Tag: Second American Revolution

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


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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

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

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

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

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

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


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goddamn It, The United States Is A Fucking Liberal Democracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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

This is enraged me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

2012: The Year Everything Changed


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It used to be that there were all these predictions about how the Mayan calendar predicted the End Of The World in 2012 for some reason. Well, that obviously didn’t happen, but something did happen – 2012 was the year that white people in America began to reach a tipping point with their abstract fears about the changing nature of the country.

So, let’s think about what, exactly, happened in 2012 that caused the political hellscape that we currently enjoy. The most obvious thing is, duh, Obama won a second term. And I think the reason why there was a cascading effect from that event was a lot of Republicans thought Obama was some sort of political fluke caused by the perfect timing of the Great Recession right before the 2008 election.

When it became clear that Obama was actually the first wave of what everyone knew was coming — the advent of America being a minority majority nation, a lot of white people freaked the fuck out. It was the 2012 election that was the last election where Republicans were willing to work within the democratic norms that we all have come to enjoy for the last 240 odd years.

Something about what happened in Obama’s second term facilitated the rise of Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party becoming fascist. It was the high speed social transformation of Obama’s second term that really caused the Republican Party to pretty much be accurately represented by Trump.

If I was, like, smart and stuff, I would be able to give you a itemized deep dive of the specific events that caused conservative white people to freak out and fall into the arms of ding-dong Trump. But, I’m not that smart — and, as such, will never write for VOX, natch.

But it is curious. I think what may have happened is at some point between 2012 and 2016 Republicans realized they had lost the culture wars and, as such, they had to strike back with someone who was a “fighter.” After that happened, the rest took care of itself. Trump was a deranged lunatic, but the Establishment eventually realized he was not only hugely popular with the base, but he could win the 2016 election. So they lulzed everything for young hack MAGA judges and a plutocrat tax cut.

I love alternative history, so I often struggle to think up a way whereby we could have avoided the rise of MAGA and Trump. All I can think up is Al Gore winning the 2000 election. Even then, Obama is such a singular figure in our nation’s political history that it’s easy to imagine him winning anyway and causing MAGA to arise in response.

If you read the book The Fourth Turning, you would say that Someone Like Trump was going to pop up at some point between 2016 and, say, 2024. The demographic trends were going to cause someone like Obama to get elected and then, in turn, someone like Trump would get elected in reaction.

One last thing I think we don’t really appricate is how the introduction of the iPhone may have also sealed our fate. Once social media was no longer tied to our PCs, then things like “cancel culture” and the mainlining of things once seen as freaky was going to happen one way or another.

Anyway, the ultimate end game of this clusterfuck is a complete mystery to me. I have no idea what happens. I do know, however, that we’re going to face a choice of either MAGA autocracy or a civil war. Which one we will pick, I don’t know for the time being.