Tag: Second American Revolution

‘9/10ths’ — Gaming Out Trump Refusing To Physically Leave The White House


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Trump is he spit balls different ideas in a rather conspicuous manner. He telegraphs the different options he’s weighing so we all know well in advance different decisions he’s weighing.

Right now, he’s mulling simply not physically leaving the White House on January 20th, after specifically saying he would. Let’s game this out to see why he might do it.

Why He Might
Ratings
What better way to wrap up the Trump Show than a spectacular series finale, one that will be talked about for decades? He would finally get the ratings he’s always wanted.

“Stab in The Back” Martyrdom
Trump could use the imagery of him being frogwalked out of the Oval Office as the ultimate fuck you to the incoming Biden Administration and cause as much damage to the country as possible. Trump might see this is as a great way to kickstart his 2024 presidential bid.

Avoiding Prosecution
What better way to avoid any form of prosecution than to hold up in the White House and use the assurance of the State of New York not going after him as a condition for peacefully leaving? I’m really, really giving Trump too much credit here when it comes to abstract thought, but he might stumble into this logic out of desperation

Why He Might Not
Trump’s a Coward
I just can’t see Trump having it in him to put himself in physical harm. He’s always been just talk. For Trump to do something this crazy, he really would have had to have snapped after January 6th. I could see him doing such a thing in the context of going transactional on Twitter, but otherwise, he probably will just slink away on January 20th or have a big campaign rally somewhere symbolic.

Here’s something I wrote some time ago about this very scenario, but in a different context.

9/10ths
a story fragment of a possible near future
by Shelton Bumgarner

April, 2019

The eyes of the world were on the White House.

Just moments before, President Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, had been convicted by 67 members of the Senate for a whole list of high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump had for weeks now been ranting on Gab about his case in the Senate, bouncing back and forth between threats to start a war with Iran or the DPRK and not-so-subtle hints that he might take his own life should he be convicted by the Senate.

And, now, at last, the moment of truth had arrived.

Trump legally, at least, was no longer president, but he had been oddly silent since the verdict had been announced with great fanfare from the well of the Senate. Trump’s conviction had come after months of investigations on the part of the now Democratic Congress. The length and breath of Trump’s malfeasance discovered by these hearings had rocked the nation to its very core. On more than one occasion, MAGA talking heads on cable news had been interrupted by astonishing breaking news that left them, for once, unable or unwilling to defend the president.

The hearings had ground on for months to such an extent that Trump’s approval had slowly drifted to the 20s and stayed there consistently. Trump’s support was now made up of the very rich and the very poor. Oddly, despite Trump’s near constant demands on Twitter for violence on the part of his supporters, little, if any was reported. Trump had grown so frustrated that he had all but abandoned Twitter at one point for the more receptive Gab social media platform. Though on more than one occasion Rudy Giuliani had made it very clear it was within the rights of the president to declare martial law if he deemed it in the best interests of the nation. More than one delegation of Senate Republicans had gone to the White House to explain to Trump that he was going to be convicted, no avail. Trump made it clear to them, in not so many words that his simply living in the White House made him president, a sentiment best expressed by the legal saw that, “Possession is 9/10ths of the law.”

Finally, a post to Gab came out: “My so-called ‘conviction’ is the work of the Deep State and as such illegitimate. I remain president.”

This set off a chain of events, the likes of which Americans had never seen. Suddenly, everyone on Twitter became a Constitutional scholar as everyone studied the exact wording of the Constitution as to what happens if the president is removed from office by the Senate. The wording is quite clear: he or she is no longer president and that’s it.

Nowhere in the Constitution did it explain what to do if the president simply decided to ignore the Senate. What’s more, nowhere in the Constitution did it state what to do with the nuclear launch codes should a president be removed from office and he refuse to accept the decision of the Senate.

The next few hours were chilling as they were surreal for millions of people not just in the United States but around the globe. The issue of Trump’s physical access to America’s nuclear launch codes was suddenly at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Though it was finally announced that while the nuclear football remained in Trump’s possession, Sec. of Defense Mattis had ordered the American armed forces to stand down for the duration of the crisis.

Trump, on Twitter, was as defiant and unhinged as usual.He threatened to kill himself. He threatened to start a nuclear war. He vowed to declare martial law.

The usual suspects on cable news did their best to spin all of this for Trump. As an anxious nation waited for the now former president to leave the White House, a cavalcade of former Republican Senators and Trump White House staffers attempted to make the former president’s case. Their final argument was that for the good of the country, Trump should be allowed to remain president, despite his lawful conviction by the Senate.

Things began to move rapidly at this point.

Vice President Pence was sworn in but Chief Justice Roberts in a dark, somber event in the Old Executive Building. Meanwhile, it was learned Trump had quietly replaced his Secret Service detail with a private security force that made it clear it was prepared to defend Trump until the bloody end.

At this point, two things happened. A final bipartisan delegation of Congressional leaders came to the White House grounds under the flag of truce. During the course of an hour-long meeting, Trump screamed at them that they had never supported him and the world would be better off if it just ended instead of allowed the forces of the Deep State to ruin America. He made it absolutely clear that he would never leave the Oval Office willingly.

With that, they left.

Next, a surreal, bizarre event, the FBI slowly began to surround the White House. There was much debate online and on TV about how long the nation should wait for Trump to leave the White House. CNN went so far as to do a deep dive into the exact amount of food the White House grounds might have available at any one moment.

Finally, shots rang out from the White House as the battle was joined. It took several hours but in the end, the FBI was finally able to secure the facility. Nearly a dozen personnel on both sides died during the course of the Battle of The White House.

In what would become ionic footage, Trump was quietly escorted from the White House grounds. He spent the remainder of his days ranting on Twitter and Gab that he was the rightful president.

The End.



Trump Era Final Days Predictions


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m always wrong when it comes to Trump, in large part because I give him way more political credit than he deserves. But, just for fun, let’s attempt to predict what may happen between now and January 20th.

The Pardons
The first thing I think we can know for sure is there are going to be a massive amount of pardons while Trump still has it within in power to do so. The first wave will be around Christmas. It will probably start as early as Dec 23. Or maybe we’ll get a heads up on Dec. 23rd that something is about to happen. But a staggering amount of pardons will happen Christmas Eve while everyone is too busy enjoying the holiday to notice. The next wave will probably happen at some point after January 6th when it starts to sink in to Trump that he is, in fact, going to leave office one way or another. It’s probably at some point after January 6th that Trump pardons himself.

The Special Counsels
I could see, at a minimum, two bogus Special Counsels being named — one for Hunter Biden and one for the 2020 Election. There could be a whole shitstorm surrounding the naming of these, especially if Trump has to find someone crazy to head Justice to get what he wants.

The Firings
While I think this is very possible, a lot depends on how much of a crackup Trump goes through post January 6th. If he really snaps, then I think Wray at FBI and Haspel at CIA could get fired and Trump toadies be named simply out of spite. And, in an effort to strike back at The Deep State, Trump could just begin to fire anyone he doesn’t like in the Intelligence Community or pretty much anywhere — specifically someone like Dr. Fouchi. (This would be very moot for a number of reasons, but it would make Trump feel better just to be able to do it.)

The Executive Orders
I could see Trump thinking up some pretty crazy Executive Orders on his way out the door, just to cause as much chaos as possible. The specific one I can think of off the top of my head is one fucking with the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause. He would do this for no other reason than to force SCOTUS to vote on it. Even if Biden rescinded it, he would have made his point.

The Congressional Elector Certification Clusterfuck
It’s looking as though for no other reason than he’s a spiteful crybaby, Trump could really lean on Republican Senators to vote for his last-ditch effort to overturn the election on January 6th. This is extremely quixotic for a number of reasons, but he would have proven his point. Also, there’s a good chance that Pence will attempt to nullify the whole thing by simply not doing his Constitutional duty. As I understand it, this would be very dumb because if he did that, then the statue says the certification at the state level by governors has precedence and fuck you Mike Pence.

The Transactional Tweets
It’s possible that after Trump is finally defeated on January 6th, that he will fucking snap in a pretty spectacular fashion. Remember, most of his ideas are simply far, far, far, far Right wetdreams that slowly work their way towards him via OANN. So, it’s at least possible that Trump will begin to actively either goad his followers into violence or to demand Red States convene snap Conventions to leave the Union. This would work pretty well in Mountain states, but in the South, this would lead only to a race war.

The White House Squatter
Laura Loomer is already suggesting Trump simply not physically leave the White House, so that’s definitely now a possibility. That would be a fitting way to wrap up Trump Era — everyone staring in horror as we have the Taking of the White House surrounded by MAGA cocksuckers.

Wildcards
There are a number of things I simply can’t predict. One is any number of “political 9/11s” that might pop out of nowhere that Trump might used to take “total control” and simply never leave office. Among them being wars with the DPRK or Iran or some sort of Oklahoma City type bombing somewhere for any reason. We also have an expectations problem ahead of us and the likelihood of significant violence will increase the closer we approach January 20th.

The Looming Second American Civil War: Race & The Paradox Of The Neo-Confederates


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I will admit that it definitely FEELS like the United States has finally run out of political gas and we’re just about to implode into a Second American Civil War. In an abstract manner, you could say there are about 20 states in the Mountain area of the United States that could secede and make then try to negotiate their peaceful exit from the Union. (This, of course, will never happen, but they can try.)

But that’s not really the issue. The issue is the former states of the Confederacy. It’s all the good old boys in across the South who are itching to see the South “rise again.” But, as I’ve said, ironically, it would make a lot more sense for Trump to drive Blue States out of the Union, then crush them using the Insurrection Act than it would for Red (CSA) States to attempt to leave the Union.

The issues: race and economics.

And effort to leave the Union by the old CSA states slam into two pretty huge problems. The first, of course, is race. No amount of pouting by easily triggered snowflake good old boys is going to convince the Southern black community that they could get a better deal in a New Confederacy. It’s a dead on arrival concept.

It’s that specific issue that makes me believe that even if Trump snapped at some point after January 6th and went transactional on Twitter about secession that it just wouldn’t work out. It might cause rolling political — and racial — violence across huge swaths of the country, but it wouldn’t be a civil war. And even if there was a secession crisis, I can’t think of a single old CSA state that cold leave the Union cleanly via a convention.

Andy secession would have to happen after a violent coup and even then, how secessionists would be able to take places like Atlanta, Richmond or Austin is a puzzle. So, at best, they might control big parts of the old CSA and declare some sort of Neo-Nazi state and start murdering black and liberals wholesale. But the whole “South Shall Rise Again” mythos would be…..not quite what the good old boys think it will be.

Let’s talk about economics.

The South, which would do much better as part of a Red State USA instead of a Neo-CSA, is not uniform anymore. States like Texas, Virginia and Florida are far more modern and urban than the Southern Good Old Boys would have us to believe. As I mentioned, Atlanta in itself is such a huge city that it would likely rather stay in the Union by itself than join any secessionist movement by the rest of the state.

As such, not only would you have to have some sort of political 9/11 for secession to take off, but your best bet as a Southern Good Old Boy would be for it to be BLUE states that leave the Union, not Red States.

But good old boys gonna good old boy.

A Second American Civil War Won’t Just Magically Happen


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I keep getting a lot of pings on this Website from people living in the Usual Suspects of the “Lost Cause” — South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas to name a few. They seem really excited about my dystopian hellscape scenarios about a Second American Civil War.

But I suspect a lot of the interest in such a second American Civil War comes from the recent soft coup by 17 states at SCOTUS. I don’t think people really appricate how ingrained the concept of “the South shall rise again” is in the lives of the average Southerner. So, for a lot of good old boys, even the hint of a new CSA is just too much for their poor old minds to comprehend.

With that in mind, let’s think about how we get from where we are to where we would need to be for an actual civil war to happen.

One reason why I think that this is sort of the end of the beginning of a long-term drive towards a civil war is there just isn’t any armed force big enough to challenge the U.S. Military. The Proud Boys are a small, angry disorganized group of assholes. They might blow shit up or murder someone in cold blood, but they aren’t even really even a militia. So, Cooter in Mobile can lust after Yankee blood all he wants to, but as of right now, such bloodlust is extremely misguided.

It would make a lot more sense for Red States to drive Blue States out of the Union, THEN use the U.S. Military on THEM rather than Red States leave and have the U.S. Military crush them. That’s a prime example of what a ding-dong Trump is — if he was anywhere near the political genus that Maggie Haberman would have us believe, Trump would have done a Reichstag Fire falseflag around Election, taken “total control” driven Blue States to revolt then crushed them via the Insurrection Act.

As it stands, he’s pretty much just ranted on Twitter. In other words — he’s done jackshit. It’s truly ironic it’s specifically because Trump, as a person, is so bad at his job as an autocrat that the United States may have dodged an actual fighting civil war because Trump just can’t get his act together.

So, in a sense, all the good old boy boners about a civil war NOW makes no sense. But the passions that Trump’s soft coup attempt has unleashed gives a lot Neo-Confederates a lot of expectations about what might happen — that aren’t based in reality. They FEEL like a new civil war is about to happen, but only in the abstract. It makes them feel good to think, in the abstract, that they can leave the Union and murder as many liberals as possible in the process.

The Good Old Boys’ best bet right now for what they want sooner rather than later would be Trump finally losing his fucking mind and starting to rant on Twitter about how Red States MUST leave the Union immediately. Or, put another way, Trump would have to go transactional on Twitter in some way.

For the time being, however, it seems that Trump may cause a lot of mischief on his way out, but unless we have a “political 9/11” in the next few weeks, it’s going to be closer to 2024-2025 before the conditions are right for a Second Civil War.

Our Craven Ding-Dong POTUS Faces His Final Political Test



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

A number of different things are happening at the same time. One issue is that several different macro trends in American politics have come to a head. The rage that 38% of the electorate feels about the changing nature of American society combined with how white working class men can’t get laid has led to significant rot in the American political system.

Red State rural areas and Blue State urban areas simply have a fundamental difference of opinion about what constitutes America. MAGA and MAGA friendly people think that by definition to be conservative is to risk being “canceled” — have their life ruined — for simply being conservative. And that, is the source of a lot of the rage and willful ignorance on the part of such people.

There are a number of pretty huge problems standing in the way of MAGA getting want they apparently want right now — 4 more years of Trumplandia. The biggest obstacle to this goal, ironically enough, is Trump himself. If he struck in some autocratic fashion before the election was called — or even before the election — then he probably would have gotten away with it. There are many, many different autocratic things he could have done that would have allowed him to stay in office to varying degrees of success.

But he didn’t do any of them and now that the Electoral College has voted, it’s now much, much harder for Rudy to use his usual disinformation techniques to run slipshod over democracy since we’re now, again, in a political crisis. The reason we’re in a political crisis — even if we don’t see it for that — is only through extra-political measures can Trump stay in power.

Or, put another way, the soft coup techniques he used in the courts recently would have to be replaced by hard coup techniques of an actual autocrat. But there are a lot — a lot — of problems for Trump going forward to pull such a thing off.

Many of his followers are begging Trump to go full-autocrat and declare martial law, or what have you. But there’s an important element of this they miss — Trump can’t just do this out of the blue. If he did — no one would follow his order.

What he COULD do, is goad his followers into some sort of Reichstag Fire event which he could then, in turn, use to invoke the Insurrection Act and attempt to maybe stay in power no matter what. But, again, even then, now that the Electoral College has voted…that’s a pretty dubious strategy. Even if something happened out of the blue — like a war with Iran or the DPRK or a coordinated series of political killings or Oklahoma City type bombings — Trump’s time in office is growing to an end.

Really, it seems to me Trump has one ace up his sleeve — in a sense: he could just snap and go completely fucking bonkers and thrash around, trying to destroy the country as much as possible on his way out. There are any number of pretty insane things he could do. He could start tweeting about how Red states need to leave the Union before January 20th. He could attempt to arrest any number of people he doesn’t like as a negotiating tactic so HE doesn’t go to prison after he leaves office.

But, remember, pretty much at any moment now, some pretty lit extra-political events might happen because Trump is hoping he can win in Congress Jan. 6th because that’s a POLITICAL event.

And, yet, I’ve overestimated Trump’s actual political ability so many times over the years, that what’s more likely to happen is we’re just going to drift into the Biden Era. Things will be in political neutral for about two years until the House flips and Biden is impeached for Hunter Biden’s laptop (or whatever) and there will be a lot — a lot — of surreal political discourse as suddenly our political norms snap back into place while, at the same time, Trump keeps doing what he’s always been doing an we just shrug.

Like we always do.

But there is a good chance that the weeks leading up to Jan. 20th are going to be unpredictable, unstable and extremely bumpy. How, exactly, all the plays out is anyone’s guess.

The Monster Always Comes Back One Last Time


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For the time being, we can all sigh a huge sigh of relief. The Electoral College voted without a hitch and now Biden is a pretty huge leap closer to actually being sworn in.

The Dead Zone as documentary.

But as with any horror movie, the monster is probably going to come back one last time. We got our first sense of that just about when the Electoral College wrapped up voting — Bill Barr is leaving just before Christmas. As such, we now enter the most dangerous phase of the Trump Era to date. Trump has every reason to demand a dozen Special Counsels to look into every aspect of the “Deep State” his way out.

These Special Counsels would be given a huge, vague charge so they could go after every aspect of Biden even before he’s sworn in. They would be what was needed for the Republicans to impeach Biden the moment they won the House and took over in 2023.

But this is Trump we’re talking about. It’s very easy to imagine he being far more dumb and ham handed about it all. I could very well see him doing something directly against Biden himself — or Obama, or whomever — specifically for the purpose of destroying the United States so everything would be so fucked up that New York State wouldn’t have the ability to concentrate on him.

Or, put another way, between now and January 20th is the danger zone. Everything from Trump going insane in such a way that significant political violence begins in the United States to a wide array of completely batshit insane things that so destabilize the country that there could be a serious secession crisis the first 100 days of the Biden Administration.

The main issue right now is Trump simply won’t concede so that gives MAGA hope that somehow, someway, they can still win. It’s a pretty massive clusterfuck we find ourselves in because either MAGA “catches the car” and there’s a civil war for that reason, or they don’t and they start blowing shit up…which starts a civil war.

And so we go back to the main issue of the day — the fate of 300 million Americans and about 7 billion humans rests on Trump. Will he continue to simply be a very incompetent ding-dong, or will he finally summon the energy to bring the United States to its knees and potentially destroy not just the United States, but everything.

MAGA Seditionist Secessionist Grievances Elude Me


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really struggle to figure out the specific reasons why growing number of MAGA seditionists have decided that secession — and the resulting violence — is their only course of action.

The closest reason I can think of is their devotion to their ding-dong Dear Leader is so absolute that they believe all his fraud claims and would rather destroy the Union than allow Biden to become president. But here’s the thing — this is still very poorly thought out and not very concrete.

At least with the 1860 secessionist crisis, there was a concrete fear that the South had — by definition, Lincoln being president would lead to first a retrenchment of slave power and then its ultimate destruction. That, at least, has some logic to it.

But to have such absolute support for just one person that you would rather leave the Union than accept Biden is legitimately POTUS now is rather curious. It still seems like a very abstract fear. Where is all this passion — even if it’s empty for the time being — coming from? From my conversations with conservatives, it seems it boils down to an absolute fear of the abstract concept of cancel culture. This is the idea that just by being conservative, a person risk having their lives ruined by liberal-progressive “cancel culture.” This is a really big deal for MAGA and Trump talks about it all the time.

I would suggest, however, that the real origin of our current clusterfuck is the end of the American dream for white blue collar men without a college education. In short — they can’t get laid. They feel left behind because not only can they not afford to get married and have kids, but they also feel that the growing economic power of women — with its associated sexual agency — makes finding a mate more difficult in the first place. The racism and willful ignorance springs from that, as well.

While it’s way too late, I’ll tell you how we could have fixed this problem — national service for all 18 year olds. If, say, AmeriCorps had been true national service and we had 30 or so years of all 18 year olds across the country being forced to hang out with each other for 18 months a lot of our problems would have been preemptively solved.

But’s too late now.

The damage is done. We’re just one political 9/11 event away from the entire Union States buckling and Blue and Red states actually beginning to attack each other on the battlefield.

The question now, of course, is we simply be locked in political neutral for a few years until the passions die down or will we not be that lucky.

Second American Civil War: The Electoral College Voting Today & The Prospect Of A ‘Political 9/11’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Today is one of a few days that we kinda know would be a prime moment for the “political 9/11” I keep worrying about. But, to date, I’ve been pretty much totally wrong. I’ve been wrong for number of reasons, among them Trump is just a ding-dong not an autocrat and there’s just not been any stomach in seditionist quarters to actually do the things necessary to provoke a secessionist crisis.

But today — along with January 6th — are obvious days where our current eerie political moment could change dramatically. All that would have to happen is a lot of faithless Electors throwing the election to Trump suddenly. Or, say, Michigan militia groups manage to hurt Electors so they couldn’t even vote.

Or, put another way — if the voting of Electoral College was paused or disrupted because of violence or the threat of violence, that, in itself, might be the crisis necessary to push us into a secessionist crisis. My point is — the American political system is so out of whack, so fragile right now that any extra stress on it will lead to its collapse.

One reason why I know America is in deep trouble is we’ve reached the point when some pretty Far Right concepts are now hurtling towards mainstream acceptance in the Republican Party. The surreal part of all of this is secessionists don’t have any concreate reasons for leaving the Union other than they hate liberal-progressives and woke cancel culture. That’s it. I guess you could say they love the Dear Leader so much they would rather destroy the country than risk living under a Biden Administration, but I still don’t know what, exactly, would be so bad about a Biden Administration that it would be worth destroying the country MAGA says they want to make great again.

And, as I’ve said, MAGA secessionists are completely oblivious about how, in practical terms, they might have some serious problems leaving the Union in the first place. Sure, there are about 15 small population, homogenous states in the center of the country that could probably make a good show of leaving the Union, but that’s it.

I can’t think of a single state of the old CSA that could make a clean break of it. Take Georgia for instance. Not only is Atlanta a major metropolitan area now, but the African American community would rather take up arms against any secessionists than let the state leave the Union for pretty obvious racist reasons.

As such, while I could see any Second American Civil War being a lot longer and a lot bloodier than MAGA could ever possibly imagine — the end result would be the same — they would fucking lose.

I really went on a tangent there. Back to the point — if we can get past today without a “political 9/11” then we’re in the clear until January 6th. If we get pass the Congressional Certification Crisis, then we have the Trump Goes Insane Crisis for much of January.

And, in the end, it could be Trump going insane that leads to the Union collapsing. If Trump goes transactional on Twitter and starts ranting about how Trumplandia needs to be founded, then, well, I guess we’ll have to see how many people take Trump both literally and seriously.

Let’s Talk ‘#Texit’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I know it’s “fun” for Red States to talk secession, it all seems rather dumb to me. Not only are Blue States better positioned to win a Second Civil war because they have bigger populations in smaller areas, have bigger economies and better educated people, the whole issue of race makes secession pretty difficult to imagine.

But right now, it’s “Texit” that seems to have caught the popular imagination among some ding-dongs. Let’s look at it.

For me, Texit isn’t viable for a whole slew of reasons. One is, if you wanted to pass it via a popular vote, there are too many patriots and moderates (and liberals!) in Texas for it to come anywhere near passing. And, as I mentioned, the issue of race makes Texit a pipe dream. I just can’t see black people rolling over and letting a fundamentally racist endeavor take place.

So, for Texit to happen, it would have to happen in the context of a broader secession crisis. Some sort of “political 9/11” would have to happen to so enrage Red State governments that they don’t have a popular vote, but rather snap Secession Conventions. There’s a huge swath of states in the middle of the lower 48 that could easily leave the Union under such conditions. And there best bet would be some sort of negotiated, peaceful departure.

Sadly, for them, I just don’t see that happening.

I just can’t imagine the Biden Administration lulzing 17 states or so leaving the Union. There will be blood, as they say. And the states in question are generally so small in population that the U.S. Military would make swift work of them.

And here’s where Texit comes into play.

As a member of the old CSA, a lot of good old boy Texans would go nuts in the passion of the crisis and demand Texas join its “wayward sisters.” It seems to me that rather than leaving the Union, Texas, itself, would implode. It would have its OWN civil war as the Red and Blue communities within it went at it.

So, in the end, Texas wouldn’t be much good to any new Trumplanian Republic because it would be too busy having its own civil war to join in.

And, let me stress this again — I’m from the South and the “Lost Cause” mythos is everywhere here. But the African American community simply isn’t going to allow a new CSA to be born. If MAGA cocksuckers in the old CSA tried to link up with the lily white Trumplandia states in the center of the country, there would likely be a race war.

Or, at least it would get very, very messy.

States like Virginia, Florida…and Texas would implode because of their internal political divisions.

The issue right now is, America is very fragile politically. If there is no catalyst, then it’s possible we’ll just drift in neutral for two years until Republicans win the House and turn around and impeach Biden for Hunter Biden’s laptop or something.

Something pretty big would have to happen at this point to change that future. Hopefully, nothing will.

Second American Civil War: A Secession Crisis Scenario


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I love scenarios. In fact, that’s pretty much how I spend all my mental free time — thinking up elaborate scenarios and then playing them through in my mind. So, let’s think about what a secession crisis in modern America would look like. Hopefully, we’ll never have to find out how close I get.

The future is not bright.

The reason why this scenario is so difficult to game out right now is I can’t figure out if it will be Blue States leaving or Red States leaving. It really depends on Trump at this point.

He pretty much has the fate of not just the United States, but all of humanity in his tiny, tiny hands — without even really realizing it. The moment he decides to take “total control” or he takes up the cause of Red States leaving the Union as we grow closer to January 20th, the closer we grow to a secession crisis that would cause the country to implode.

If the United States imploded at this point — 2020 would be up there with 1453, 1789 and 1940 as seminal turning points in human history. But, let’s run the scenario with the assumption that it’s Red states, not Blue states that decide to leave the Union.

First, there would have to be some sort of catalyst. It could be anything. From Trump “joking” on Twitter that Red states should leave the Union to a major Red (or Blue) state figure being murdered or even just some sort of abrupt, sudden and unexpected event that causes Red States to decide they can’t abide by liberal-progressive cancel culture anymore. (Ugh.)

If there was a secession crisis, it would happen really fast. Like, all at once. at least 17 Red States would likely leave the Union in one fell swoop in snap Conventions. That would create a lot of momentum for other Red states to pick a side.

Now, here’s where things get tricky for would be Neo-Confederates. While it’s pretty easy for the lily white central Red states to bounce, when, say South Carolina, or Alabama, or Tennessee — or, even, for that matter Texas — get it in their head to leave the Union the African American community in these states will flip the fuck out.

So, it would likely go something like this — a huge swath of states in the sparsely populated central part of the lower 48 would leave cleanly. This would prompt the good old boys in the South to get REALLY EXCITED and see visions of the South “rising again.” And then…they hit a political brick wall: black people.

As such, the South would be the first place where the passions of a modern day secession crisis would explode into massive violence — maybe even a race war. Some states, like Florida and Virginia (and maybe even Texas) wouldn’t survive. (At least in my opinion.) They would implode. Virginia into Red rural counties and Blue urban areas, Florida into the panhandle, the middle peninsula and the south and Texas would probably just have its own internal civil war as communities with mixed Red and Blue exploded into violence.

Around this same time, the domestic political refugees would begin to bounce around the imploding Union at an alarming rate. There’s even a possibility that the U.S. Military itself would implode into Red and Blue at this point. And passions would get so whipped up that some pretty astonishing things would happen, like New York City declare itself a free state or something.

This would all happen really, really fast. No more than two weeks total. Here’s another point where I just can’t figure out things — would all of this happen in, say, early January when Trump finally snaps at the prospect of going to prison in New York State, or does it happen closer to January 20th?

Or does it not happen at all?

As I’ve written before, while all the conditions for all of this exist, Trump, to date, has proven himself all talk. It’s gotten to the point where it’s somewhat eerie. I hate the idea of any type of violence at all, and even I am astonished Trump hasn’t taken the final steps necessary to destroy the country.

There are some pretty huge wildcards. One, is suddenly strike by Iran either against Israel or somewhere domestically in the United States (or both.) Or the DPRK might rattle its saber just enough to give Trump an excuse to start a major regional war so he can simply use that as a distraction to stay in power. (Though I doubt that gambit would work.)

But remember, if the United States implodes, the entire post-WW2 liberal order implodes, too, and well, World War 3 starts as a number of regional wars break out. If you throw in a series of limited nuclear exchanges, as many as 1 billion people might die because white working class men in Red States can’t afford to get married and have kids.

I’m wrong all the time. I hope I’m wrong this time, too.