to brook the “rising again” of the white South. Significant violence would break out throughout the South to the point that all those fucking MAGA New Right people who were so giddy at the idea of a civil war will live to regret it.

What would you do?

There is one potential solution to this impending clusterfuck and that would be that the U.S. Military stepped in an absolutely last ditch effort to keep the Union together. We could endup with an acting President Jim Mattis who would serve as part of a junta just long enough for passions to cool down and maybe some sort of fair and equitable Constitutional Convention to be held.

But that’s extremely speculative on my part.

If we did somehow find ourselves in a civil war, the entire post-WW2 liberal global framework would collapse and there would be WW3 while we were preoccupied. A few billion could die from starvation after India and Pakistan zap each other and cause a mini nuclear winter. UGH.

And the MAGA New Right WANTS that? What is wrong with those people.

A modern American civil war would be bloody, tragic, avoidable and horrific. It would likely rearrange the borders of North America (Goodbye Canada!) and no matter who won millions of Americans could up and leave the country just because they were mad their side didn’t win.

Welcome to the 21st Century?

My Hot Take On Why Republicans Are Freaking Out Over The Congressional January 6th Commission


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Republicans are experiencing political flop sweat over the upcoming Congressional investigation into the events surrounding the January 6th Capitol Insurrection.

The question is, why?

There are two major things that might be proven that would make Republicans uncomfortable. One is a direct funding and organizational link between the Trump Administration and what happened. The other is that a number of Republican members of Congress were in cahoots with the rioters.

Both of those things, if proven, would be hurt Republicans in the upcoming 2022 mid-terms.

And, yet, I don’t really think they have THAT much to worry about. First, Congressional Republicans have established the conditions such that anything, no matter how damaging, that the commission finds can be spun to the base as a “Pelosi’s partisan witch hunt” and have you heard of Critical Race Theory and Cancel Culture? For everyone else, the ideological negative polarization and recursive thinking has grown so intense that there is literally nothing the commission could possibly fucking find out that would change anyone’s mind within the violent personality cult that is the modern Republican Party.

The other issue is, I’m not so sure we can take for granted that there will be a free and fair election in 2022 in the first place. It’s very possible that by 2022, the Republican Party will essentially be the theoretical fascist Patriot Party and even if Democrats win, those wins won’t be certified by hyper-partisan state and local election officials.

The fix is in, in other words.

So, in a sense, all the hand wringing by Republican leadership now is more out of an abstract fear than any sense that anything concrete will happen to hurt them. What is likely to happen is by the fall of 2022 what would now be considered shocking — that elected Republicans actively worked with a violent mob to attempt a coup — will be seen exclusively through the lens of partisan politics and fuck you lib.

I don’t think Twitter liberals appreciate how far down the road to tyranny — or civil war — the United States has gone at this point. I know just in my own personal life my various, numerous conservative relatives are so consumed by both-siderism, negative polarization and recursive thinking that there is no talking to them. (Which, that, in itself, is pretty depressing in a putative liberal democracy.)

As I keep saying — at some point between now and when the presidential results are certified in January 2025, we, as a nation, are going to be faced with the existential choice of civil war or autocracy.

I generally think we’re gong to slide peacefully into autocracy that culminates in a Constitutional Convention that codifies the MAGA belief that America is a nation of “blood and soil.” All my dystopian nightmares will come true — just a few years later than I predicted — and I will die at the hands of an ICE agent one way or another because I refuse to fucking shut up.

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.

What Did You Do During The Second American Civil War, Daddy?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


Folks, we’re in trouble. The two sides now misjudge each other. Twitter liberals don’t take the MAGA New Right seriously and the MAGA New Right has a growing violent personality cult element to it that glorifies organized political violence.

In a sense, a number of different things ranging from a resurgent Lost Cause mythos in rural portions of the old CSA combined with vast income disparity and education disparity is leading to the so-called Fourth Turning of 2025.

I still think we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy in the late 2024 – early 2025 timeframe. We’re going to become autocracy and it’s going to be very popular with a sizable portion of the electorate, just like how it was with when Putin established an autocracy in Russia soon after coming to power a long fucking time ago.

But, I do occasionally think what might happen to me if an actual fucking modern civil war broke out in the United States. I’ve written about this before at length. Like I’ve said before, I know that should The End come I have two destiny to either die soon after it starts or to find myself in the surreal situation of being some sort of leader.

Given where I live right now, this prediction is holding up pretty well. Either a MAGA fucker is going to murder me in the opening days of a modern civil war in the United States or I’m going to follow the trail of refugees to north of the Mason Dixon line and become some sort of leader in the new revolutionary Blue government.

Or something. Something like that.

Put another way — I’m not someone to sit by and watch a revolution take place around me. If the country buckles, I’m heading to NYC one way or another to see if I can help the anti-MAGA war effort.

That sounds fantastical and delusional at the moment — it is — but given how dark things are at the moment, I can’t help but think about it.

The Dark Truth At The Heart Of Trump’s 2020 Election Big Lie


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In the end, the point of Trump’s Big Lie is the MAGA New Right no longer sees the concept of a liberal democracy with an ebb and flow as legitimate. Everything is now an absolute zero sum political game. Compromise, by definition, is weakness and, as such, must be crushed.

Any policy or law that helps the common good but doesn’t demonstrably help the cause of Trumplandia must, too, be crushed.

The end game is minority white autocratic rule — or civil war.

A prime example of this is how the MAGA New Right thinks Fox News is a bunch of RINOS and they now have gravitated towards OANN and NewsMax. The MAGA New Right WANTS to be given a media narrative that only makes sense if you’re preparing for the violent overthrow of a liberal democracy that will usher in a long-term autocracy.

Because, lulz, that’s what they want.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg on such bullshit. They don’t want an investigation of the January 6th insurrection not only because a honest investigation probably will implicate some pretty powerful people in the Republican Party, but they still support the aims of the insurrection itself.

They are enraged that Mike Pence did his job and didn’t throw the whole process into chaos after they made it clear to him they wanted him dead for not doing just that.

It’s shit like this that make me think that it’s pretty clear that no later than 2024-2025, we’re going to be faced with the existential choice of civil war or autocracy.

It’s difficult for modern Americans to wrap their minds around the idea of a civil war, while an autocracy is a lot easier so they assume that’s what’s going to happen. But I beg to differ — no fate but what we make. There’s a greater than zero chance that the MAGA New Right bungles our transition from liberal democracy to autocracy and there is an organize murder of Americans by Americans for political reasons — a civil war.

It’s not like I want this, far from it. But there’s a reason why I have sent off for a new passport. It will come in handy when I’m in a refugee camp in Maine near the Canadian border.

The Dangerous Idiot — Cyber Ninjas, The Arizona ‘Audit’ & Trump


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

What makes Trump so dangerous is he keeps being himself when it comes to the sham Cyber Ninjas “audit” of the 2020 Arizona presidential election results, which leads you to wonder if something like a far worse version of January 6th could happen because of it.

Chauncy Gardner, only far more dangerous.

That’s the thing about Trump and January 6th — he had absolutely no idea what the endgame for his ranting would be. He’s not smart enough to do the basic autocratic plays necessary to pull off an actual coup, so he just ranted about the Big Lie in abstract terms.

So, Trump and his toadies went through all this trouble to see if they could get Pence to not certify the election, but they didn’t really think through the political or historical consequences of their actions. There was no guile, at least on Trump’s part. His January 6th machinations were little more than a very stupid political grunt.

The same thing with what’s going on with Cyber Ninjas in Arizona. Trump knows he wants to become president as quickly as possible — even if it means destroying the country in the process — but he’s a spoil little brat and thinks if he just uses The Secret enough that the law of attraction will make it happen. And, so, the rest of us are left wondering what’s going to happen.

To date, nothing has happened.

But Trump has begun to talk in concrete terms about the “decertification” of election results in states across the country and he honestly thinks he’s going to be “reinstated” because of such bullshit, even though it’s not, in anyway, possible.

And, as such, my prediction that we could go from “decertification” to “nullification” to “secession” seems a fair bet for a possible near future crisis.

But there’s a hitch.

On paper, it definitely seems as though my dystopian civil war scenario is possible. But at the same time, for such a thing to happen, Trump would have to not only go transaction in a concrete way, but Republicans in critical states would have to take him seriously and literally.

What Republicans like Trump want, I think, is simply have the abstract idea of decertification as a talking point to rile up the base and to make money. They see it as a possible way to maybe give Trump the option of being Speaker of the House when Republicans inevitably flip that chamber in 2022.

And, yet, as January 6th shows, it’s possible that things will take on a momentum all their own and if Trump rants about “decertification” enough, the the base will demand something be done about it. Then elected officials in MAGA states across the country will feel so much pressure that “Decertification Conventions” will be held.

Before you know it, because of mission creep, we go nullification then secession.

Then you start talking about the provisional Trumplandia federal government and how many Republicans are willing to jump off a cliff to join this new Red State collection of states.

But I think that at the moment, that’s really pushing things. Trump is all talk and a scaredy cat to boot. He just doesn’t have the autocratic chops to do all these dystopian things I come up with. This is something he’s proven again and again.

As such, I think we’re going to kick the crisis of civil war down the road until the 2024 – 2025 timeframe.

Texas, California & A Second American Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Holy shit.

I saw this on Twitter and had to comment. Sometimes, I feel like I’m just talking into the aether when it comes to my fears that at some point between now and January 2025 the United States is going to face the existential choice of civil war or autocracy.

So, when I read the above imagine on Twitter I almost gasped — this is just the type of talk that one would expect from a modern antebellum America. On a basic level, I just don’t know what exactly California is doing to Texas that is so bad to warrant bloodshed on a mass scale.

All things being equal, the United States — Texas and California included — is a stable and prosperous nation. There’s no need for the individual states of the United States to be at each other’s throats. Also, as I have mentioned repeatedly on this blog, there’s a big difference between being in peace afforded the luxury of being a latte sipping soyboy and having to put your blood on the line to defend your personal freedom.

As such, at the moment, it’s easy to see why a ding-bat Texas nationalist might think California would collapse like a “rotten door” as Hitler might say. I would suggest that if the United States actually buckled AND California felt it was in its self-interest to fight the good fight against seditionist Red States that we would all be very impressed with how well they will fight.

A lot of what the MAGA New Right thinks about places like California is complete self-serving bullshit that once put to a test is going to come back bite them. In other words — California has a huge population and economy that could easily be converted to a deadly weapon of war should it be put on a (civil) war footing.

And, yet I doubt anything can stop the momentum, the dead hand of history, that is hurdling us towards civil war or autocracy.

‘The United States Of Canada’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

All of my dystopian hellscape scenarios about the potential for a coming Second American Civil War to date leave out one important thing — any civil war would not happen in a geopolitical vacuum.

So, it’s very likely that Canada — at least — would get sucked into America’s civil war black hole if that particular seal was broken. As such, it’s easy to imagine there not really being a definitive conclusion to any such civil war. It could be that the United States could literally split into the USC (United States of Canada) and, uh, Trumplandia.

That’s been the flaw in a lot of my back-of-the-envelope scenarios about a Second American Civil War — I assumed that one side or the other would win completely. But it’s possible once all is said and done there will be the USC and Trumplandia. The creation of these two states would be EXTREMLY MESSY and BLOODY, but, lulz at least the good old boys of Trumplandia will, at last, be “left alone.”

Fuck those guys, by the way.

Now, I suspect that if the USC is born that California won’t join the Union at the beginning of any civil war. California, as I keep writing, is something of a wild card because it has such a huge economy and united polity that it’s kind of a nation-state unto itself. Anyway. Canada fucking hates the United States, but it only has 35 million people. The American refugees alone during any Second American Civil War would be enough to transform Canada into something that could join with most of the Blue States to form the USC.

I don’t want a civil war. But the MAGA New Right definitely seems fucking determined to have one.

Modern Antebellum America


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I inadvertently caused a liberal I know to get REALLY worked up when I made the case that lulz, nothing matters when it comes to the Cyber Ninjas “audit” of the Arizona presidential vote. He started to yell, correctly, about what a sham it all was.

Once I got him calmed down, I said he was right, but it didn’t matter — the entire point of the “audit” was, at a minimum, to give MAGA New Right cocksuckers the ability to say, “I guess we’ll never know” who won the 2020 election. But that’s just the baseline — what they really want is some sort of “proof” that they might use to “decertify” enough states that they can start to talk about reinstating Trump early.

Now, if you really want to talk a sooner-rather-later civil war, then Trump finally gets some traction about this very thing and MAGA state legislatures hold “Nullification Conventions” that become “Secession Conventions” and away we go.

But the case could be made that if that hyper-dystopian scenario doesn’t happen, then all this bullshit in Arizona would be the thing Trump would use to shiv House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy when it comes to who will be the Republican Speaker of the House in 2023.

Trump says that Arizona “proves” that he’s “still president” and, as such, he should be in the line of succession for POTUS. He gets it, impeaches both Biden and Harris and then tells Senate Democrats — push Biden and Harris out of office, or we have a civil war.

And THAT doesn’t even begin to address that if we avoid all that bullshit that we have the final, absolute certain future history of a civil war staring in the the general late 2024 to early 2025 timeframe because of a certification crisis.

So, we’re fucked.

But if you look at macro trends, this was going to happen. It was just a matter of the exact sequence of events. And the case could be made that Trump is SUCH a FUCKING IDIOT that of all the possible would-be fascists to cause a civil war, Trump is the weakest of the bunch as long as he’s around. It’s when something happens to knock him out of the equation and we have to deal with Josh Hawley, Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton coming for our liberal democracy that we have a serious, serious problem.

Our history of the future isn’t written yet, though. Anything could happen. We may somehow, miraculously dodge the civil war bullet, but thing’s aren’t looking so great.

Only time will tell.

James Woods, Civil War & A Renewed American Covenant: The Political Agony And The Ecstasy That Is California


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Someone like Trump was going to happen. Something about Obama’s second term cracked the noggin of the American Right. It went septic and insane. And it just so happened that dingas Trump had enough credibility because of his birther nonsense that when the voice of fate called his name, he answered.

I love alternative history and it’s very easy to sketch out a situation where Trump wasn’t picked on by Seth Meyers WHCD and, as such, Trump decided to play president in a Sharknado movie. The person who could have filled Trump’s spot in our history is James Woods. He’s a really intense, really conservative motherfucker who had he been nudged by Fortuna, might have run instead of Trump — and won.

That points out something about California — it’s actually odd that Trump from New York and not someone like Woods in California became our fascist nightmare. It politically makes a lot more sense for a really progressive state like California to pop out popular conservative figure (e.g Reagan) than the more moderate New York State. Though, I guess you could say that NYC is kind of a state unto itself and, as such, had the same dynamic as a fascist coming from California.

But I have the idea of a Second American Civil War on the brain a lot (as do, apparently, a lot of MAGA New Right cocksuckers) and, as such, I think a lot about what California would do if that tragedy happened. In the beginning stages of any such conflict, there would likely be a lot of wavering on the part of California leadership as if they even wanted to get involved. A civil war might be their only chance to bounce from the Union peacefully.

And, yet, I would like to think that they would rise to the occasion and throw their lot in with the Blue Army. California of the 2020s is the New York State of the 1860s. And, as such, its easy to imagine if the Good Guys win a Second American Civil War that a lot of dead progressive measures would be enacted to fix a lot of long-term, structural problems with the United States at the moment. Just as the we renewed the Union’s covenant of states in 1865, if we had a second civil war, we might do it again with the ideals of California as its basis.

At the same time, I think a lot about how fucked up California is right now. It seems like the place is over run with homeless people and that civil order is beginning to fall apart. It’s all very curious. I guess the case could be made that a civil war might be just the swift kick in the ass California collectively needs to stop thinking about their chakras and start to get down to the hard business of keeping the state’s bolts tight.

What do I know, though. Absolutely no one listens to me.

The Idiotic American Civil War Of 2021 That Didn’t Happen (Yet?)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We really dodged a bullet earlier this year. Or, more specifically from about November 2020 to January 2021. In a lot of other nations, we would have descended into a horrific civil war that would still be going on.

But none of that happened because the person with whom history entrusted such a horrible event to Donald Fucking Trump, was too lazy and stupid to pull it off. He wanted to destroy the United States violently, but he just “couldn’t get it up” to coin a phrase.

Don’t get me wrong, ding-dong Trump is still very dangerous and he is one of a number of people who could, through a MAGA Congress’ nullification of a Biden win in 2025 force us to the breaking point.

But that hasn’t happened yet. Nor has the civil war — or popular revolt — in 2021 that so many MAGA New Right cocksuckers seem to crave. Though, in all honesty, I don’t think they really want a civil war in the concrete. For the time being, at least, a “civil war” is just an abstract talking point that they use when drinking Miller Light with their friends on the back porch of their cabin where they SWEAR they saw Big Foot one time.

Anyway, much to my surprise and delight, the Union continues to be holding up pretty well. At least on the surface. It’s definitely a lot more unstable that Blue Check liberals would have us believe — but, there would need to be a huge catalyst of some sort for there to be an actual hot civil war in the United States in 2021. August hasn’t come yet, so I guess it’s still possible.

And we are still well on track to have a civil war at some point between Election Day 2024 and Congressional Certification Day 2025.

Get your rest. Buy a passport. Get ready.